How do you currently enable your change champion?

I am sure you have encountered the following situation many times: You are at a dinner party, and your friend asks you and your buddies: “Who has seen a great movie on Netflix lately? I Am looking to recommend one to my cousin who likes action movies”. You say: “I have, it’s this movie with, what’s his name again, you know the one where they do this heist and end up in this aeroplane crashing somewhere in Monaco I think, gosh, what’s the name again.? It’s a great movie full of action with, uh, this famous actor…and it has a great twist at the end.”

How do you think this sounds to your audience? What will your friend tell his cousin? The same story? I doubt it.

Value-Framing

Now, consider your following reaction: “I recommend your cousin to watch the movie ‘Lift’ with Kevin Hart in the main role. It’s a hot pursuit action movie around Europe where he and his buddies pull off a heist stealing gold. Action, Fun, and it has a great twist; you got to watch it. Lift, with Kevin Hart.”

You have just enabled your friend by using Value-Framing, A powerful way of influencing others.

Unfortunately, this is not often used in sales meetings. More often than not, we are going on and on, throwing more and more information into the conversation without being to the point. This way, you overwhelm your stakeholders, who often get even more confused. How can you expect them to influence others?

Once you have found a stakeholder with the potential to be your Change Champion, you must enable them to influence others. Although you have convinced them that a change is necessary, how will they convey that message to their colleagues in the buying room? What if, after you have left the building, your stakeholder bumped during the lunch break into another critical stakeholder? How well have you equipped your Change Champion to influence others? Your ideas and insights must be factful, concise, and easy to remember. Your value-framing contains:

• The customer’s desired objective
• Their challenge
• The solution
• The outcome

You use Business Acumen to make your idea relevant to their challenges. They need a clear idea of your proposed change and the solution required to achieve the outcome. When you walk out of their building, your stakeholders should be able to remember and tell your exact message. Most of the buying is done when you are not there.

Digital Enabling

Returning to the movie-night discussion, you said, while grabbing your mobile phone: “Here, let me forward you the link to the Lift movie. I do it right now, so you can forward that to your cousin….”

What you just did there is called Digital Enabling. Also, in sales meetings, you need to empower the receiver to give another stakeholder the quickest access to the insight, research article, or data you base your business idea on. Then, they are armed with valuable material they will forward to another stakeholder together with your Value-Framing.

That’s the way you enable your Change Champions!