When Goal-based Planning Doesn't Work...

1. Traditional Planning/Selling Approach

Consultative and transactional selling models are goal-based. The needs identification stage of consultative selling presumes the existence of a known and desirable goal(s)… which is great if people know what they want. This is not usually the case, especially when faced with complex issues. The truth is that most people don't know what they want until they know what they can have. That’s why when you’re dealing with complex client problems goal-based planning approaches aren’t appropriate. A scenario planning approach is required.

2. Scenario Planning Approach

A scenario-based planning approach reverses the order of two of the steps in the planning process: setting goals and planning for possibilities. In a scenario-based approach, planning for possibilities comes before planning for goals.

3. Scenario Selling Model

ScenarioSelling turns the traditional consultative sales process inside out: Instead of starting with client goals and developing possibilities to achieve them... It starts with evaluating possibilities and choosing among them to determine goals

The result is a new model for professional selling that dramatically improves both the client experience and sales results for selling situations that involve complex products and services.

Scenario Selling = Scenario Planning + Consultative Selling

ScenarioSelling is the marriage of scenario planning and consultative selling.

In the traditional consultative selling process, the salesperson creates and presents the scenarios. The salesperson does the scenario planning. The client/prospect's role in scenario planning is reactive. As a result, the salesperson's role is persuasive.

In the ScenarioSelling process the salesperson and client create and analyze scenarios (do scenario planning) together. The client's role in the process is proactive resulting in greater buy-in and commitment. The salesperson doesn't have to persuade. They simply facilitate the scenario planning-selling process.

Understanding Creative Tension

What causes people to make decisions rather than put them off? What motivates people to take action rather than settle for what they currently have? The answers to these questions can be found in the principle of creative tension.

Creative tension is a term popularized by leading thinkers in the subject of change management to explain what motivates people to change.Creative tension describes the feeling people have when they recognize the difference (the gap) between where they are (their current scenario) and where they want to be (their preferred scenario). The ‘gap’ is the distance between what we have and what we want. This gap creates a natural and healthy tension that seeks to resolve itself. This tension is the reason choices are made and actions are taken. It’s the source of energy for change.

Creative tension is a natural force. Have you ever seen how lightning works? As the poles become charged ionized particles between the poles begin to ‘line up.’ When the forces at the poles are strong enough – zap – a powerful spark bridges the gap.

Now, let’s see how this applies to decision-making and selling.

Decision-Making & Creative Tension. When people see something they want, there is a natural tendency to move toward it. This power (creative tension) pulls us toward our vision. It’s a very powerful motivator.

What is motivation? Motivation is a ‘need.’ It is an internal drive that requires action. Motivation is like the volume on the radio. It describes the level of intensity dedicated to resolving an issue. The stronger the tension, the greater the motivation, and the more likely that change will result.

Once you know what you want in relation to what you have, you begin to organize your thoughts and actions, consciously and unconsciously, to cause the desired change to happen. Creative tension is an innate pull that seeks resolution; and the most natural resolution of this tension is for our reality to move closer to what we want.

Selling & Creative Tension. Sales efforts that don’t recognize and address the natural forces at work typically collapse into ‘pushing’ the prospect towards the salesperson’s vision of what the client wants. Sales efforts that utilize creative tension ‘pull’ prospects and clients towards the vision that they themselves have created.

How do you use the concept of creative tension in a sales situation?

• Provide a clear picture of where they stand today
• Develop a shared vision of what they want

If you do a good job on these two points, the natural impact of creative tension will introduce a ‘productive discomfort’ that will cause the client to seek resolution. As a result, they will buy rather than having to be sold.

An excerpt from ScenarioSelling: Technology and the Future of Professional Selling, by Patrick J. Sullivan and Dr. David L. Lazenby.

What We're Doing

Our Mission. The focus of our work is helping people understand, solve, and explain complex problems... problems that involve system behavior... problems that cause normally rational people to behave irrationally.

Challenges to Managing Complexity Issue #1: Very few people (less than 1%) have any skills or training whatsoever at handling complex problems. Traditional logical thinking and decision making doesn't help people solve complex issues and usually make the problems worse. (One of the traditional responses to complexity is to try and break it into parts. The results may be satisfying in the short term and usually futile and often disastrous in the long term.)

Issue #2: As problems increase in complexity, people's ability to think about, talk about, and take action on them goes down. Typical untrained responses to complexity are: (a) to freeze and not act; (b) to react impulsively; and (c) to revert to familiar patterns of behavior... none of which help solve the problem!

Issue #3: Technological advances have made the world smaller and more interconnected. People have access to information than every before and are drowning in the overload. They are faced with more choices and potential consequences. The world is becoming increasingly complex. Increasing complexity without appropriate skills and tools to manage it, is having significant repercussions on business and in society that are becoming increasingly challenging.

There is a great deal of research going on at MIT, Harvard, Stanford, Carnegie Mellon, and other academic institutions on this subject. There is also a multidisciplinary research think tank called the Santa Fe Institute, with some of the world's leading minds participating, working to facilitate discussions about it.

Some of the most interesting and meaningful results of these efforts have been advancements in studies of Systems Thinking, Scenario Planning, and Simulation. All three provide valuable contributions to helping people learn to navigate through complexity - solving complex problems and making complex decisions more effectively.

So What? So how does all this academic jargon apply to financial services and what we're doing? Most financial companies' (and advisors') approach to complex problems is KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid), which typically modularizes or breaks the problem into parts; for example, retirement planning decisions, investment decisions, insurance decisions, and estate decisions. This is a logical, but flawed approach.

Why? The reason that most customers get hung up and fail to decide/act is because they have difficulty visualizing the tradeoffs between these issues. For example, "If I solve my estate problem by gifting assets to children, will I need the money some day (cause a retirement problem)?" There are many other examples of issues like this where people's decisions and actions are paused or abandoned because of the inability of the client (and the advisor) to visualize and model the tradeoffs involved in the client's big picture.

If this can be solved, clients will be better served - they will make better more confident decisions - and sales people will sell faster and more effectively!

The Bottom Line. Real life and real problems, particularly the types of issues clients in the 21st century go to advisors for, aren't simple. They're complex! If advisors want to add real value for customers, they must be able to help them understand, solve, and act on complex problems. But most advisors don't have the training or tools to do it!

We've done a lot of research/work to create tools and training to help fix this. We create products that represent the state of the art in helping advisors model and explain complex financial problems.

We design visuals tools, including slideshows and software, based on principles of systems thinking, scenario planning, and simulation to help people look as financial wholes rather than parts. Using our tools advisors help clients talk about big picture issues and visualize financial tradeoffs. This helps them plan more appropriately and effectively and make decisions/take action much faster.