Sandler Brief: The VUCA Challenge - Why Technique is Not Enough

Below is Sandler’s famous Success Triangle. The triangle's three corners can drive our ascent to our fullest and highest potential in sales and life. They define the three critical areas of ongoing development that, taken together, can make sustainable personal and professional growth a daily reality – not an abstract idea or a faraway goal but a consistent series of measurable improvements in both performance and achievement.

Most salespeople we work with gravitate toward the technique corner first. That's understandable. It's easiest to focus on technique. It's low-hanging fruit. You can improve your results quickly by upgrading your technique.

The problem is, for some people, improving technique is all they consider: what to do and how to do it, what to say and how to say it, what not to do and why you shouldn't do it. While it's tempting to focus only on the tactics, to operate on the assumption that technique is all there is, the technique is not the whole picture.

Consider: Today's selling teams compete in a world defined, increasingly, by volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity, also known as VUCA. In a world where technologies are constantly shifting, leapfrogging, and disrupting, where whole industries can be, and are, reimagined more or less overnight, buyers and influencers have better information tools. They are more educated and less reliant on salespeople than ever before; in the world where we all now find ourselves, the key to sustainable success as sales professionals is our ability to build and sustain functional ongoing professional relationships.

Healthy relationships withstand and thrive on change. Our challenge as sales professionals is to build excellent working relationships. These relationships stand the test of time with people who are just as complex, demanding, and multifaceted as we are. Some techniques support that goal . . . but there are no techniques that, on their own, can make it happen. Technique by itself just doesn't do that.

Creating and sustaining functional relationships requires assuming responsibility for what's happening between our ears; it means looking at the assumptions we make about ourselves, our market, and our world that affect our communication with others. Not only that, but it also requires a willingness to evaluate the outcomes our behavior patterns are producing . . . and to ask ourselves whether something in our behavior plan needs to change to accommodate a change in the world around us. Very often, the answer to that question is going to be Yes.

Avoiding or ignoring those two corners of the triangle, attitude and behavior – even if we implement techniques that made sense yesterday – usually leads us away from optimal performance. We focus less than we should on the relationship . . . and less than we should on the metrics that will tell us whether our techniques are effective. Just as concerning, pretending that technique is all that matters usually points us, over time, toward a singular focus on the identification and removal of symptoms.

We want to go beyond that transactional level. Why? Because a transactional approach won't get us in the door or keep us in discussions with modern buyers and the ever-larger cast of characters who affect their decision-making. Only when we interact with buyers and influencers as the human beings they are, and not as some checklist we can complete, can we build relationships that will survive and thrive in today's business environment.

As it happens, Sandler has a reputation for solid technique. We are known for sharing great actionable tactics and great strategies that sales professionals can learn and implement. But what we have seen play out across all the industries we work in is that even though salespeople may have been taught to seek out better techniques, what really changes their game is their willingness to work, at the same time, on the other two points of the Success Triangle.

This is what our long-term clients discover: that focusing on all three corners of the triangle is what really sets them and their team apart from the competition. And what we're seeing in the field is that this kind of balance is more critical now than ever.

Technique alone will not set you apart from the competition in today's markets. When it comes to understanding, mapping, and aligning with a given buyer's journey, each of the corners of the Success Triangle is equally indispensable.

Let's take a moment to consider the behavior corner more closely. This corner challenges us by asking when and how often the techniques we've learned are actually put into practice. If we know how to perform great techniques in some area of our life (dieting and exercise, say), but we never or rarely bother to execute those techniques, is it going to help us? Of course not.

The Success Triangle challenges us to answer this question: Do we know what behaviors and activities need to happen daily to make our whole business successful, and do we do them? In other words, is there a behavioral plan, and are we executing it? You know the old joke about how to eat an elephant: a bite at a time. Well, the behavior corner asks us if we are breaking up that elephant into little bites when it comes to our daily behaviors, the things we commit to do, and actually do, day after day.

That's behavior. Now, how about attitude? Well, attitude (also known as mindset) is just as important as the other two corners when mapping out and aligning with any buyer's journey. If our belief system reinforces scarcity, victimhood, or a belief that people are fundamentally dishonest, we won't get very far. Yet, for some reason, many salespeople minimize or ignore the significance of critically evaluating their own attitude.

Suppose we are second-guessing ourselves or sabotaging ourselves with our internal dialogue. In that case, if we're still living out scripts we learned as children that no longer support us (such as "don't talk to strangers" or "it's rude to talk about money"), we're always going to go off track. We will waste a lot of time, effort, and energy that we cannot afford to waste in the current environment.

Our parents gave us rules because they cared about us and wanted to protect us, but we need to recognize that some rules no longer serve us. Yes, we're professionals now, grownups . . . but most of us still have head trash leftover from childhood that can cause us to freeze up at important moments when we're interacting with buyers.

The attitude point on the triangle challenges us to notice and assume personal responsibility for our own mindset. Is it a mindset of fear, doubt, and worry? Or is it one of confidence and conviction in our message? If it's the former, we have some work to do on our self-talk and our self-concept.

We tell our clients: You can instantly talk yourself in or out of greatness. Most of us talk ourselves out of greatness every time we start fantasizing about bad outcomes that may never actually happen—and it doesn't matter if they do! For example, "They know more than I do," or "I don't know all the details about our product/service," or, "If I stand my ground on this issue, they will disapprove of me." Here's an important reality check brought to you by the attitude corner of the Success Triangle. We're not having this conversation with the buyer to be liked.

Commit to work on all three corners of the Success Triangle continuously. And keep that commitment. You'll be glad you did.