I was interested recently to read a study in Nature Human Behavior showing that about 75% of social media shares are made without reading past the headline or even clicking through. Though this is horrifying, it doesn’t surprise me. After all, it happens in complex sales all the time.
While the study’s authors (Sundar, Snyder, Liao, et al) don’t speculate about why so many shares are made without reading the article, I will. I suspect it’s a combination of laziness, confirmation bias, and a misplaced effort to be “efficient.” We see a headline that confirms something we already believe, we already believe it so we don’t bother double-checking, and then we share because we have other, more important things to do than read something we already know. Unfortunately, this creates echo chambers that erode the quality of public discourse and lead to poor political and social outcomes.
The same is true in sales.
In sales, the equivalent of “shares without clicks” is making assumptions about prospects, opportunities, win/loss analysis, and account growth, without digging below the surface. And we do it all the time, for the same reasons we share without clicking on social media.
In prospecting, we get on the phone with someone who sounds interested, and we immediately start pitching them with the product. The “headline” is: Someone sounding interested. The article we haven’t read is why they’re interested, their relationship to the problem that needs solving, where they are situated within the purchasing company, who else is involved in the decision, how urgent the need is, and what specific problems they want to solve.
In sales, the equivalent of “shares without clicks” is making assumptions.
Without that information, we end up shouting into an echo chamber of our own making, hoping something shouts back. When we “read the article,” we learn who else we need to talk to, what urgent problems we must align with, and how we can help them so that we’re not just a vendor offering a product, but a partner solving a problem together.
Even when we know we have a qualified prospect in our pipeline, we often continue to fail to click through and read the article. We don’t schedule calls with the other stakeholders, we don’t ask probing questions, we don’t do our industry and company analysis, and we don’t help the customer create a compelling business case. We think that because a few people in the company are looking for a product like ours, it’s an easy sale if we just show them how great the product is.
After a project is closed, whether it’s won or archived, analysis is often either skipped, or shallow. We say we won a deal because it was the right industry and they needed a product of our size and capability. Or we say we lost a deal because a competitor offered a lower price. Sometimes we even act like we lost the deal because the customer was stupid.
This is sharing without clicking. Effective win/loss analysis digs below the surface to read the article. It analyzes across deals to see if there are trends like industry, size, or even number of stakeholders contacted (read this research paper to learn how we discovered the effects of this). If one salesperson seems to land a disproportionately high number of deals or high-value deals, win/loss should dive into why, what they are doing differently, and how you can share those steps, skills, and abilities across the team.
Sharing without clicking in account growth means assuming that you know what each account needs, or that they’ll reach out to you if they want something. The “article” in this case is staying in touch with key stakeholders to ensure that they’re getting the most benefit from your product and uncover new opportunities to grow with them. It means paying attention to industry trends and market conditions that may be impacting them.
In all of these cases, salespeople think they’re being efficient by jumping to a sales pitch, talking to just one person, or skipping the win/loss analysis. But what they’re actually doing is creating a bubble of self-reinforcing beliefs and habits that lead to poor results and lack of growth.
I’m sure there are many, many more ways that we “share without clicking” in this industry, other than those I’ve thought of for this post.
Where do you see this happening on your teams or in the broader sales world?
George is the founder & CEO of Membrain, the Sales Enablement CRM that makes it easy to execute your sales strategy. A life-long entrepreneur with 20 years of experience in the software space and a passion for sales and marketing. With the life motto "Don't settle for mainstream", he is always looking for new ways to achieve improved business results using innovative software, skills, and processes. George is also the author of the book Stop Killing Deals and the host of the Stop Killing Deals webinar and podcast series.
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