The Future Belongs to Sellers Who Can Zoom Out and Back In

I recently encountered an interesting concept in a Bloomberg article about Warren Buffet. In it, Buffet is quoted as saying, “‘the single best measure of where valuations stand,’ is the ratio of the value of US publicly traded companies to the country’s GDP.”

What struck me is how far out Buffet zoomed out in order to contextualize his strategic thinking about individual companies. It got me thinking about how we can apply this in complex sales to win more business. What if salespeople learned to zoom out like Buffet, in order to zoom in and help solve customers problems?

The Narrow View Limits Salespeople

Even within the context of complex B2B sales, sales leadership and salespeople often focus too narrowly. We send folks to train on products and services and teach them a process and methodology, but we rarely provide them with a broader view to support them with business acumen or systems thinking.

Salespeople can stay unhelpfully zoomed in due to fear, and they can get stuck because they don’t know how to zoom out.

Then, salespeople get laser-focused on one problem, one pain point, one solution, and/or one stakeholder within a sales project. This “zoomed-in” mindset limits our ability to help potential customers understand their own problems, contextualize them, and create alignment on their team around decision-making.

The DSRP Zoom In/Zoom Out Tool Provides a Useful Framework

The DSRP theory for systems thinking developed by Derek Cabrera at Cabrera Lab, gives us a useful way to structure the way we think about sales. Specifically, the “S” in DSRP provides a tool for gaining wider perspective.

The “S” stands for “Systems” and refers to the ability to view any given system as part of a larger system, and also as a larger system containing smaller systems. The primary “move” associated with “Systems” in DSRP is the Zoom In/Zoom Out.

Zoom In/Zoom Out helps us understand that the person we are interacting with in a sales call is only one part of a much larger system which, in turn, is part of other larger systems, each of which contains many smaller systems.

For instance, a salesperson is part of the “system” of a sales department, which is part of a “system” of the whole company, which is part of the “system” of the industry, and so on. Within the industry, there are many similar companies, and within the company, there are many other departments. And within the department, there are many systems, such as the technologies that are used, processes, and the culture of people within the department.

Salespeople who can quickly zoom in and out on a problem can see that any problem that a buyer has is part of a larger system and connected with other systems within that system. Zooming in enables the salesperson to empathize with the immediate problem or goal, and zooming out enables them to contextualize the issue.

Zooming out also enables salespeople to identify additional relevant stakeholders and provide wider context for decision-making, beyond the immediate.

Zooming Out Helps Salespeople Quantify The Cost of Inaction

In complex sales, a “no decision” decision is a frequent and costly outcome of a sales project. Organizations easily get bogged down in conflicting priorities, resist the risks of change, and get stuck doing what they’ve always done.

Quantifying the cost of inaction can help buyers break this pattern and make a decision that will move their initiatives forward. The Zoom In/Zoom Out move can help salespeople reveal costs and reframe the status quo as the greater risk.

Zooming out from the immediate problem to the larger system, and the impact of the problem on the system, helps to raise the stakes by showing how costly the problem is. Zoom out even farther, and the salesperson can quantify what the status quo is costing the company against the industry standard and what industry leaders are doing to be proactive and move past the old way of doing things.

Providing broad, zoomed out perspectives to the buyer also increases the salesperson’s value to the buyer as a trusted advisor, rather than just a vendor offering a one-off solution.

Zooming Back In Helps Connect the Big Picture to the Buyer’s Immediate Needs

With the broader picture understood and communicated, salespeople can zoom back in on the immediate problem, and connect with how understanding the whole, helps prioritize and solve the small. This builds trust and connection with the buyer, and builds their motivation to continue the process and move toward a decision.

Zooming Out is a Skill, not an In-Born Ability

Salespeople can stay unhelpfully zoomed in on a problem due to anxiety or fear, and they can get stuck because they don’t know how to zoom out. Zooming out requires sales professionals to wrestle with their limiting beliefs that prevent them from becoming a trusted advisor and gaining confidence that they can swim in larger waters.
The good news is that if salespeople are willing and their organization provides the framework, they can learn the skill of zooming out and the habit of mind that supports it. Bringing DSRP into your sales training has the potential to position your sales team as the one that helps buyers see the big picture and make decisions within a broader framework.

Zoom In/Zoom Out Transforms Sales from Transactional to Consultative

When salespeople are confident and skilled in zooming out and zooming in, they become more than a vendor to the buyers they work with. They provide key insights and consultative support that help buyers make good investments in their growth.

Additionally, zooming out enables sellers to identify the larger systems that need to be part of the solutions-building conversation. This provides the context to enable salespeople to build alignment along the strategic choice, builds trust, and leads to stronger sales outcomes.

Teams who can do this will “zoom” ahead of the competition and drive the future of sales. So, how good is your team at zooming out and back in? How often do your salespeople provide broader context for their buyers? 

PS: Check out this webinar I did recently on the topic of systems thinking inb the context of sales: Seeing Sales as a System.