Often, even after seemingly doing all the right things and following the normal sales process, for some reason the customer still won’t accept a need for your product. This is sometimes hard to accept, especially if your sales skills are good-leaving you wondering where to go next.

Now there can be several reasons that this situation can occur; your skills are not as good as you thought they were; you haven’t understood the customer sufficiently; your product isn’t as good as you believed; it’s just the ‘wrong time and place’ or you haven’t uncovered enough needs for the customer to consider changing what, for them, is a normal habit.

Now you may feel you can do something about most of the reasons but what about the last one? This is where I would like to introduce you to Gleicher’s Theory (David Gleicher 1986)

Gleicher’s Theory runs thus:

A+B+C>D

A = the level of dissatisfaction with the current situation. If people are happy with the way things are, they are unlikely to support change.

B = a shared vision of a better future. For change to be sustained the group or individual must have a common vision of a better way of doing things.

C = an acceptable safe first step. First steps are acceptable if they are small and likely to be successful or if they can be easily reversed if they prove to be unsuccessful.

D = costs to the individual or group. Costs may be real or perceived, but there will always be ‘costs’. Some people may view these as unfair or too painful.

The theory is based on the assumption that most people are only prepared to get involved in the messy and unsettling world of change if they can easily see that the advantages of doing so sufficiently outweigh the costs.

The theory has it’s roots in Change Management but can be easily adapted to fit the Sales call and simply put explains that the customer hasn’t committed to buying from you because they haven’t seen sufficient reason to do so. So how can we adapt the theory to suit the sales call? Let’s use an example from the Pharmaceutical sales world but this can be adapted to any sales situation.

Let’s start with part ‘A’.
A = the level of dissatisfaction with the current situation. If people are happy with the way things are, they are unlikely to support change.

This is fairly self-explanatory and simply put you have to uncover or help the customer to clearly identify that their current situation can be improved. And in the Pharmaceutical world that normally means that patient’s symptoms and/or lives could be better.

Now for part ‘B’.

B = a shared vision of a better future. For change to be sustained the group or individual must have a common vision of a better way of doing things.

Again simple but executed correctly can be extremely powerful. This is the part where you use either patient pictures to describe the improvement or, depending on the customer’s motivation, how the customer’s lot can be improved i.e. by improving symptom control the patient has less need to visit their Dr., who in turn has more time and, as you know, time is a highly valuable commodity.

And finally part ‘C’.

C = an acceptable safe first step. First steps are acceptable if they are small and likely to be successful or if they can be easily reversed if they prove to be unsuccessful.

When you have successfully completed parts A and B, you can still fall at C if the commitment you are asking for is a step too far for the customer. You should have in your mind before the call what commitment you are going to ask for and in fact, it is often useful to share this with the customer up front. Let’s face it the customer knows you are going to be asking for something and it is far easier to close if the customer is prepared.
So for a successful conclusion of part C keep the step manageable. Try to avoid the cliché close of ‘would you use product X in your next 5 patients’, it is easily measurable but not very imaginative or easy for the customer to picture. Instead, have an idea of a patient type you would like to target and one where the customer can evaluate the success of the change.

For Gleicher’s Theory to work the additive effects of A,B and C have to be greater than D which is:

D = costs to the individual or group. Costs may be real or perceived, but there will always be ‘costs’. Some people may view these as unfair or too painful.

Obviously ‘cost’ can mean many things, the actual cost of the product, cost in terms of side-effects, costs in time spent, or most often cost in terms of effort in changing a set thought process or habit. It really doesn’t matter what the cost is because if the rest of the formula is completed and agreed by the customer then their sum will be greater than D.

If having now read this article you think through the Theory you will realise that it isn’t much different from any other sales process but what it does do is focus your mind on successfully completing each part, gaining customer agreement and summarising that agreement before asking for commitment.

I hope that you can use the Theory and increase your success by using it.

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