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How the 5 Stages of Change Can Help Buyers Buy

Guest post by: Rick Kirschner

Article Overview: It's a tough economy, no doubt about it. And though the pace of business is accelerating, some businesses are taking longer to make buying decisions. When the people talking with vendors and potential vendors are hesitant, they could be concerned about making a wrong move and losing their job over it. Yet change happens, and prospects do decide to make positive changes and buy. So it's useful for any person in sales to understand the process by which positive change does happen.

How the 5 Stages of Change Can Help Buyers Buy

James Prochaska in his book ‘Changing for Good,’ has a model for the stages of change that I find both interesting and incredibly useful. It identifies five stages of change that people move through before a change is firmly entrenched in their lives. Successfully introducing someone to a product or service has the potential for positive change. So when you’re not getting the results with a prospect that you think should be possible, that’s a good time to stop pressing ahead, drop back and learn about what your offer means to the client, and then walk them through the stages of change.

The first stage is ignorance. For some, ignorance is bliss. In sales, it's not. More often than not, it's our own ignorance about our prospect's ignorance that gets in our way, because what we don't know can hurt us. This first stage is a delicate one that precedes introducing information. Maybe your prospect is ignorant of the benefits of what you're offering, and telling them the benefits is all they need to progress to the next stage. Or maybe they know about the benefits, but are ignorant about how to gain those benefits for themselves. In that case, information has to be about educating the prospect to take full advantage of whatever you are offering. Or maybe they know what the change is that you're asking them to make, and they even know how to go about it, but don’t know why they should care one way or the other. In that case, information should be motivational, speaking to their interests, values, and needs. Whenever you engage with someone in order to facilitate change, assume they are at the ignorance stage about all of these until you’re certain that they’re not.

The second stage is recognition. That’s when they see the light. It dawns on them that there is something they can do and want to do, and they start seeking information about their options. In that moment, a person starts asking questions about how to go forward. This is a great moment, the AHA moment, the transformational moment. This is when your prospect realizes that a change is possible, or realizes that the method for a certain change is something they can employ, or they recognize that there are very good reasons to care about making the change. Listen well and provide the information they are asking for, and they move to the next stage.

The third stage is planning. This is when a person begins to access and organize the information and resources available, to plot a course, to develop at least the next step or two of moving forwards towards a desired change. At this stage, offering a helping hand is all that’s required. It’s a mentoring and modeling stage.

The fourth stage is action. With a plan in place, they begin to move forward, to take the step. In making any plan, people can try an idea on for size to find out what happens, then learn from the experience and improve on it. Don’t be surprised if there are a few false starts at this stage, since whenever you ask someone to do something new, things rarely go as expected. Offer reassurance and encouragement, give support. Help them to make sense of what's happened and fine tune their relationship to the product or service. Reliable feedback is invaluable at this stage.

Walking through something once doesn’t mean that a pattern is going to be set for the rest of your prospect's life. Starting takes a lot of energy, keeping something going takes less, but it does take energy and commitment. You can’t just walk away believing things are handled. Instead, you go to the fifth stage -- repetition.

This is the stage in which you review what you've learned and how your product or service addresses it, the plan to move forward and the next step actions needed to complete the process.

The biggest mistake that most people make in facilitating change is that they expect people to go from ignorance to action in a single step. The result is that they wind up introducing so much dissonance into a person’s thinking that the natural impulse is to deny, ignore or overwhelm the information with counterexamples in order to discharge the dissonance. The end result: Nothing changes.

Whenever you seek to persuade others, you can’t leap from stage one to stage five, or even three. You move one stage at a time. So it’s important to gauge exactly which stage a person is at regarding the change you want to persuade them to make.

Your goal is to move the person to the next stage only. This will dramatically increase your success in persuasion.

So here are three rules to keep in mind:

1. Tailor what you do to the stage.

It’s foolish to use the same approach for somebody in Stage One (ignorance) as you would to somebody in Stage Three (planning).

Your goal is to move a person (or group) to the next stage. Organize yourself accordingly.

2. Go forward one stage at a time.

No one goes from ignorance to habit in one move. Instead, don’t push the river, as they say. Patience is truly a virtue. If someone is ignorant, your sole purpose is to introduce meaningful information, not to get a change. If they’re in recognition, all your efforts should focus on accessing resources and making a plan. If the person has a plan, all your efforts should be devoted to getting them to take a step forward, to take action. If they’re taking action, then you focus on review and reinforcement.

3. Plan enough time.

Since you can't skip stages, and your ultimate goal is a self sustaining result, you simply must plan enough time. When you or your prospect feels pressured, it becomes difficult to thin

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Article Tags: decisions, economy, job, no doubt, pace, positive changes, prospects, stages of change



Related Forum Posts
Re: Are You Complying with the FTC? - A lot online marketers will run to Cyprus and other Islands to do their businesses. FTC rule or no rule the Internet is a global thing and still a wild wild west. Buyers should be careful and do due diligent before buying anything online
Re: Spellcheck? - [quote="TheAnonymousMan":2f894q6j]When discussing the majority of people I would definitely say that most people hit the "Change" or "Ignore" button without thinking too much about the correct spelling of a word. All bosses are concerned about is getting the report to the Directors meeting on time.[/quote:2f894q6j] That probably depends on what the "majority" are trying to accomplish. I have word set to alert me about misspellings and grammatical problems, so I fix most as I go. But I also add names etc to the dictionary because I get tired of seeing the red and green squiggles when I know the info is right. If you're only going to click "Change" or "Ignore" then why bother to take the time to use spell check????? Business people that I work for want the info compiled in a timely manner and they want it right - which is fine because that's the way I strive to do any project. Sending out a memo, letter, report etc with obvious spelling and grammatical mistakes makes the person and the company look bad as far as I'm concerned. Shri
Re: Are You Complying with the FTC? - [quote="ideasuniversity":2shwf6gr]A lot online marketers will run to Cyprus and other Islands to do their businesses. FTC rule or no rule the Internet is a global thing and still a wild wild west. Buyers should be careful and do due diligent before buying anything online[/quote:2shwf6gr] Exactly. The consumers should have enough common sense to check out a program or product before buying it if they're worried it might be a scam. There's plenty of resources available to aide them in the process. But, unfortunately, everyone must suffer regardless.
Re: Trade Shows - Are They Worth It? - Hi, Tradeshows are attracting different types of people. First, the visitor, which is the main reason of putting it on. Visitors come from all types of background: Buyers, prospective buyers, people who had a business and failed, directors, shopkeepers and even the public. Secondly there are people who just like to meet new people, that is the best place to be. Exchange of business cards, make new contacts for future use. Thirdly, the exhibitors are mixing with one another either help one another or just want to fine out the newest trend. It is also a good place to meet with competitors and learn from their strategies. Finally, there are numerous seminars with excellent speakers, covering a wide range of information. Taking these points in consideration, they are beneficial. Of course, not every exhibitor has the same success.
Re: e-Commerce and e-Payment providers - Hi GT It is only fairly recently that people in South Africa have been able to get full use of Paypal as we were only able at one time to make payments but not receive them. Fortunately this has now changed. I have received money through Global X Change for one of the affiliate programs that I promote and have found them pretty good as the money is normally transferred directly into my bank account within 2-3 days and I have not had any problems with them. MichelleJ


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