Find your Competitive Edge by Creating Collaborative Vision with your Customer
Have you ever looked back on a story you wrote in primary school?
You might have been all of seven years old. You were yet to receive your pen licence and your scratchy, HB leaded words were so large you could only fit four per line. (Smudged in a leaded shadow if you were a rookie left hander!)
What you lacked in finesse you made up for in imagination. Creating sentences & stories with words made from combinations of letters which made sense to you.
“The bare sat on the seet eeting his selary.”
Of course bears sit on seats eating celery, why not?
In the day, you were proud of what you created and so were your parents. Why else would they pull the thin, discoloured page out forty years later for a giggle?
When we are young, we don’t understand the world’s broad context or how things are put together. All we know is what we see.
Our days are full of discovery. Our minds fascinated by the trivial. A dancing plastic bag, caught in a gust of wind. A pile of crispy autumn leaves begging to be stomped on. Simple things invisible to preoccupied adult eyes.
When we are young, our sense of wonder is sharp. Nourishing our minds & animating our faces.
It feels good.
Then one day in our adult life we wake up tired & stale. “Where did that imaginative, carefree little person go?” we wonder. Somehow they disappeared without us noticing.
Age squeezes the creativity out of us. Just as life’s harsh edges diminishes our belief anything is possible.
We simply stop asking questions like, “but why?”. In fact many of us stop asking questions at all.
Our adult conversations becoming transactional rather than cooperative. Mental filing cabinets full of responsibilities replacing the cavernous echo chambers which used to house our wild imaginations.
If only we could turn back time.
Creativity is not only beneficial to our mental health, it’s a powerful business tool offering a competitive edge.
One obvious example is creating collaborative vision with your customer; the process of designing your future landscape together. A picture & narrative which:
sets your direction
brings purpose to your partnership &
intention to your actions
Think of it as a horizon. One you commit to walking towards together because it is mutually beneficial. Your path, becoming your journey of customer engagement.
We are looking to create a story preference for action, movement & eagerness, over cautiousness & vigilance.
A high performing sales professional understands the importance of vision creation for generating ongoing engagement, or “touch points” with their customer.
They bring this capability to the table & lead their customer throughout the journey.
How do we build our vision creation capability & set ourselves up for success?
Here are four “must-haves” I bring to every consulting job:
Mindset
The frame of mind you bring to the conversation will influence both your customer’s mindset & overall outcome. Set yourself up with a positive mindset focused on growth & possibility, instead of one restricted by history.
Remember, your resources are now pooled. Opportunity looks different.
You must be mentally agile. Able to switch from “getting it done” to “daydreamer mode”. Create the time & space to do so.
Don’t forget to be mindful of creeping constraints. Judgement creates blind spots & must be left at the door along with defensiveness. They only suck the oxygen out of the room & extinguish the creative flame. There is no right or wrong throughout the vision creation process. Only a safe space where you can toss the ideas & see if they float.
Tip: The best collaborations I’ve ever had were for ideas which didn’t exist at the time. We had presence of mind & the courage to disrupt.
The key is not to be afraid of what you don’t know.
Curiosity
Grab your passing interests & fleeting ideas with both hands. The ones which grow into an insatiable itch. They drive passion & fuel perseverance. (2)
Curiosity brings them to life.
Vision creation requires relentless curiosity. Curiosity which pushes the boundaries & finds the hard questions few are willing to ask. An exploratory process of immersion; into the problem we are trying to solve, a mutual customer’s perspective, or possibilities yet to exist. Our only limitations, a mind we are in control of.
Questions to kick off the process:
What is the problem we are working to overcome?
What is the impact we are wanting to make?
How do you envisage the future?
What are the positive possibilities?
What can we do to improve the human experience?
Tip: I love my question bank & would encourage you to start your’s. A dedicated place you can store vision creation questions. Always keep an eye out for great questions. Inspiration is everywhere - books & interviews my favourite sources.
Language
The language we use influences our mindset.
Depleting words such as; lose, fail, waste or prevent on my “avoid” list during vision creation sessions. They only create dead ends.
Words of abundance maintain conversation momentum & enthusiasm for the process; gain, benefit, learn, care & excite some of my favourites. They keep the ideas flowing.
You see things and you say, “Why? But I dream of things that never were, and I say, “Why not?”
George Bernard Shaw
Tip: Make a visible note of the “avoid” words. Observe if they crop up & send the conversation in circles. A collective commitment to place examples around “avoid” words in a “parking lot” for now, keeps your conversation moving forward & improves productivity.
It acknowledges relevance, just not today.
Action & Accountability
Energy & excitement can be palpable in these sessions. It can also fall away quickly if there is no action plan, ownership or accountability.
Own the process, hold yourself to account for driving it forward & always, gain consensus from your customer.
Customer consensus is your permission towards future engagement & access.
Tip: Never forget it’s more about the process than the outcome. The key is to run with it, not control it. And always, throw everything out on the table with your Customer. From my experience, when you have the courage to share the vulnerability of learning lessons together, your partnership goes from strength to strength.
Think about your engaged partners today. My Momentum Mindsetters will know what that means!
Who are the forward thinkers, the early adopters, the curious?
How have you invigorated your relationship recently?
A vision creation session is a terrific way to inject energy into you, your Customer & your partnership. It’s a shared creative process which provides an increased sense of purpose & supports mental health.
Nothing better than a conversation you all walk away from feeling uplifted, positive & raring to go!
Peta x
Sales Coach | Consultant | Team Masterclasses
Founder of Momentum Mindset - Creating Masters of Customer Relationships. An online course for sales professionals
Mental Health Speaker for Beyond Blue
Author of My Beautiful Mess - Living through burnout & rediscovering me
Would you like to bring more Vision Creation to your team’s thinking?
Reach out to Peta via the link below.
(1) Goleman D & Cherniss C (2023) Optimal - How to Sustain Excellence Every Day. PRH. UK
(2) Andriopoulos C (2022) Purposeful Curiosity - How Asking the Right Questions Will Change Your Life. Hachette. UK.