Understanding Understanding

If salespeople want to succeed, they need to respond to the decision-making challenges customers face in a world of unlimited information.

At a press conference in February of 2002, Donald Rumsfeld, (image above) the United States Secretary of Defense at the time, categorized uncertainties into three types:

• Things we know (Known Knowns)
• Things that we know that we don’t know (Known Unknowns)
• Things that we don’t know that we don’t know (Unknown Unknowns)

Now that we are in an age of infinite “information” and Artificial Intelligence, it might be time to revisit “Rumsfeld’s Epistemology” and see if there is something useful in it given the many challenges of our current environment.

The first thing I noticed about Rumsfeld’s framework is that only one of the three categories seemed to acknowledge the value of at least knowing what we need to know…even if we don’t know it yet:? Known Unknowns.? More about that in a minute.

In the above framework, Known Knowns do not seem to differentiate between what we know - and what we need to know for a specific decision.? (This is the functional equivalent of the infinite scroll.)? This lack of differentiation wasn’t the most pressing problem back when data was scarce, but that is no longer the case. ?In 2000, the amount of data generated globally was around 2 exabytes per year.? By 2020, that figure increased to 64,000 exabytes per year.? That means we are producing at least 32,000 TIMES more data today per year than we were 24 years ago.? In just two decades we’ve gone from not knowing enough to make the right decision, to knowing too much to make the right decision!?

Fortunately, the solution for Unknown Unknowns (blind spots we aren’t aware of) is the same as the key to solving the complexity of Known Knowns (knowing too much to make a decision):? A definition of the specific pieces of information required to make this specific decision.?

If we have that delineation, we can:

• Eliminate the information overload of what we know (Known Knowns) and the anxiety of wondering if there are things that we haven’t thought of (Unknown Unknowns).
• Minimize the likelihood of unforeseen issues or factors that could undermine decision success. For example, if decision-makers are unaware of a specific stakeholder's requirements, the chosen purchase might fail significantly, jeopardizing implementation or the achievement of the desired outcome. For instance, if decision-makers do not realize that the selected platform requires significant downtime for upgrades or updates, and this is unacceptable to business users (an unknown unknown), the new platform will fail to deliver the desired outcome. I have seen multi-million dollar systems discarded after just nine months due to this exact scenario.
• Proactively mitigate the known gaps in our required information state. If you know what you need to solve for (the known in known knowns), and you’re tracking what you’ve learned (the knowns), its immediately obvious where the information gaps are.? Suprises happen everyday in every CRM system because they aren’t designed to help reps help their customers map out a decision.? ??

So, a critical part of the process of understanding is a metadata function…that is, we need to know which pieces of information are critical to each specific decision...that’s data about data.? Obviously defining and executing a cybersecurity initiative requires a different constellation of information elements than a decision about revamping HR (which has its own array of needed information.)

In my (29) Free Range Salespeople – The Day of Reckoning | LinkedIn article, I said that for most salespeople, “learning about the prospect and their needs is more of a happy coincidence than the intention of the meeting.” ?That’s why I called those sellers “free range”.? An accidental or incidental approach to understanding what you are asking your customer to say yes to is an approach that is quickly running out of efficacy.?

Case in point:? I had a meeting not long ago with the GM of a division of a services company focused on outsourcing specific functions for a hugely popular industry. This particular division had not sold its new service once in its first 18 months of sales “activity.” (They had a lot of activity … just no sales).? I asked the GM, “Do your salespeople understand what they are asking their prospective customers to say yes to?”? (Meaning can you explain how outsourcing this specific function will impact your prospect’s specific business as compared to their current state?) He thought for a while and said, “No, we don’t.”? And I said, “Well, that seems like the root cause of your sales issues. If you don’t know how your service will impact each customer’s specific business, why would they trust you to “help” them?”? Spoiler alert: They won’t.?

If we want to help salespeople to be integral to the customer’s decision-making process, we have to arm them with the definitions of the information the customer needs to solve for to make the best decision given the details of their objective and the uniqueness of their business.? That means shifting sales enablement from static sales methodologies to dynamic, adaptive learning systems that help reps help their customers make the best decisions.