Card 9: Doing nothing

• Their pitch (the status quo's): it costs nothing today and nobody changes a habit. Expect this to be the alternative you meet most often.
• Our edge: a small, safe, reversible first step that removes the frictions that stop posting.
• Ask: "What happened the last time you asked the team to post more?"
• For you, not for buyers: JOLT research on about 2.5 million sales conversations found 40 to 60% of qualified deals are lost to no decision, mostly through fear of a mistake rather than love of the status quo, and that pushing the case against the status quo backfired with indecisive buyers 84% of the time (Dixon and McKenna: graded mixed, a very large but proprietary dataset, not peer reviewed). Do not scare them; make the first step small and reversible.
• Where doing nothing wins: no cost today, no embarrassing post, billing work comes first.
• Where we win (GREEN): a small, reversible start (a few people, approvals on, policy loaded); removes the blank page (news, morning list, meeting ideas), time (Holly drafts), voice (built from their writing) and compliance worry (rules checked). The argument: "The damage doesn't show up when you stop. It shows up three months later, and by then you've decided it's the market." "Mandates don't survive a busy Tuesday. Systems do."
• Evidence you may quote (say the source): roughly 5% of buyers are in market at any one time, on the LinkedIn B2B Institute's estimate (illustrative, never measured). Going from one post a week to two to five gives the biggest gain per account (Buffer study of about 2 million posts, vendor data).
• Discovery questions: "When did someone last get an enquiry from something they posted?" "What stops the ones who don't post?"
• If they say:
• "Come back in six months." Say: "I can. What will be different then? If it's a real event, let's diarise it. If it's a busy patch, that's the problem we solve."
• "We're fine as we are." Say: "You might be. Who's posting today, and is that the right people?"
• Never say: "Don't fall behind", "before it's too late" or "your competitors are already doing this".
• Close (JOLT), one recommendation with risk taken off:

Say

"Here's what I'd do: start with three people, Holly at Suggest, so Holly proposes and they decide, with approvals on, your policy loaded, onboarding booked, and we look at it together in 30 days."

Regulated firm: Observe instead of Suggest. One option, not a menu. State the deadline once, plainly: "Founding rates close on 31 December, or when the band fills."