Selling safety meets resistance. It’s not about shoving safety down their throats. It’s about helping them see that safety improves their lives.
Use the word "sell" and safety managers get their backs up. The belief is that safety shouldn’t have to be sold. The word “selling” gets in the way of the true purpose of safety.
I used to sell photocopiers. My clients would never buy the photocopier. They bought what it could do, and more importantly, what it could do for THEM. When I sold radio advertising, again people weren’t buying commercial time. They were buying the traffic that the commercial time created - what it could do for them.
You have to sell safety the same way too. It’s not about shoving safety down their throats. It’s about helping them see that safety improves their lives in a way that they are not seeing it. As a safety manager, you have to help them see what safety does for them.
But the idea of selling safety meets resistance. It's hard to sell when you don't know what you're doing. So you take the easy way. Getting people to obey rules is always easier than trying to convince them to buy-in to your idea. You can hold up the OH&S Code book and stand on the law. But you will only get compliance - not buy-in.
Selling a personal point of view and getting buy-in takes a different set of skills. It takes conversation and caring instead of quoting rules. But before we get to that, let’s start with understanding the four reasons you hate selling safety but have to do it anyway:
1You think selling is the same as manipulating. Selling is about presenting facts and feelings in a way that make people want to buy-in. You will never sell something to anyone against their will. Perhaps you have felt manipulated and sold something you didn’t want at some point. The truth is that you probably didn’t have enough courage to say no. Maybe you wanted to be liked. Maybe you didn’t want to hurt their feelings. But you didn’t say no, so now you blame them for selling you. No one buys something without a win for themselves.
2Safety shouldn’t have to be sold. An innocent man shouldn’t have to sell a jury to stay out of prison either, but he does. Consider that a lawyer tries to sell a jury into delivering an acquittal. You don’t think what a lawyer does all day is selling? Helping people see your point of view is selling. That’s all you want, for people to see safety the same way you do and to buy-in to it with the same conviction and enthusiasm.
3Salespeople are slimy liars. Didn’t someone help sell you on the idea that getting certified in safety would help you? Maybe someone you respect and admire? Maybe the argument was that safety was a growing industry and that the earning potential of the position was good. Whatever it was, you made a decision based on information you had. Slimy liars don’t last in the job for long. Honest people with excellent communication skills do. That’s the basis of what selling is: communication. It's about putting the right information into the right hands of the right people at the right time.
4You want to be respected. Think you’re getting respect by dogging and policing your people into compliance? They don’t respect anyone that is just waiting to pounce on them. So, they tolerate you and your rules. If you want respect, find the common ground between what you want and what they want. It’s in the safety program somewhere. But you’ve got to knock down their objections one at a time. When all objections are overcome, they have no other choice but to buy-in. That’s selling.
Selling is helping somebody else get what they want. Daniel Pink, in his book, To Sell Is Human writes, “We’re in the business of moving others.” As a safety professional, you have to move your people from where they are to where they and you want them to be.
In my Blog post, Top 3 Arguments For Safety, I wrote that safety is the vehicle that connects you to your long-term goals. Safety gets you from where you are to where you want to be. Learn and understand the difference between selling features and selling benefits. It’s the benefits of the safety program that make it worth buying-in to.
You sell best one-by-one; not in a safety meeting through PowerPoint slides. Seriously, have you ever bought anything from a PowerPoint slide? You must find the win for each individual person. Only in one-on-one conversations can you do that. Moving forward an idea in a one-on-one conversation is selling.
Once people buy-in and give their commitment to safety, it is difficult for them to go back to their old ways. If you still can't wrap your head around having to sell the safety program, don't be surprised that you have a hard time getting your crew to buy-in. They won't buy-in until there is something to buy.
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Getting employees to buy-in to safety is what Kevin is good at. Start 2015 the right way. Call Kevin to bring his presentation of personal leadership in safety to your workplace.
