Oftentimes when I speak with HR managers I hear a common and funny thing.
"We're too busy hiring or working on other projects to look at our processes or reducing costs"
- Basically they're saying 'I don't want to change, event if it's going to be better for me.'
My entire career has been spent helping people do things better, faster or cheaper; after all, that's what sales is about. If your product can't help people achieve one, or more, of these goals, you shouldn't be wasting someone's time.
STOP CHOPPING DOWN TREES LONG ENOUGH TO SHARPEN THE AXE...The value you add to a company isn't in your ability to move paper and do the same thing you've done for the past 20 years. The value you bring is to be smarter or faster or think differently than the next person. You need to step back, from time-to-time, evaluate how you do things and determine if the market has changed, created something new or something in your company has evolved and, if the way you were doing something 10 years ago, is the best way to do it today. If you don't do this, I assure you, someone in your C-Suite is, and they're going to wonder why you didn't.
I saw this time and time again when I was in the laboratory business. One vendor, in particular, was particularly adept at this and although they sold laboratory equipment, the last place they went was the laboratory. The lab was a place where they had been doing things the same way for decades and anything different would upset their apple cart...and after all, if they all thought the same way, who was going to be able to come in and convince them otherwise? One vendor decided the laboratory management and environment was too difficult to work with, passed them up and went strait to the C-Suite of the hospital to sell them a massive new process and all the equipment that went along with it. Oh, and did I mention one of the biggest selling tools they used was the fact that this new system would pay for itself because it allowed them to lay off half of the laboratory staff. By the time the paperwork was signed, the people that were most going to be effected by the decision had no idea what was going on and were left shaking their heads as to what just happened. They refused to be part of the process of evolution and the market simply cut them out of it.
I'm not saying this is nice or right, but at the end of the day they chose not to evolve and the environment around them moved along and left them behind.
Business is a constantly changing process and if you don't look at new ideas and evaluate if that person calling you on the phone has something better, cheaper or faster, you shouldn't be surprised when one day the market has decided you no longer need to be part of the process.