Sharon Drew Morgen

With so much interest in the buyer’s buying decisions, it’s important to note that the field of sales has concentrated on understanding need, and placing product. There has been no model in place that actually teaches buyers how to navigate those internal systems issues (having to do with the internal people and their relationships, the internal policies and politics that too often define possible choices, or historic events that keep the status quo in place). Until or unless buyers get buy-in from within, they cannot make a buying decision on choosing a solution, or it will create chaos. The time it takes buyers to do this is the length of the sales cycle.

 

Until now, sellers have sat and waited for buyers to call back, not knowing what they were doing. But it’s possible to lend a hand, so long as they use a different method, other than ’sales’. Sellers must add a new element to their sales process. Not only must they understand need and what problem the buyer needs to resolve, but they must also help buyers manage their unique, idiosyncratic systems issues internally, to free them up to make a buying decision. The hard part here is that sellers have no way of understanding these private internal issues because they are not problem, need, or solution based.