But sellers only close 7%  of their prospects (and far, far less if using marketing automation).

If you understand how buyers buy, why do you have less than a 40% close rate?

Indeed, it’s not enough to understand: so long as you are using the conventional sales model (and bas your interactions on placing a solution) you have no idea how your buyers travel through their buy path or who is involved. And you certainly have no way of influencing it.

MAKE YOURSELF THE BUYER

Let’s say you’re not closing all of the sales you deserve to close. You follow many prospects and are surprised at which ones finally buy and which ones disappear. You constantly shift the dates on your pipeline because the buyers didn’t close when they said they would. Things ‘happen’: the buyer’s company is going through X, or Y decision maker is now involved, or the old vendor has shown up…. always ‘something’  kinda dumb, when their need obviously fits your solution.

You’re suffering the same issues all sellers face: waiting, waiting, waiting for the purchase. From where you sit, it should happen any day. From where you sit, you know what’s going on: you know the players, you know the old vendor and old technology, you are best friends with the buyer, you’ve agreed on price, and everyone is bought in.

Or is that all true.

From where I sit here’s what I see:

• you don’t know on the first call who is going to buy and who will never buy;
• on the first call you haven’t taught your buyer how to put together the full Buying Decision Team or help him/her discover everyone who will touch the solution and helping them buy-in to change;
• you’re not closing all of the sales you deserve to close;
• you actually have no way of knowing if the right folks are on board at any point in the buying decision cycle;
• your sales cycle is at least 50% longer than it needs to be;
• you are not closing half of the sales you should be closing, or finding the right prospects, or spending too much time chasing prospects who will never close;
• you are entering the buying decision too early and attempting to place a solution before they have the proper buy-in to make a purchase, or even know the full data set of purchasing criteria.

From where I sit, you have a need for my solution. You have a need to add Buying Facilitation® to what you’re already doing, so you can manage the upfront change management piece buyers must go through prior to making a purchase, close at least 40% more sales, and close in 1/2 the time. You’re a prospect. You have all of the problems that my buyers exhibit and need my solution.

So your need and my solution fit. Does that make you a buyer?

You have budget constraints. You don’t know how Buying Facilitation® would fit as an addition to your current sales skills. You don’t have the time/money/management support to make a change. Your sales manager is concentrating on, oh.. say Closing Skills or Negotiating Techniques, and doesn’t have the bandwidth to allow you to sell differently from the others. But I don’t  understand how you buy.

THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN SELLING AND HELPING SOMEONE BUY

I am an outsider. The difference between what I, or anyone, can know as an outsider, and what the insiders must do/know to manage their internal politics, or get all the right people onto the Buying Decision Team, is the difference between your need, your change issues, and my solution.

The difference between what you need and how/when/if you buy is the distance between how you consider/seek Excellence, and how you envisage your status quo, and what you need to manage to be ready to make a change.

Do you have a manager that has created a selling environment based on his own sales skills and wants his team to replicate his success of long ago? Does the CEO not want to spend money – regardless of the training funds sitting in your budget (making the CEO the gatekeeper)? Does HQ want all training to come from them? Is there a training roll out happening now and there is no way you can learn anything new until the roll out is complete?

I might understand your need, and I might even know everyone on your Buying Decision Team (but I probably don’t): but your buying decision issues must match the internal, idiosyncratic, unique, and personal issues that make up your status quo, and I can never, ever understand the politics, or relationships.

Stop trying to undertand. Instead, learn Buying Facilitation®. Add it to the front end of your selling skills. Learn to lead your buyers through their entire series of change management issues so they can avoid all of the delays you’re watching them go through. Then you can find more, close more, close faster, and stop wasting time. And you’ll know who will close, and when.

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Learn Buying Facilitation® as a Self Study program.

Read Dirty Little Secrets: why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell and what you can do about it to really understand how buyers buy.

Learn Buying Facilitation® | Implement Buying Facilitation® | License Buying Facilitation®

Do you really understand how your buyers buy? is a post from: SharonDrewMorgen.com

Would you bring in a leadership training without getting the buy-in from the people who would be trained? Or know their criteria without their voices?

Would you choose a web designer without getting the buy-in from the current design team and the techies? Would you know what they would want included until they offered their opinions or knew what parts they wanted to do themselves?

Why not?

I recently had a coaching call with a SVP at a well-known CRM Management company. The man had a Harvard MBA, had been a partner at Accenture, and now was running the Texas sales operation for this CRM company. This is not a stupid man, obviously, but a man steeped in the ‘sales’ thinking modality.

During his session he wanted to put together a set of Facilitative Questions that would help his prospect (a hardware company with a sales force of 1500) buy his solution during his ‘big meeting’ that he finally got. Who was going to be in the meeting? I asked.

SS: There will be 10 people there: the head of sales and her team, and the head of marketing and her team.

SDM: So you’ve got 2 people.

SS: No! Ten! And it took me 2 months and 3 meetings with the head of sales to have her set up this meeting.

SDM: But there are only 2 members of the Buying Decision Team who will be present. Who else would need to be on the Buying Decision Team?

SS: Well, the head of technology, obviously, but he’s on board. He loves our solution. Besides, he’s only an influencer.

SDM:  So if he doesn’t want a CRM system, the company will ignore him?

SS: No. They wouldn’t buy. I guess that makes him a decision maker.

SDM:  And  there won’t be a problem with him working together with the heads of sales and marketing? They have no relationship issues?

SS: Oh. I guess I wouldn’t want to be there while they decided on stuff together. Hm. Who else do they have to get on their Buying Decision Team?

SDM: Not only do you not know, but they don’t know yet either. Let’s start with users. There must be user groups with 15oo sales people.

SS: There are 6 user groups. I guess we’d need their buy in.

SDM: I’m curious about the tech group. Your solution has a complicated implementation process and takes quite a bit of collaboration with the in-house folks. Does the tech team know they will need to free up folks for the implementation? Or are they going to outsource all of this? Or some combination?

SS: I have no way of knowing that.

SDM: That’s correct. And neither do they. And until they figure that out, they cannot buy your solution. In fact, until they have the entire Buying Decision Team on board, they can’t buy. There are too many people who need to have a voice, too many unknown decisions to make, too many buying and implementation criteria to take into account. And you can’t understand any of this – or be directly involved in doing it for the prospect. But you can lead them through their decisions so they have a path to follow. Otherwise you can wait until they figure it out themselves.

SS: So this meeting tomorrow is too early, with too few of the Buying Decision Team members, and giving them a big presentation right now is wasting my time and theirs because we don’t have all of the right people and they don’t have all of their buying criteria. This is why my sales take years to close. What do I do tomorrow? I bet you’re going to tell me not to make a presentation.

SDM: Let’s put together a list of Facilitative Questions that will help them figure out how to manage all of the issues we just discussed. And, at the end, if they still want a bit of your presentation, it’s fine. So long as you understand that their needs might change once all of the Buying Decision Team members have a say in the outcome. Obviously the tech folks will have different purchasing criteria than the sales folks, and the users won’t want anything new. And now, no one knows any of this.

Until or unless all of the members of the Buying Decision Team are on board, the buyer can not know their full set of buying criteria – or even the full definition of their need. When sellers go in and first attempt to ‘understand need’ or even ‘know who is on the Buying Decision Team [useless data as an outsider is not an influencer on the Team]‘ or offer solution data, they are wasting a lot of time and delaying the buying decision.

Facilitate buy-in, manage change, and help gather the correct Buying Decision Team members first. Then help them all figure out their buying, buy-in, and change criteria. And THEN you can focus on the need and your solution. And close a lot more sales a whole lot faster.

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Read sample chapters of Buying Facilitation®: the new way to sell that influences and expands decisions. This book is a very clear discussion of what Buying Facilitation® is and does. It’s tactical; my book Dirty Little Secrets: why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell and what you can do about it is strategic. You can get them both in a bundle with an additional illustrated booklet in a bundle at www.buyingfacilitation.com

Help Buyers Choose the Buying Decision Team: a case study is a post from: SharonDrewMorgen.com

The sales process discovers need, gathers data to determine a solution fit, and places the solution. Buyers need that data and the sales function is vital. But first they absolutely must make sure that a new solution fits comfortably, and causes no major disruption on a human or a strategic level.

BEHIND-THE-SCENES, BACK-END, OFF-LINE

The modern sales model came into full flower (although it’s been around since the Serpent convinced Eve to eat the apple) in 1937 with Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People.  At that time, gathering needs and discussing solution was simple: there were very few competitive solutions, and very little capability for buyers to get the information they needed.

Times have changed, but the sales model hasn’t changed its goals and thrust toward solution placement, even as astonishing technology is available to help.

The buyer’s entire behind-the-scenes pre-purchase buy-in process remains unaddressed and these back-end issues are far more confounding now than they were in 1937. And nothing about the sales model – even when marketing automation and sales enablement is applied – addresses these off-line issues.

Unfortunately, sales treats a ‘need’ as if it were an isolated event, and separate from the day-to-day activities and rules inherent in the buyer’s environment. But until everyone (EVERYONE) is on board with the level and specifics of the change that would be required if they were to make a purchase, buyers can’t buy (see my latest book Dirty Little Secrets: why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell and what you can do about it): the disruption to their system would be well beyond the positives of solving one of their problems.

It’s estimated that 80% of buyers will purchase a solution (yours or your competitor’s) at some point within 2 years of their first contact with a sales professional. That leaves behind a trail of dead sales people – most of whom probably had a great solution, but were either too early in the buyer’s decision cycle, or their Buying Decision Team just didn’t know how to adopt the change a new solution would bring.

QUESTIONS TO PONDER

Why is the personal, political, human side of the buying journey ignored during a seller’s outreach? Why is it assumed that the seller ‘knows’ what the buyer needs, or ‘knows’ what’s going on behind the scenes, and assumes that that ‘knowing’ is sufficient to sell a solution?

Why do sellers prefer to wait for buyers to ‘show up’ after they’ve traversed their perilous back-end, political journey rather than adding a new skill set to help them manage the change and buy-in issues (and close sales in 1/8 the time)?

Why is the focus on making an appointment, assuming that once the buyer sees your bright, shiny (and professional, naturally) face the buyer will just ignore the policy problems, and internal politics, they need to manage before they buy? Sales people lose over 90% of their prospects by focusing on an appointment, when it’s so simple to help buyers recognize their buying steps on the first call. And when they invite you to meet, they will have the entire Buying Decision Team.

What needs to happen for sellers to recognize that a buying journey is far, far more complex than fixing a need? Or that the need is sitting and waiting for the seller to show up? Or that the need is just sitting on a shelf, by itself, and can be plucked out and fixed and then put back where it was with no ramifications to the rest of the buyer’s system?

Why is it so difficult for sellers to want to add a capability to support the 90%+ of what buyers are doing off-line, without them, and prefer instead to contain their skills to solution focus and lose a very high percentage of prospective sales?

What would you need to know or believe differently in order to add a decision facilitation skill – Buying Facilitation Method® – to your current sales skills to help buyers achieve this buy in?

Buyers need to resolve a (business) problem – they don’t necessarily need your solution. But until or unless they manage their own off-line, back-end change management issues, they cannot buy.

Your job should be to help them manage the buying journey – and THEN you can sell.

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There are many ways to learn Buying Facilitation®:

• 3-Day Public Training in Austin in early June (contact Sharon Drew to discuss)
• Buying Facilitation® corporate training
• Guided Study program for individuals or teams
• Learning Accelerators

Sharon Drew is a featured speaker at the Search Insider Summit – May 4 – 7 , 2011

Buyers don’t sit and wait for sellers is a post from: SharonDrewMorgen.com

And you still expect different results?

Do you realize you’d rather suffer with the long sales cycle rather than actually enter the buyer’s journey much earlier and help them navigate through their decision issues and buy effortlessly? And when I suggest there is a way to do that, you don’t want to change?

Do you realize you’d rather think your customer is stupid than understand that their behind-the-scenes decision issues – their budget-sharing, their turf and ego issues, their vendor issues, or manager issues, or mergers, or or or – are keeping them from being able to buy? And that their buying decision and need is separate from your sales activities or outreach? Even separate from their need or your solution?

Do you realize that you spend time trying to ‘get to’ or ‘understand’ or ‘have a relationship with‘ the folks you consider to be ‘The Decision Makers’ rather than realize that the entire Buying Decision Team not only has to be on board (and you’ll never, ever, get to meet or influence the entire team) but whoever touches the solution must add their two cents to the solution choice — and you can never find them, know them, understand them all – before they can buy?

That it’s not about their pain, or need your solution your relationship/kindness/trustworthiness and it is about

• their change management issues
• the buy-in from those who touch the solution
• their need design a path to reduced disruption when adding a new solution
• their policies, politics, and people.

We are using a scissors to cut a lawn, and complaining that it’s not acting like a lawn mower. And complaining loudly. For a long time. And getting paid for the extra time/output for using the scissors.

WHY SHOULD WE CARE ABOUT THE BUYER’S JOURNEY?

My friend Andy Rudin once cheekily said to me something like, Why should I care about the buyer’s journey? And he’s right! Sellers are getting paid to use a scissors. But they’re complaining about their results, and still not willing to buy/use the lawn mower right in front of them. What would you need to believe differently to be willing to consider that seller/buyer problems are change-management problems, not solution choice issues? That the last thing the buyer needs is your solution? That until there is buy-in from all folks who touch the solution they cannot/will not buy? And the sales model merely manages needs assessment and solution placement – not the necessary change management/buy-in issues buyers must first contend with.

Go beyond what is expected of you.
Earn more money.
Close much, much sooner.
Help buyers manage change as part of your solution.
Influence the Buying Decision Team from the first call.

You cannot do this with sales. Are you ready to actually do something about the delays and lost customers? Why haven’t you done so before now? You read my posts, buy my books, and yet aren’t changing your sales model. What would need to happen for you to be willing to add a decision facilitation capability to the front end of your sales model?

If you are ready to learn,  let us help:

Read sample chapters of my two last books – Dirty Little Secrets and Buying Facilitation®: the new way to sell. Then buy them both
Listen to podcasts of a recent interview with Sharon Drew on how buyers buy.
Let our licensees run a Facilitating Buying Decisions workshop for you.
Let Sharon Drew train your company.

But stop complaining, and begin actually helping buyers buy.

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Come to my loft in Austin and learn Buying Facilitation® with me or send a trainer to learn to train your folks. Buying Facilitation® licensing program that includes Facilitating Buying Decisions: July 2-8, Austin TX.

Webinar with Method Frameworks June 15th:
Buy-in: A Radical Approach To Change Management

Consider purchasing the bundle: Dirty Little Secrets plus my last book Buying Facilitation®: the new way to sell that influences and expands decisions. These books were written to be read together, as they offer the full complement of concepts to help you learn and understand Buying Facilitation® – the new skill set that gives you the ability to lead buyers through their buying decisions. In addition, you will also receive a bonus illustrated booklet.

Buy the MP3′s of Sharon Drew making live phone prospecting and qualifying calls.

Learn Buying Facilitation® | Implement Buying Facilitation® | License Buying Facilitation®

Selling doesn’t cause buying is a post from: SharonDrewMorgen.com

The problem is they are working from a sales model; but buyers buy using a change management model as they must address their internal, human, unique decision issues prior to a solution choice. Here is where the real influence happens.

But by using the underlying assumptions of the sales model – with the right need and the right solution, there will be a sale, or if someone signs up for a webinar or white paper, they have a certain amount of interest in a purchase – the automation process is limited to push technology.

And the lead scoring assumptions fail also: by assuming a prospect has a higher value if they do several activities, we are not supporting or influencing the entire decision journey, but waiting to close the low hanging fruit. There should be a higher close rate:  of 10,000 names, approximately 400 are scored as viable, and of these, 2 close. How many of the 10,000 might be buyers? How many of the 400 might be buyers if approached or supported differently?

WHERE MARKETING AUTOMATION IS GOING WRONG

There is something obviously wrong with this picture.

• Just because someone visits a site or signs up for something, doesn’t mean they are a buyer or a prospect;
• Just because someone only visits a site once doesn’t mean they aren’t a buyer;
• Just because someone has a low or high lead score doesn’t mean they are/aren’t a buyer;
• 98% of prospects who are approached for an appointment after they score high enough to be considered a real prospect decline the appointment: this does not mean they aren’t buyers…just that they don’t want an appointment;
• Prospects need different types of data at different points along the buying decision path, and using current technology there is no way to know, or influence, where the buyer is on his/her decision journey – so companies inundate site visitors with junk – um, I mean nurture material – hoping to hit the sweet spot.

SHIFT THE FOCUS TO CHANGE MANAGEMENT

Imagine if marketing automation used change management thinking: until or unless buyers manage the behind-the-scenes change issues that will be effected when/if they make a purchase, and until or unless all folks who will touch the new solution get their voices heard, no purchase can happen.

Current marketing automation does nothing to address the real buying decision journey – the 90% of the purchase decision that is change related, internal, and idiosyncratic - as it’s not solution based. It certainly does nothing to move prospects along each type of decision to help them.

Here are some questions to consider:

1. What do prospects need to do to get the right folks involved to give their buy-in for a purchase? Until they do, they won’t buy regardless of how great your white paper is.
2. How does someone take an idea from a thought in a shower to getting folks to start thinking about making a change? Until people back the idea, they won’t get the buy-in to make a purchase.
3. How does the Buying Decision Team evaluate solutions? Until they know how, they won’t make a purchase.
4. What sort of data does any site visitor need to make a final purchasing decision? Until they have the specific data needed by the entire Buying Decision Team, they won’t make a purchase.

Using the underlying tenants of change management as per my Buying Facilitation® model, I have developed an Intelligent Contact Sheet called the EXpediter© that gets the appropriate data to site visitors at each stage of the buying decision path, starting from an idea. And it leads them from one step to the next. Some facts:

• It’s easy to slip into your current marketing automation set up.
• You will know exactly what stage the visitor is at, what specifically to send them, and whether or not the Buying Decision Team is already on board.
• You will be able to lead site visitors through the range of their off-line decisions.
• You’ll be able to follow the site visitor to other sites, know how/if they are evaluating your solution, and help them move to the next stage of their decision.
• You will know who to call to make an appointment with, at what point to place the call, and your success rates for appointment-getting and closing will be much higher.

I’ve got the content. I can work with your tech team to implement it. Or my technology partner Genoo can lend a hand. Interested? Let’s speak.

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Discover how Buying Facilitation® works with marketing automation and can help you close more sales.

Wanting to learn more? Dirty Little Secrets: why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell and what to do about it. Check out the site for more details.

Or consider purchasing the bundle: Dirty Little Secrets plus my last book Buying Facilitation®: the new way to sell that influences and expands decisions. In addition, you will also receive a bonus illustrated booklet.

An Intelligent Contact Sheet is a post from: SharonDrewMorgen.com

I’m here to tell you that cold calling can be one of the most effective ways to meet new prospects and close sales. And it’s a whole lotta fun.

I know, I know. Most sellers eschew cold calling, preferring instead to network, get referrals, golf, meet face-to-face or make friends through facebook and twitter.

Did you ever ask yourself why you don’t like cold calling?

Think historically: Dale Carnegie, in How to win friends and influence people published in 1937, told us to meet prospects in person (and his choices then were….. were what?). You can think about trying to ‘get through’ the gatekeeper. You can think about trying to gather information or pitch product with no ability to understand or share personal expressions on a phone.

So let’s say you do your networking, getting referrals, golfing, face-to-face meets and tweeting. What does it give you? Well, it gives you a connection, but it doesn’t necessarily help you close more deals: buyers still need to do their part to manage their behind-the-scenes systems (change management) issues and get buy-in at all levels, or nothing will happen whether they need you or like you.

The bigger problem than meeting someone who might buy is how to help buyers manage those off-line issues, because until they do, your sterling personalities are immaterial: If you start your conversations by shifting from making a sale to helping manage the internal buy-in issues, you can use the phone effectively AND make a sale in at least half the time.

WHY ARE WE CONNECTING?

Let’s begin with the question: Why are we attempting to make contact?

If you begin by trying to understand need, push product, or influence with your personal charm, then I agree; cold calling sucks.

But when you begin as a true consultant to help buyers manage the change of a buying journey, cold calling is wonderful. Buying Facilitation® is a change management/decision facilitation model I”ve been teaching globally for decades that employs a totally different skill set than sales, and helps buyers understand and manage the off-line portion of the buying decision. And then your sales skills are necessary. First manage change, then place the solution. Different way to think, right?

Given the space we’ve got on a blog post, I’ll give you a simple example.

I read about California Closets in the late 1990s and wanted to have them deliver Buying Facilitation® throughout their franchises. I did some research, and found what I later discovered to be a ‘bad’ number – but at the moment I called, it turned out to be a lucky error. A man answered:

SDM: Hi. My name is Sharon Drew Morgen, and I’m an author and developer of a new selling model. This is a sales call. Is this a good time to speak?

EL: No. It’s terrible. But I’ll give you 5 minutes.

SDM: I can call back. It’s only a sales call and I don’t want to disturb you. We didn’t have an appointment.

EL: Let’s start now and we can finish later. I already like your style. How can I help you?

SDM: Thanks. And at any point you want to end, we can stop and pick it up at another time. I was wondering how you are currently adding new sales skills to the ones you’re currently training your sales people and designers.

EL: Are you using the model you’re teaching? Because if you are, I’m buying. I’ve been looking for a new model for 2 years, and from what I’m hearing, I’m happy. How ‘bout if I get the heads of Sales and Training on a call next week, and think about doing training, or training our trainers at the end of January. Call me in a week at this number: XXXXX. Nice job.

And he hung up. We’ve been working together since then. And this was a cold call. Of course, I did get a bit lucky. But if I had used conventional sales techniques, or twitter or facebook, these folks would not have been my clients – even if I had managed to get in front of them.

DON’T USE YOUR BODY AS A PROSPECTING TOOL

When I understand that my job is to be in a ‘We Space’ (the conversation was all about him) and truly serve by helping  prospects discover how to move toward excellence, it doesn’t matter if I’m in person or on the phone, because there is no manipulation or personal persuasion tactics. Also, the focus of the entire call at this early stage is about the internal issues they need to manage (that a seller can never be a part of) within their system. It’s not about their need, or our solution. Sales does that way too early.

In the Buying Facilitation® model, every interaction, every comment, is based on helping buyers traverse their off-line buy-in issues. I understand that my solution can only be purchased AFTER buyers have managed the needed buy-in. And the telephone is a very handy tool. Of course, once the buyer manages their off-line decision issues internally, and their decision team discovers it’s ready to change and add a new solution, it will need to know more about our solution. THEN we can go visit them, and the entire Buying Decision Team will be there, with us on it. Try it. You might like it :)

So focusing on each cold call as if it were a puzzle, and you are the puzzle master who is not in front of the puzzle, but whispering in the ear of the person doing the puzzle, you can have fun. You won’t have to try to get an appointment, you’ll save travel time and funds, you’ll find a whole lot more prospects, and when you do go to the client site, it will be to sign the contract.

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Learn Buying Facilitation® on your own with our Guided Study program, or with a training program from us.

Learn Buying Facilitation® | Implement Buying Facilitation® | License Buying Facilitation®

Cold Calling Works – and it’s fun! is a post from: SharonDrewMorgen.com

Buyers live in a ‘system’ that maintains their Identified Problem (or ‘pain’)  over time, creating work-arounds that become part of the system and, well, comfortable. Indeed, if the buyer really needed to make a change, they would have done so already. It’s only when a group of dedicated, internal  change agents are willing to push the river, that a purchase is even considered.

Before buyers can buy, there must be buy-in to the proposed change, a plan that minimizes disruption, and a way to foster agreement between the people, policies and relationships that touch a new solution. A buying decision is far more complex than just fixing a problem.

I’ve developed Buying Facilitation® – a decision navigation model that is an add-on to sales and helps buyers bring together the right people and issues - to enable agreement and ensure change procedures are  in place to make a purchase. Here are a few Buying Facilitation® skills to use with sales:

9 STEPS

Help the gatekeeper discover who your best point of contact would be.

Don’t try to ‘get through’ the gatekeeper. She knows the best person to connect you with. And don’t attempt to ‘go to the top.’  The top person usually delegates to the appropriate people. Ask for the CEO’s assistant, and she’ll get you to the right people. Question: who is in control of the conversation – you? or the Gatekeeper?

Use Facilitative Questions to get into rapport and have buyers begin to examine how/if/why they would consider changing their status quo.

Until or unless prospects determine to make a change and get all appropriate folks on board to buy-in to change and ensure there is minimal disruption, it doesn’t matter whether

• you can see their need,
• your solution is perfect,
• they think they need you/your solution,
• they love your solution, price, personality, etc.

IT’S NOT ABOUT YOU. Do you need to be working out more? It’s not about the gym.

Here is a Facilitative Question I use to start conversations: How would you know if it were time to add new sales skills to the ones you’re already offering your sales folks? This question helps them think about necessary steps and new choices they must consider.

Remember: discussing solutions and needs assessment are irrelevant at this early stage. Facilitative Questions help the BUYER see the whole picture of what is going on strategically and tactically. Until or unless they know how to manage their system first, they will take no action. This is where buyers go when you’re sitting and waiting.

Lead prospects/buyers through the systems issues they must consider in order to determine how any proposed change will disrupt their status quo.

Facilitative Questions and Presumptive Summaries are used to help buyers look at their status quo with an unbiased eye. No matter what their ‘need’ or ‘problem’  if they don’t think they can change in a way that maintains systems congruence, they will do nothing. Remember: the buyer’s environment/culture/system has lived with the Identified Problem until now, and can continue to do so. If they had known how to resolve it differently, they would have.

Facilitate prospect’s discovery of what sorts of strategic issues they must manage to get folks on board with potential change.

There are 3 levels of decisions necessary: systems, strategic, and tactical. Addressing them in this order is optimal  although it’s usually an iterative process.

Lead prospects/buyers through tactical issues they must manage before they can choose a solution.

Once they determine that

1. their system would be willing to shift to add something/change/resolve something,
2. their rules, relationships, people, are willing to change,
3. they know how to shift congruently to minimize disruption,

they will then be willing to bring in a new solution. Until or unless their status quo is reconfigured in a way that the insiders are willing to support, they will do nothing: the risk to their functioning is too high. Hence the longer-than-necessary sales cycle.

Buyers must do this with you or without you – so it might as well be with you.

Help the prospect choose the members of the Buying Decision Team.

Help buyers recognize the right people to include. Usually they don’t know who it will be until way down the road, much like you don’t know all the trials you’ll face before you start a move.

Discuss how your solution fits with the internal issues that they must manage.

This step is about melding your solution with the entire range of issues they have to manage internally, including the people, policies, and relationships.

Discuss/present your solution and show the prospect/buyer how it would fit with their need/problem.

Once they do all of the above and get appropriate buy-in to manage change, they will know how and when to buy, and you can discuss needs/solutions according to their buy-in issues.

Follow up to see if there is anything you can do to help the prospect/buyer decide to purchase.

This is part of a good sales job, of course.

SALES TACTICS THAT ARE NO LONGER NECESSARY

Make an appointment to get in front of the prospect

This is a hold-over from another era. Until buyers put together their decision team and figure out how to change without disruption, your bright shiny face and the efficacy of your solution is irrelevant. You can do all of the above without meeting a client. And then, when you get there, the entire Buying Decision Team will be there and you wouldn’t have wasted any time/visits.

Manage objections and differentiate yourself from the competition.

The sales model creates objections because it pushes data/solution info against a ‘closed system.’ When you hear an objection, it’s merely the system defending itself against change and nothing whatsoever about your solution. Once you teach the system how to manage buy-in without disruption, there are no objections.

80% of your prospects will buy within 2 years – but not from you. The time it takes them to manage the buying decision to ensure there will be no disruption is the length of the sales cycle. You can either sit and wait for them to do it, or you can learn Buying Facilitation® and become the GPS system to help them navigate. Would you rather sell? or help someone buy?

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Wanting to learn more? Dirty Little Secrets: why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell and what to do about it. Check out the site for more details.

Or consider purchasing the bundle: Dirty Little Secrets plus my last book Buying Facilitation®: the new way to sell that influences and expands decisions. In addition, you will also receive a bonus illustrated booklet.

9 Sales Steps that Influence a Buying Decision is a post from: SharonDrewMorgen.com

What does your GPS system do? It gets you from here to there without any input other than coordinates. It knows you must go left one mile, and then hang a right at Route 26. It knows you will drive about 40 minutes. It knows there is one alternate route. But it doesn’t need to know what you are wearing, or the gift you brought. It doesn’t need to know that there was an accident ahead that would cause you to slow down. It knows how to get you to where you want to be: it does not concern itself with the details of your personal issues.

Why am I putting sales and weddings and GPS systems in one article? Because I’m making a parallel between the buyer’s decision path and the sellers involvement with a solution choice.

THE TWO JOBS OF SALES

As a seller (if you can follow me here) you need to know the needs to help determine the right gift. You need to understand who is involved, what they like, how much money is budgeted. You need to understand as much as you can to determine that your solution and the buyer’s needs match. It’s the equivalent – using the above analogy – to understanding why you chose to go in your car, or what you decided to wear.

As a buying facilitator, you just need to understand systems and how change happens to bring in something new – the path from here to there.  A GPS system does NOT need the details of the activity. It does not care if you are going to a wedding or a funeral. Just left, right, left, right.

BOTH SELLING AND BUYING FACILITATION® TRIGGER THE BUY-PATH

Imagine if you had 2 jobs as a seller: one, to understand need and place a solution appropriately; one, to help buyers traverse their internal change management/systems issues so they get the buy-in and path to bring in something new.

You know how to do the needs assessment and solution placement. That’s sales. But do you know how to enter a buyer’s system with no questions about need? With no reason to gather data about how they’ll use a solution, or choose a vendor?

Do you know how to interact with a buyer to be their GPS system and manage their internal change? Because until buyers do this, you’ll be sitting and waiting and hoping for them to close.

What do you need to know or believe differently to be willing/able to put aside your curiosity as a sales professional, and put on the hat of a GPS system in order to teach your buyers how to put their ducks in a row – to go down the path of finding the right people, developing the right criteria, figuring out the change issues – so they can buy your solution.

Buying Facilitation® is a wholly different skill set than sales. It is a change management model. You use this to help buyers maneuver and discover, just like a GPS system goes from here to there. By using this model, you can get buyers to the point of being ready to buy – just like the GPS system gets you to the front door of the wedding. And then you can bring your gift and have some fun.

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Learn Buying Facilitation® on your own with our Guided Study program, or with a training program from us.

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The differences between the solution sale and the buying decision: let’s go to a wedding is a post from: SharonDrewMorgen.com

• dialogue with me,
• discover ways to partner,
• just chat about places to stay.

And the use and quality of Skype has made it all as simple and cheap as calling a friend in a different city.

IF WE TRUST EACH OTHER, WHY AREN’T WE CLOSING MORE?

With automatic ‘trust’ built in – we’re sort of family once we are connected – our conversations seem to flow smoothly: we’ve used Facebook, the net, and Twitter to discover who the other is, have determined whether and how we want to connect, what we can offer each other, and how to prepare. An off-handed comment about the person’s upcoming wedding, or a congratulatory mention of their new business venture compounds the trust.

Gone are the days of cold calling, running around the country to network, speaking at events for free just to collect business cards. I bet some folks out there don’t even remember when those were the only ways to get leads, other than the phone book.

So why aren’t we closing more?

Not only are we not closing more, we’re closing less.

What is going on?

What’s going on is that our relationships, communication, trust, and friendliness are not helping others reach the sorts of decisions necessary to close a deal.

CHANGE, SYSTEMS, AND BUY-IN

Before we look at what’s happening, let’s change the discussion for a moment to look at what needs to happen for any purchase to occur.

In order for someone to buy something other than a small personal item, there are several steps that must take place to get the necessary buy-in to move forward. The appropriate buy-in must be acquired from the right people and groups; the rules must be changed to allow for a new set of ‘givens’; vendors and business partners must agree; job descriptions must match up with the new jobs.

We tend to forget that all purchases are change management problems. And, because a problem is not an isolated event and has been maintained by the people and policies, rules and politics of the existent environment, there are systemic things that touch the solution that would be affected if a new solution were to enter.

So a new piece of software would seriously affect users, techies, internal consultants, and trainers; training for one group would affect all of the people who touch that group.

And systems prefer to maintain the status quo, even if it means maintaining failure. After all, it has been ‘good enough’ until now, and everything has bought-in to maintaining it as it is. In fact, our buyers would rather maintain their status quo regardless of what it is costing them, and regardless of the efficacy of our solution: no matter how much they will save with a new solution, it costs more overall to bring in something new.

Remember: If the buyer felt pain, or was ready to change, they would have done so already.

So until or unless the status quo will accept the addition of something new, and has the capability to manage in such a way that an addition will not create too much unregulated disruption, it will do nothing.

WHAT IT TAKES TO CLOSE A DEAL

Currently, our relationships through social networking haven’t included the agenda to help the Other recognize and manage the different sorts of buy-in necessary to change. But that doesn’t mean we can’t include that.

I was at a client site recently listening in on a sales call with a prospect who my client had been chatting with for months. It was a lovely call. Laughter, in-jokes, obvious rapport. They were introduced on LinkedIn; they tweeted each other daily. Yet nothing was going anywhere. I wrote a note in front of him, which he repeated:

We’ve been chatting for a while now. And the more I get to know you, the more I see the possibility of our working together somehow. What would you need to know about my solution to know if it would fit, and if your colleagues would be willing to consider adding something new to what they are already doing so well?

The conversation shifted. The man was happy to answer: We’re starting to go through the process of an M&A, and won’t be able to take on anything new for about a year. Can we revisit this in 6 months? At that time there will be new people on board (I might even be gone!), and I don’t know what the hierarchy will be, but we can discuss it.

There could be no buy in, no decision team, and most likely no purchase. Does that make you want to continue being ‘friends’ or end the ‘friendship’? Do you want to ask for a referral? How much time do you want to spend being ‘friendly’ vs closing a sale? And how will you know when/if it’s time to pull the plug, or ask the hard questions?

We’re in a new era. There are no rules – we’re making them up as we go along. So ask yourself:

• What do you want to get out of social media?
• How will you know that one person over another is a prospect?
• At what point is connecting enough, or do you want to connect only with potential prospects or partners?

The capability is in front of us. The choice is our as to what we want to do with it. We just have to remember that being friendly, evoking trusting ‘relationships’, having hundreds or thousands of friends, doesn’t make you a better seller.

What would you need to learn differently to add a new skill set to what you’re doing online, to help you help your ‘friends’ make their best decisions?

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Learn about Buying Facilitation®: Peruse this blog for articles on change management, the buying decision path, how buyers buy, and how to add Buying Facilitation® to your sales process.

Sharon Drew is a contributor to the new Entrepreneurial Selling program by RAIN Group. Registration is now open! Check it out Check it out here!

Learn Buying Facilitation® | Implement Buying Facilitation® | License Buying Facilitation®

How does social networking help make the sale? is a post from: SharonDrewMorgen.com

You have been taught to be curious about needs. Do prospects need your solution? Are they in ‘pain’? The moment — the very moment — you hear that a ‘need’ matches your solution, you’re off and running. And you (wrongly) assume you have a prospect.

STOP TRYING TO SELL SO SOON

Here are some erroneous assumptions:

• you just need to get in front of someone, and once they understand the brilliance of your solution they will be buyers;
• if your solution matches their need, all you have to do is sell properly (and be interested, caring, smart, yada yada) and they will buy;
• you need to educate your buyer because until they understand your solution they won’t understand the value;
• you need to understand everything you can about your buyer so you’ll sound intelligent and engender trust and can position your solution accordingly.

I’m here to tell you that all of the above are false. A buyer cannot buy (learn all of the issues involved in the decision to buy in my latest book Dirty Little Secrets: why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell and what you can do about it) until

1. all of the members of the Buying Decision Team have put in their two cents about what they need a solution to do;
2. they know that a beloved vendor, or their internal resource (their own tech team, for example) cannot solve their problem;
3. they get the necessary buy-in from everyone who will touch the solution;
4. they know know how to resolve their problem without major disruption.

Here is the hardest thing for a seller to understand and believe: the only thing you will ever know about your buyer is how their need might be served by your solution from the one or two people you’re talking to.

THE REASONS YOU’LL NEVER KNOW YOUR BUYER

Using the sales model alone (i.e. without putting Buying Facilitation® on the front end) you will never know the following:

• what is going on internally, behind-the-scenes, that has created and maintained their problem, and the reason it hasn’t been resolved until now.
• the criteria they, as Buying Decision Team, will use to choose a solution or a vendor.
• how they will go about determining who should be on the Buying Decision Team and what internal political factors bias these choices.
• what sort of havoc your solution will play with the status quo if the folks inside don’t figure out how to resolve the internal systems issues first.

Buyers do not want your solution. They want to resolve a business problem. Your solution is the last thing they want. I recently heard a VP of Sales Ops for a tech company tell me that they had a very long sales cycle, but there was only one buyer (the CIO) and he couldn’t figure out what took him so long.

He totally forgot that there are several departments that must buy-in to new technology; that the CIO undoubtedly delegated all or part of the solution; that the internal tech guys would fight tooth and nail before allowing yet another tech solution to come in and make a mess of what they have in place.

If he used Buying Facilitation®, he could:

• teach the prospect how to put together a Buying Decision Team on the first call.
• lead the buyer through all of the systemic change management issues that he’d need to address to create an openning and willingness for the folks to bring in something new — they would understand how their jobs would change and be ok with that.
• help prospects understand how all of the current and new technology would fit and work together;
• help prospects understsand the upsides and downsides of the learning curve, and how to mitigate or get buy-in around the learning curve.

You do not know how your buyer will manage any of that. You merely know what you think they need. And if that were enough, you’d be closing a helluva lot more sales.

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Read Dirty Little Secrets: why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell and what you can do about it to learn all of the issues buyers face when they are considering a purchase.

Sharon Drew is a contributor to the new Entrepreneurial Selling program by RAIN Group. Check out the free video series leading up to the program.

Learn Buying Facilitation® | Implement Buying Facilitation® | License Buying Facilitation®

You think know your buyer. You don’t. is a post from: SharonDrewMorgen.com

Until or unless the entire Buying Decision Team is in place, the buyer will not know how to hear you: until everyone who touches a solution has had their voice heard, and adds their choice criteria to possible solutions, a buyer doesn’t know what they need to buy.

Let’s say you and your Partner have a brief, rushed chat as you leave for work, about the possibility of moving. When you return for dinner, you tell your Partner you’ve got a surprise: You’ve bought a great house on the way home from work and you’re moving next week!

You would probably have a massive fight: there are too many private, behind-the-scenes decisions that must be made to manage each person’s criteria, feelings, future plans. Bigger house/smaller house. Leave the city/move to country. Move to a different state/different country. Near one kid’s school district/near someone’s work. Will your house sell easily? Do you need to call the bank and get a loan/financing if you don’t sell your house first? When to put your house on the market?

Let’s say instead of coming home with a new house, you called a friend and said you might move, and the friend called me since I’m a realtor. I call you up the next day to tell you about this fabulous house.

Do you want to hear about the house? Why not? You’re not ready: you won’t have made all of the decisions you’ll need to make to have the relevant choice criteria to even consider the house. It’s too early.

SELLING VS. BUYING

There is a difference between your solution and what a buyer needs/wants to buy/is able to buy; between your selling patterns and a buyer’s buying patterns. And buyers will only buy according to their buying patterns. If you use selling patterns, you are merely selling to those folks whose buying patterns are the same as your selling patterns.

Think of the telemarketing industry of a decade ago. Their solutions were fine. It was their selling patterns people objected to.

Until or unless buyers have all of their choice criteria ready, they won’t know how to hear you; won’t know the details to listen for; won’t know how your solution would fit. It’s like offering house details before they’ve decided to move. And they won’t use your criteria to make their choices.

When you contact a prospect, if you’re attempting to gather data about their ‘needs’ before the entire Buying Decision Team is on board, you are only hearing one set of possible buying criteria, from one person who may or may not be on the Buying Decision Team, and who probably doesn’t know the full set of criteria. It’s a waste of your time and theirs – hence, a tiny fraction will speak to you, and a smaller fraction of possible buyers will give you an appointment.

When you call just to make an appointment, you are getting rid of a minimum of 90% of your list because they don’t want, or aren’t ready for, or see no need for (whether they need your solution or not) a new solution. And those that will agree to see you are already in the market, so you enter in a competitive situation.

You are wasting over 50% of prospects by trying to get an appointment before they have determined their buying criteria. And at this point in their buying path, you can’t help them choose to see you, or decide to purchase, using the sales process.

YOU CAN HELP BUYERS BUY: BUY NOT WITH YOUR SOLUTION

The last thing buyers do is choose a solution. My latest book Dirty Little Secrets: why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell and what you can do about it explains all of the off-line decision issues buyers must address before they have the full set of criteria to know what solution to choose.

Instead of calling them to ‘understand need’, call them to help them navigate their buying decision journey. Instead of trying to get an appointment, use your connection to help them figure out what Excellence would look like for them. And once you’ve helped them put together the full Buying Decision Team, then the whole team will be eagerly waiting to meet you.

Buying Facilitation® will give you a skill set to start your conversations differently and facilitate the buying decision journey. Use Buying Facilitation® first, and then they will be happy to meet with you.

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Sharon Drew is a contributor to the new Entrepreneurial Selling program by RAIN Group. Check out the free video series leading up to the program.

To learn more about Buying Facilitation®, read Dirty Little Secrets: why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell and what you can do about it, or hear Sharon Drew use the model with prospects.

Learn Buying Facilitation® | Implement Buying Facilitation® | License Buying Facilitation®

Wait until the Buying Decision Team is in place to visit or pitch is a post from: SharonDrewMorgen.com

Buying Facilitation® will help you begin facilitating  the buyer’s decision path - defined as those back-end human issues (relationship, political, and financial) that must be managed prior to any agreement to  purchase – from first moment of the call.  By starting connections with a different focus, you can activate the purchasing decision process   immediately.

THE PROBLEM WITH STARTING WITH A ‘NEEDS’ FOCUS

Starting with the needs assessment, you are limiting your prospect audience by a factor of 4: in the studies I’ve done with my clients, they have brought in 4x the prospects – prospects that not only invited them in to visit, but had the entire Buying Decision Team waiting for them on first meeting/call.

When you begin your communication (either calls, or marketing automation) by attempting to find a buyer with a need that matches your solution, you are limiting your business.

• The only people who will agree to speak are those already searching for a solution similar to yours – and you will not know where they are in their search process;
• Prospects who might need your solution but hadn’t started the process of enlisting internal support for change will tell you they are fine, thanks.
• Prospects who might need your solution but are battling internal demons will tell you it’s a bad time and call back in, oh, 6 months.
• Prospects who don’t know you, or don’t want to speak with a stranger, will tell you they are fine. That may or may not mean they need your solution. And you’ll never know.

The problem is that the focus is on resolving a problem they aren’t ready to resolve. If they knew how to resolve their problem, they would have done so already.

Imagine if you focus on Excellence. Look at the difference between these openers:

How are you adding new sales skills to those you’re currently teaching your folks, for those times when you need them to be closing more business?
vs.
We’ve got some powerful sales training that will help you close more. Do you mind if I ask you a few questions?

What’s the difference? Or this example:

How would you know if it were time to bring in additional banking solutions for those times when your current bank can’t give you the flexibility you might need?
vs.
I’m a small business banker, and I’ll be in your neighborhood next week. I’ve got some wonderful new products designed specifically for small businesses such as yours. Do you mind if I stop by either Tuesday or Wednesday?

What’s the difference?

In one question you’re helping the prospect decide if they want to add something new, and start them thinking about change. In the other, you’re attempting to place a solution before they have had the chance to think about whether or not they want to change.

BUYING IS A CHANGE MANAGEMENT PROBLEM

Until or unless buyers figure out how to manage all of the back-end change management issues, they cannot buy. They absolutely cannot buy. Remember: they’d done ‘well-enough’ until now, and if they really needed you, they would have purchased you (or your competition) already.

The system buyers live in is sacrosanct. I have a full chapter about this in my latest book: Dirty Little Secrets: why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell and what you can do about it. They will always choose to preserve the system rather than face the mess that buying a new solution will bring….unless they figure out how to minimize the mess and make sure the change issues are handled and there is appropriate buy-in to something new.

If you begin your conversations, as I did above, with Facilitative Questions and Buying Facilitation®, buyers can start figuring out their change issues right from the first call. Note: you thinking you know what they need does not help them get the internal buy-in necessary. Not to mention without the entire Buying Decision Team on board, they won’t know what they need, either.

By the end of the first call, you can actually teach prospect how to bring together the full Buying Decision Team, and all be on your second with you, to lead them through their change and choice issues re seeking excellence - hopefully with your solution.

I go back to the question I’ve been posing since 1988: Would you rather sell? or have someone buy? They are two different activities. Start by helping them decide how to buy, and you’ll sell a helluva lot more.

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Learn Buying Faciltiation® with Sharon Drew in a classroom setting, or through individual learning.  Listen to Sharon Drew have live prospecting conversations with learning discussions.

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Where does selling begin? Activate the buying journey immediately is a post from: SharonDrewMorgen.com

I”d like to talk about what that means for me…and admittedly, I’m a hammer looking for a nail: I”ve written a NYTimes Business Bestseller (now-outdated) on the subject (Selling with Integrity: reinventing sales through collaboration, respect, and serving). So excuse my rant. But rant I will.

SOLUTIONS VS. CHANGE MANAGEMENT

The sales model is designed to place solutions: sellers are trained to understand need, and place a solution accordingly. Arguably, the buyer gets what they need and the seller makes a commission: win/win. But is a win/win?

In my map of the world, the above ends up as a net loss. Here’s why: because the sales model merely enters at the solution placement end of the buying decision path, it avoids and ignores the entire path buyers must traverse to enlist the right people, manage the change, and ensure system stability as they attempt to discover their best solution options. Therefore, sellers just come in at the end (or come in far too early with this data at the beginning) to offer a solution, and do not have the skill set to facilitate the back-end change management journey, leaving buyers floundering, trying to get the right people on board, and get the right agreements.

Ultimately, using the sales process without Buying Facilitation® (which manages the change management end of the buying decision journey), sellers end up closing only those buyers who show up with all of their ducks in a row (about 7%) – the low hanging fruit.

Indeed, if all of that needs assessment and relationship building and getting-past-the-gatekeeper stuff worked, we’d be closing a lot more sales. And buyers would be getting their needs met much faster: the time it takes them to figure out how to manage the backend change is the length of the sales cycle.

So by not helping manage the change and the behind-the-scenes decision path – very different from solution-focused/choice activities - we are actually harming buyers: with no help, it takes them longer than necessary to determine the folks to include in defining a solution, or figure out how to manage the change so there is no disruption, or how to get the necessary buy-in, to purchase our solution.

Net net, it obviously harms us also by elongating the sales cycle…not to mention we can’t close those prospects who can’t figure it all out.

OUR BUYERS WILL BUY EVENTUALLY – BUT NOT FROM US

The industry standard says that 80% of our prospects will buy a similar solution as ours within 2 years of us speaking with them. That means: they’ve got the need, but don’t know how to get their ducks in a row to buy. And we didn’t know how to help them figure out how to do it sooner.

Buyers don’t want to buy. They want to resolve a business problem. If they must make a purchase, they must make sure there is appropriate buy-in from the people and rules and and and…

Sellers tend to think in terms of  placing a solution. Buyers think of avoiding chaos. We forget that 90% of the decision issues buyers must address before they get to the solution choice stage is based on creating an environment that will accept and adopt a new solution. The last thing they consider is making a purchase.

In my humble opinion :)  without helping buyers manage their change -

• getting the right folks onto the Buying Decision Team,
• finding and listening to the voices of those who will ultimately touch the new solution,
• making sure the old and new meld -

we are not in integrity with our buyers, but merely serving our product sale.

Here is the question: are you willing to go outside of your sales thinking, and start considering helping buyers manage their behind-the-scenes, non-solution-related change management issues? It’s the Buying Facilitation® process, of course, and not sales. But between the two models, we can truly sell with integrity.

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Get a copy of Dirty Little Secrets and understand how buyers buy – and how you can help.

Listen to Sharon Drew make prospecting/qualifying calls using Buying Facilitation®.

Learn Buying Facilitation® | Implement Buying Facilitation® | License Buying Facilitation®

Selling with Integrity is a post from: SharonDrewMorgen.com

Here are the ‘Dirty Little Secrets’ of why buyers don’t buy, taken from my book of the same name:

1. Sales focuses on solution placement and needs assessment, and has no skill set to help buyers maneuver through their off-line, personal, idiosyncratic, behind-the-scenes planning and decision making that must take place in their environment before they can buy.
2. Buyers will make no purchasing decisions until they get buy-in from the components (people, policies, initiatives, groups) that are in any way connected to, or will touch, a solution to their ‘need.’
3. Until or unless there is buy-in, and the system is ready, willing, and able to buy-in to necessary change, buyers will not accept a solution no matter how great the need.
4. Buyers live in systems that operate, as all systems do, from the law of homeostasis, and thereby must resist if something new were to threaten disruption. To insure minimal internal disruption, buyers face internal change management issues as they bring in something new (a solution).
5. Until buyers understand and know how to mitigate the risks that a new solution will bring to their culture, they will do nothing. The system is sacrosanct; homeostasis is more important than fixing a need. New solutions can’t be purchased until a way is found to maintain internal balance. Includes internal politics and relationship issues.
6. Until all of the Buying Decision Team members have added their voices and fully defined the criteria that a solution must contain, buyers can’t make proper use of  solution information (i.e. pitch, presentation).
7. Sales, and the focus on solutions, enters the buyer’s decision path too early in a buyer’s decision cycle – usually before all of the Buying Decision Team is on board and has added their specific needs to the solution criteria.
8. Helping buyers maneuver through their buy-in and systems issues require a different focus, and a different skill set, than the one sales offers. Buyers don’t buy using a seller’s selling patterns. And the sales model doesn’t have tools to influence non-solution-related decisions.
9. Buyers buy on unique, idiosyncratic criteria that are agreed to by their Buying Decision Team – not on the strength of their need, your product, or their relationship.
10. The type of relationship a seller has with customers/prospects is a buying feature only once the buyer has determine how, when, why, and if they are going to buy.
11. Buyers seek a solution only after they manage their internal systems issues. Part of their decision/choice is the assurance that the new solution will maintain the ecology of the system.
12. At the start, buyers don’t know all the issues they need to manage as they begin the process of resolving a problem and choosing a solution.

Your current sales skills do a great job understanding need and placing solutions. But they don’t work with the behind-the-scenes non-solution-related change management issues buyers go through privately.

How will you shift your skills to help buyers manage their buying decision issues?

If you want to help buyers facilitate their off-line, behind-the-skills decision issues, you may want to learn Buying Facilitation® – a set of change management/decision facilitation skills that are wholly different from (but work in tandem with) sales skills, designed to help buyers navigate through their decision path as they prepare to choose a solution. It speeds up their change management process: we sit and wait while they do it anyway.

Add Buying Facilitation® to your sales skills as a facilitation tool, and decrease your sales cycle, find the right prospects to spend time on, and close more sales. Here are some sample chapters to give you more data: Dirty Little Secrets: why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell and what you can do about it and Buying Facilitation®: the new way to sell that influences and expands decisions.

In today’s business climate, decisions to buy are far more complex than they’ve been in the past, and your selling skills aren’t enough. What would you need to know or believe differently to be willing to add a new skill set to enhance your success?

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Join Sharon Drew Morgen on September 13th for a FREE online webinar about understanding Buying Facilitation®.

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12 Dirty Little Secrets: why buyers don’t buy is a post from: SharonDrewMorgen.com

Sales models to not have the capability to facilitate the buyer’s behind-the-scenes issues and activities to ensure they get the necessary buy-in to bring in an outside solution. But they should, because in the gap between the selling and the buying is where we lose our buyers, and they lose us.

WHEN DOES A BUYER  NEED TO BUY

Just because we perceive a need (And we are right! They do!) doesn’t mean our prospects  want it fixed, or fixed by us, or fixed now. We enter our conversations with a bias: we believe that our solution will rule the day: find the need, pitch the solution. Bingo. Except then we sit and wait. And wait.

But the last thing a buyer needs is a solution. In fact, buyers don’t want to buy anything – they merely need to resolve a business problem. If they are not able to resolve it with a familiar resource, they are forced to select a solution to purchase. But they don’t really want to.

When we enter with a solution – even one that is necessary – buyers have a problem: how do they solve their problem in the easiest, most cost-effective manner? It’s simpler to use an existing resource so less change is necessary. But if they determine they must find a new provider, they must bring in the new solution in a way that leaves their culture whole. All things being equal they really don’t want to disrupt their routines.

BUYERS LIVE IN SYSTEMS

There is a disparity between the selling model and buying behaviors: solutions are ‘things’ and a buying decision is a change management issue. As per my latest book Dirty Little Secrets, buyers (like all of us) live in systems of people, rules, relationships, history and policies. Any ‘problem’ becomes part of the system, which develops work-arounds so it can keep on keepin’-on. So when we gain weight, we buy new clothes rather than change our eating habits, work out more, stop drinking our wine. And daily, the system wakes up doing the best it can.

When we approach prospects using the sales model (i.e. a search for a match between the need and the solution), we are acting as if the problem were an isolated event rather than a part of a larger system of people and policies that maintain it. We don’t realize that they have already created a ‘good enough’ work-around for it.

It is only when – and if – the group of folks that touch the problem daily decide that a work-around isn’t good enough AND they cannot fix it with a familiar resource, that they seek an external fix. Then, regardless of how well we’ve been selling, they have work to do: 1. they have to figure out how to ‘go outside’ for a solution; 2. they have to figure out how to get internal issues prepared for change.

HAVING A NEED DOESN’T MEAN A NEED FOR A SOLUTION

Our selling doesn’t provide us with another tool kit for change management – what buyers do when they go off-line to manage their internal politics and relationship issues.

So what are we supposed to do?

Here are our choices:

• we sit and wait until they figure out how to get everyone together to decide;
• we sit and wait until they get the full Buying Decision Team on board;
• we pitch, send data, nurture, and hope we’ll be top-of-mind when they’ve put all of their ducks in a row;
• we begin with a different focus: we help them navigate through their buying decision path and shorten the sales cycle AND get onto the Buying Decision Team and thwart competitors.

The last option sounds the best, right? And yes, my Buying Facilitation® model is an add-on skill that works with sales to do this.

Given you work within a sales system, let me ask you to consider adding Buying Facilitation® skills to the sales skills you use:

How will you know when it’s time to consider adding a new skill to what you’re already doing successfully?

What skills/activities/beliefs do you want to keep so anything new will not disrupt your normal functioning that you’ve become familiar with? And how would you like something new added in a way that maintains your activities and motivation?

What would you need to know about Buying Facilitation® before you consider an addition, to know if it would work for you? How difficult it would be to learn/add? What the downsides and upsides would be? How your boss/team would react when you begin selling differently?

What would you need to know from me, as the developer/seller, to know if you’d get the support you need to be successful?

It’s not about your solution. To really sell well, you must have 2 skills: helping buyers navigate through their back-end change management issues; place solutions.

Or just sit and wait for the low hanging fruit to drop. Remember that 80% of your prospects will buy a solution similar to yours within 2 years. They have the need – they just haven’t figured out how to manage the change. Help them. And close more sales, quicker.

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Read sample chapters of Dirty Little Secrets. Or buy the book.

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Learn Buying Facilitation® | Implement Buying Facilitation® | License Buying Facilitation®

A buying decision is a change management problem is a post from: SharonDrewMorgen.com