RSSBuying Decisions: What Happens Behind-The-Scenes
Sep 14, 2009 Decisioning & Change Management, Top Posts
For some reason, it’s very difficult for sales people to think beyond ‘need’ and ’solution:’ We tend to think that because the buyer’s need matches our solution, and because we’re professionals who ‘care,’ the only thing buyers need to do is choose our solution.
But if it were that easy, buying decisions would get made more often in our favor. We certainly would not lose as many sales as we do. The problem is that the buying decision is so, so much more complex than we can imagine as we stand on the outside looking in.
Sales mysteriously treats an Identified Problem (my word for ‘need’) as if it were an isolated event. But it’s not. There are ramifications to any change, and the ramifications are ones only buyers can see from the inside and we will never be privy to.
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Tags: buyer, buying decision team, buying decisions, identified problem, isolated event, need, sales, seller, solution
Managing Off-Line Decisions
Aug 28, 2009 Decisioning & Change Management
Where do our prospects go when they say, “I’ll call you back?” Most of us guess, but really, we don’t know where they go.
Where they go, in fact, is to get ahold of their colleagues and figure out how to get agreement for whatever outcomes the new solution will cause within the buyer’s environment. We rarely think that way as sellers: we see a problem, figure out if we have the appropriate solution, and go forth, fearlessly, to match the need with the solution.
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Tags: behind-the-scenes, budget, need, off-line, sales, solution
Decision Making The Expert Way
Aug 26, 2009 Decisioning & Change Management
You all know that my passion is helping people make decisions. I have put my decision facilitation model into sales, but it’s equally at home in any situation in which one person is helping another person decide.
Enter Expert Choice. Expert Choice is a decision facilitation software tool. They offer teams of decision makers “rapid convergence of experience, intuition, and data to collaborate and make decisions with alignment, buy-in, and confidence.”
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Tags: Decision Facilitation, decision technology, Expert Choice, Rich Doughtery
Birthing A Book
Aug 25, 2009 Decisioning & Change Management
I’m just putting the final touches on my new book which involves writing the text for the back cover, doing final proofs, chasing friends for testimonials. Although I write something every day, and have written hundreds of articles, many books, hundreds of blog posts, it’s not the same as a book. A book has some heft to it – not in terms of size, but in terms of the promise of it. And the time I have to weave my dreams onto pages that will hold them.
I thought I would write a brief sales book that announced my anger at the sales model for being so unruly, for allowing so much failure. So many sales people end up wasting so much time, not to mention buyers not getting what they deserve. I thought that I’d just have a good-old rant for 100 pages or so.
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What Is A Need?
Aug 5, 2009 Decisioning & Change Management
Since I’m the Queen Contrarian, I’d like to say that the ‘need’ we think that buyers have is not a real need.
First of all, we often meet them at the wrong end of their buying decision – when they are just starting their search for a possible solution. Not only have they not committed to making a purchase, they are too early in their decision process to fully understand all that their ‘need’ entails.
Tags: Buy-In, buyer, buying decisions, need, systems
The Internal Customer: Is It A Sales Job?
Jul 24, 2009 Decisioning & Change Management
What is the difference between selling to an internal customer and selling to an external customer?
Nothing.
At the end of the day, there is the buyer, the seller, and the solution. The influencer, the influenced, and the idea, or request. Regardless of the moving parts, one person wants another person to buy in to something that represents some sort of change.
Whenever we are responsible for having someone else buy in to an idea, change an opinion, help us on a project, we have a sales issue.
But it’s not the sort of sales issue we’re accustomed to. It’s a change management issue: after all, if the Other can’t figure out a way to add our request to their daily activities, their beliefs about their job, their feelings about what is being asked of them, they will do nothing. If we force them to do something they are not internally comfortable with, we’ll have to manage their sabatoge.
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Tags: Buy-In, buying decisions, customers, management tools, teach
