Please read, listen, and enjoy. While my work is often associated with ‘sales’, my decision facilitation model (named the Buying Facilitation Method® when applied to sales) is indeed a change management model useful in any area in which change, disruption, bias, and resistance resides, and it is a guide to facilitating buy-in.

PODCAST SERIES: MAKING CHANGE WORK

The brilliant Nathan Ives, publisher of StrategyDriven ezine, interviewed me for 6 half hour (give or take) sessions, entitled:

1. What is Change? And why is Change so hard?
2. The problem with Change Management: bias, resistance, and push.
3. What are systems, and how do they influence Change?
4. Overcoming resistance.
5. Why is buy-in necessary, and how to achieve it.
6. Real Leadership.

These podcasts are on my site www.facilitatingbuyin.com along with other podcasts I’ve recorded on the topic of Change Management.

ARTICLE: BUY-IN

My buy-in article was first conceived as part of a World Future Society talk on Leadership and Change Implementation. Very different from typical and academic thinking in the field of change management, it is based on my decision facilitation methodology that is systems based and choice driven, with the change agent taking the role of a facilitator for any situation in which change and buy-in are required: negotiation, coaching, sales, leadership, influencing, or managing.

Read the article here. And if you wish to discuss implementations or change management issues you might like to resolve, please contact me and let’s see if there is a way to facilitate your change.

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Change Management can be easy: podcast & article is a post from: SharonDrewMorgen.com

For those of you who want to hear the delightful interview we did, here is the podcast:

Enjoy. Something for you to do during the hoidays when there is too much family around :)

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And, for those wishing to learn Buying Facilitation™ as a result of being inspired by the interview, see the many choices on BuyingFacilitation.com.

Interview with Fuel Radio is a post from: SharonDrewMorgen.com

• what buy-in means in terms of the change management process
• how and when buy-in occurs
• why people do not buy-in
• how a leader can get someone who is resisting to not only buy-in but to do so happily
• when the change agent should begin to seek buy-in from the various stakeholder groups
• what skills change agents need to gain employee buy-in and how can they acquire these skills
• what leaders can do to programmatically embed the buy-in approach to their change management policies

Listen now:

For the full series, go to: www.facilitatingbuyin.com

Note: these podcasts are equally relevant for sales as well as change management: our buyers must get buy-in across their Buying Decision Team members before they can make a purchase. This free series will explain just what’s going on in the buying process.

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Making Change Work #5: why is buy-in necessary and how to make it work is a post from: SharonDrewMorgen.com

Company name: Leadformix
Title: What’s the Difference between a newspaper and a sales professional? Hint: both are doomed.
Date/time: Sept. 13 at 11:00 AM PST
Ideas discussed: with sales enablement capabilities and the internet co-opting the influence seller’s have on  buying decisions; sellers must learn new skills or be out of a job.
Link: http://www.leadformix.com/webinar/aug25/webinar.html

Group Name: CustomerThink Sales Summit
Title: Start at the beginning: add new Trusted Advisor skills earlier in the buyer’s journey
Date: Oct. 5-7 with Dave Brock. Time TBA.
Ideas discussed: All sales folks attempt to be Trusted Advisors. But what do buyers really really need from us now? The stakeholders need help in making sense of all of the pertinent change management issues necessary to get buy-in to make a purchase. Hear Brock and Morgen discuss the different aspects of the buyer’s decision journey.
Link: http://www.customerthink.com/summit/sales_edge_2010

Group Name: Focus.com
Title: The Focus Interactive Summit: Evolving your sales game plan
Date: Oct. 21
Ideas: Sales thought leaders getting together to discuss various aspects of the new world of sales. Jill Konrath and I will be discussing some Sales 2.0 ideas. Learn about the latest processes and technologies to help you create a top-performing revenue-generating sales force.
Link: http://www.focus.com/interactive-summits/

Also, if you missed these that I recently completed, check out the recordings below.

• Pastor Rick McDaniel (Richmond Community Church) & Sharon Drew – Two spiritual thinkers interviewing each other (also listen at the bottom of the page – just before comments)
• CustomerThink Webinar: Mark Sellers & Sharon Drew - Enabling The Buyer’s Journey
• StrategyDriven Podcast Series - Making Change Work – Sharon Drew interviewed by Nathan Ives of Deloitte & Touche: #4: What is Resistance? For the rest of the series, go to FacilitatingBuyin.com
• Podcast Series – Keeping Sellers Relevant: What is the new job of sales when the Internet takes over the sales function?

In Boston, on September 23rd, I will be speaking at the Aloft Hotel at 6-8 pm, with the SMEI group. I will have a registration link shortly.

And here’s a bit of fun: watch my silly video on the stupid seller (below). It’s quite tongue-in-cheek, of course. Ably abetted by my friend Stone Payton playing the ‘stupid buyer’, I drive a shiv into the recognized problems in sales – all of which can be alleviated by using Buying Facilitation™. Enjoy.

Thanks for your interest, folks. This blog is ranked #7 of the top 100 sales and marketing blogs. Thanks for your interest and support! And send on to friend – I am to be #1!

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Wanting to add some Buying Facilitation™ skills to your current sales skills? Want to learn it on your own? Designed with self discovery and homework, these Accelerators will get you up and running with new skills in a few hours.

Webinars Galore is a post from: SharonDrewMorgen.com

Just like the ‘push’ of the sales model creates objections, so the ‘push’ of the typical change management methods create resistance. Change management  is an attempt to place something new into something old, it forgets the systems nature of the status quo: everything is part of a system of interdependent parts that all have agreed to common rules and practices. Whenever anything – anything- new tries to enter this system, the system does what it is designed to do – push the intruder away. It’s scientific name is homeostasis. So to retain balance, the system must, by its nature, push away the offending element.

The field of change management is awash in ways to manage the resistance. It never has realized, for some reason, that it causes the resistance just by the nature of the frontal attack. Whether the proposed change is efficacious or not is immaterial. It doesn’t fit. Or at least the old bits that have maintained the system through time don’t know if it fits or not. Just like buyers who might need a solution object and resist purchase until there is internal buy-in from all of the people and policies that maintain the status quo, so a change environment resists. Until or unless all of the parts that will touch the intruder buy-in to it being let in, it will be kept out.

There is a very neat, simple to make it possible to achieve buy-in. I call it Buying Facilitation™ when I use it in the sales industry, but decision facilitation is another way to label it. It’s entirely possible to create buy-in before the change is attempted, and get everyone inside bought-in to the change and doing leadership activities to welcome the change. And avoid resistance totally.

I have been recording podcasts with Nathan Ives of StrategyDriven magazine. I’ve included #3: The Problems of Change Management, and #4: Managing Resistance. If you missed the first 2, here they are: podcasts one and two.

Enjoy listening. And please feel free to contact me to have a dialogue on this important topic. I have an article coming out soon in Pegasus (the magazine about systems thinking) called Buy-In: a radical approach to change management. If anyone would like me to send them an advanced copy, email me at sharondrew@newsalesparadigm.com.

The change management/decision facilitation model I’ve developed has universal application. I’d be happy to discuss it with you.

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Making Change Work 3 & 4: The Problems of Change Management & Managing Resistance is a post from: SharonDrewMorgen.com

Unfortunately, the same thing is happening with our sales jobs. With a focus on

• understanding need and placing a solution,
• attempting to understand what’s going on so you can place your solution, and
• handling objections, pitching solution, and overcoming objections,

you’ve lost the real nugget of what is possible in the role of a seller: true buyer support, time savings so buyers can fix problems sooner, and supporting them through the change management issues they struggle with internally.

By helping buyers navigate through the off-line, behind-the-scenes, political and relationship-based issues they need to handle amongst themselves before they can buy anything, you’d be a real asset to the buyer.

Right now, they muddle through this alone, and doing it with you would put you on the Buying Decision Team and obviously make you a Trusted Advisor. And it’s something the internet cannot do. And it’s the aspect of the buying decision journey that sales has never been privy to.

Here are some questions I have for you:

As part of your sales job, do you keep trying harder and harder to understand — understand what? You can see what the prospect needs. They know they have a need. So why haven’t they bought yet?  Do you know the answer?

What is stopping them from buying? What’s taking so long? Do YOU know? And does understanding their problem help?

What do buyers have to do to get all of the right people on their buying decision team? And what happens when/if they don’t?

Today’s final podcast in the series Keeping Sellers Relevant will focus on how you can enter the buyer’s decision journey far far earlier in their buying decision process. Last podcast I explained the buyer’s journey. This one I go into detail and explains how you can be involved in each step of their buying decision process.

It should open your eyes to a world of new possibilities. Please note that if you want to learn more than I can offer in a 15 minute podcast, please consider purchasing Dirty Little Secrets: why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell and what you can do about it. I’ve also developed some Learning Modules to help you actually learn the new skills. And for those of you who want to study with me, I’m running public trainings in Austin and Boston in mid September.

It’s important at this time in history that you recognize that the sales model is incomplete, and you can be far more successful if you can enter the buyer’s journey earlier. Not as a sales person or a solution provider, but as a Change Agent and Coach.

Buyers have always gone through this journey without us, causing us to lose most of our prospects. We’ve not taken the challenge to learn a new skill set. But now your choices are limited. Either add a new skill, or become obsolete. Because like it or not, technology can do a lot of your job.

Enjoy. For those wishing to hear the three podcasts in the Keeping Sellers Relevant series, here is the MP3.

And, Mark Sellers (of the BuyCycle Funnel) and I will be doing a live webinar on August 19. Registration and details.

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How sellers must change to remain indispensable – Podcast 3: Keeping Sellers Relevant is a post from: SharonDrewMorgen.com

This one starts, like DLS, with what a system is. Our buyers, our colleagues, our clients, all operate as part of a system, and the system is what resists change. Once we understand the makeup of a system, we can move forward with helping the system manage change.

Part 3, to come out in a couple of weeks, is about resistance and bias: why do people and systems resist change, and how do change agents bias the results, actually creating resistance.

For you sales folks reading this, the exact same issues apply with buyers: buyers work in a system of rules, relationships, politics, tech folks and engineers – and this system will fight to maintain itself rather than bring in a different solution. So in addition to listening to my Podcast series on Making Sellers Relevant, you may enjoy this series also.

For those of you who have missed Part 1, here it is.

To join a conversation about change, buy-in, and systems thinking, visit my new site: Facilitating Buy-In.

Part 2 of Making Change Work

And when you are done, Part 3 of Making Change Work.

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Making Change Work: Part 2 – What is a system, and how does change happen? is a post from: SharonDrewMorgen.com

1. getting internal buy-in from colleagues, bosses, and budgets to decide to make a change, figuring out how or what will be included in the change, and agreeing how to move forward;

2. choosing a solution and vendor.

In today’s buying decision journey, technology is beginning to ably handle the solution choice: Since sales focuses on the needs analysis and solution choice end of the buying decision, it’s easy-enough for the process of selection and information-gathering to be co-opted by the web.

That leaves the seller not meeting quotas, not involved until the very end after many of the decisions have been made, and not using their talents as purveyors of industry knowledge. Sellers are not entering the buying decision journey early enough, are too often reduced to order takers.

WHAT’S A SELLER TO DO?

The choices are:

• have many sellers leave the profession as there just isn’t going to be enough work;
• have sellers play musical chairs as they get fired/hired/fired/hired etc.;
• learn new skills to change the sales job to better accommodate the front-end of the buyer’s buying decision journey.

About 20 years ago, I wrote a column for Telemarketing Magazine. I had written a book called Sales on the Line in which I introduced Buying Facilitation™ as a sales tool for the phone. In the book I told telemarketers that unless they used their brief phone time helping prospects navigate through their decision issues quickly (i.e. “Hi, Mrs. Jones. Is this a good time to speak? I’m selling magazines. I’m wondering how you are currently choosing to add new subscriptions to the ones you already have?”), they would be out of business.

The editor of Telemarketing loved my stuff. Of the 4 telemarketing magazines on the market in those days, he (Robert – forgot his last name) was the only one who thought my ideas were print-worthy. I yelled and cajoled and begged and offered and wrote and taught. I said, over and over and over: If you don’t change your ways, you won’t be in business in 10 years. Few listened.

OK. I was right. Now I’m going to say that again to the sales field: If you don’t shift your jobs to managing the entire buying decision journey – not just that end that is concerned with the solution purchase – you won’t have a job. As we speak, I know of 2 tech companies working very hard on creating a Q&A capability for a piece of software to replicate a buyer-seller conversation.

ENTER THE BUYING DECISION JOURNEY EARLIER

Now is the time. Get ahead of the curve. Learn Buying Facilitation™. Read Dirty Little Secrets and Buying Facilitation™. Take the Guided Study program or training with me, or get the Modules. But add this new skill to what you’re doing, and

• get onto the Buying Decision Team on the first call;
• become necessary for buyers as a consultant who can be a real asset during the early parts of the buying journey;
• use your skills and industry knowledge to truly become servant leaders to your buyers.

I’m not talking about choosing a solution or vendor - they can use the net for that. I’m talking about a change management skill set: to help them bring together the people, the decisions, the policies, the tech solutions, the partners, the buy-in/resistance issues, so they can quickly, effectively, make a solution choice – with you on their decision team and then, naturally, their provider.

Here is my 2nd podcast in the series: Keeping Sellers Relevant. This one explains the buyer’s journey. Enjoy. And please, take this to heart.

Previous: Podcast 1 | Next: Podcast 3

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Here are chapters from Dirty Little Secrets to better understand how Buying Facilitation™ helps buyers decide.

The Buyer’s Buying Journey – Podcast 2: Keeping Sellers Relevant is a post from: SharonDrewMorgen.com

And, why am I recording a Change Management series? For those of you familiar with my decision facilitation model, you’ll recognize that it’s basically a change management model that helps buyers (or teams, or patients, or or) navigate through all of the unconscious, behind-the-scenes, private issues they have to decide on, en route to doing something different. After all, anything different means change. And any time we change, we have issues to manage within our status quo, so we don’t create chaos unduly.

ALL DECISIONS ARE CHANGE MANAGEMENT ISSUES

Whether you’re going to change your hairstyle, or buy a house, or adopt a new ERP system in your company, or bring in new staff, anything that will shift the status quo is a change management issue. Because the status quo is happy with whatever rules or relationships or technology already exists (or it would have been changed already), adding anything new upsets the apple-cart, so to speak.

Until now, the change management model has focused on designing the change and managing the resistance. But I believe that resistance isn’t necessary if the change agents first seek buy-in. Interesting, that when a search is done for the term ‘Buy-In’ in the change management field, only one instance came up! Yet every book on change management is about, in large part, managing resistance.

In this series, Nathan and I discuss change from a systems standpoint, and how to achieve buy-in by getting systems to agree to change – before even introducing the change initiative. Is it possible? Listen to the podcasts and let me know. We’ve got a new site dedicated to buy-in, discussions around buy-in, and creating community to help buy-in become a recognized aspect of change management.

The titles for the 6 part series are:

• What is change? And why is it so difficult?
• What are systems, and how do they influence change?
• The historic problems with change management models: bias, resistance, and push
• What is resistance, how do current change management models create it, and how can it be avoided?
• Why is buy-in necessary and how to achieve it.
• Putting it all together: a radical approach to change management and real leadership

STRATEGYDRIVEN

For those interested in change management, have a look at www.StrategyDriven.com. It’s a truly neat site. Here how it is described:

StrategyDriven represent tried and tested business world methods based on years of business planning and execution experience and founded on solid research and academic principles. We provide readers with the best practices needed to create the high level of organizational alignment and accountability characteristic of world-class organizations and introduce warning flag processes and behaviors that signal a retreat from world-class standards. Our framework not only addresses performance of discrete planning and execution functions but also the interrelationships between an organization’s mission and objectives to its executable programs, budgets, and procedures, and finally to its products and services and the market it serves.

At a more granular level, our framework and supporting practices enhance organizational alignment by reinforcing business process interrelationships from strategic planning and resource management to tactical execution and evaluation and control. We also discuss the management and leadership practices needed to bring employees and the system together; all running smoothly and seamlessly with one another. And all of these practices focus on achieving the organization’s vision, values, and mission goals.

Go to www.strategydriven.com. Have a look around. You’ll be filled with new thoughts, find all sorts of articles, and leave the site hungry for more. Enjoy. And, make sure you listen to our Making Change Work series. We’ve worked hard to provide some new thinking.

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Once you finish this podcast, check out part 2 of making change work.

Making Change Work: a change management podcast series with StrategyDriven is a post from: SharonDrewMorgen.com

As we continue designing web capability to do the needs analysis and solution placement that we have been doing ourselves, we are actually making our jobs irrelevant.

So what, exactly, will our jobs be? I don’t think we’re going to go back to the good old days when we sat down for coffee with every prospect to explain our value proposition. And the internet isn’t going away.

We’ve gotta change our jobs and become relevant.

DO YOU HAVE THE SKILLS TO HELP BUYERS INFLUENCE THEIR BUYING DECISION TEAMS?

What will influence buyers? What is their real problem? No – not the problem your solution can resolove. I mean their REAL problem. Because if their real problem were as simple as buying our solution, they would have done that already.

Buyers are having a hard time getting buying decisions made:

• They have more stakeholders on the buying decision team than they’ve had historically.
• There are economic issues to contend with: they don’t even know IF they can buy now, let alone WHAT they want to buy.
• There are internal politics at play about spending money or making changes.
• Everyone on the Buying Decision Team is playing around with possibilities on the net and may have different ideas about how to resolve a problem.

I believe that our current sales model of solution placement and needs analysis, combined with all of the capability now available to buyers on the net (which in many cases co-opts our jobs), is making our jobs (as they have been until now) irrelevant.

It’s time to move our focus away from providing solutions to providing buyers help with their journey through their behind-the-scenes decisions (not necessarily sales- or solution-related) so they can get the buy-in necessary to make a purchase. Is this sales? No, it’s Buying Facilitation™. Is it a selling model? No, it’s a navigation model that works with the change management issues buyers must contend with before, during, and after they bring in a new solution. But it’s an add on: the skills sit comfortably on the front end of your sales skills. And it’s certainly going to help you close a lot more sales – and  you’ll never have to sit and wait for buyers to call as you’ll be on the Buying Decision Team.

Today I’m offering my first of 3 podcasts on The New Buying Decision Journey: Keeping Sellers Relevant. Here is the first podcast on the subject. Enjoy. And please, feel free to pass this on to friends and colleagues. Here is some reading material from Dirty Little Secrets to show you what the new skills would look like.

As adjunct material to use with the podcast series, you may want to purchase my newest book Dirty Little Secrets: why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell and what you can do about it, or have a look at my learning modules.

Enjoy. It’s time to change. Are you ready? Your buyers already have. You have too much knowledge and too much care and respect for buyers to be made irrelevant. Let’s add a new skill set to close sales.

Once you finish podcast one, check out podcast 2: The Buyer’s Buying Journey.

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For those wishing to study with me, I run corporate Buying Facilitation™ programs. I’m offering a unique public program in Boston, September 20-22.

Is the salesperson irrelevant? Podcast 1: Keeping Sellers Relevant is a post from: SharonDrewMorgen.com

StrategyDriven Magazine is a really professional ezine that publishes articles about change, leadership, organizational performance, project management, and decision making. They have truly interesting white papers, expert opinions, and editorials.

Everyone on the editorial team works in a company and does some form of change management and strategizing daily, so they are not mere talking heads but smart folks. Take a look. The site is also quite professional, interesting, and timely.

The man who interviewed me for this podcast about Dirty Little Secrets and decision facilitation is Nathan Ives. He works in management at one of the Big Four firms: he understands strategy from the inside out. It’s his job. And he’s real smart.

What should have been a 20 minute interview turned into a very dynamic discussion now in 2 parts. Part 1 is below. It not only discusses Buying Facilitation™ but talks about it in terms of change and how organizations change – to buy something, or to implement something, requires the same problems and change issues. A buying decision is a change management problem, after all.

Nathan was a very interesting interviewer. He asked smart questions and made me think. He got the best of me.

Enjoy this interview. I’ll give you Part 2 next week. In the meantime, please send your comments and questions to: sharondrew@newsalesparadigm.com. I’ll publish them and discuss then. And take a look at StrategyDriven magazine. You’ll like it.

Part 1:  http://www.strategydriven.com/wp-content/uploads/SDSE039DirtyLittleSecretsPt1.mp3

And stay tuned for our 6 part series on change management called Making Change Work. We’ve worked hard to make them intriguing and idea-filled.

As you think about the decision facilitation material, try to remember that it can manage any sorts of change – not just getting Buying Decision Teams on board for a purchase, but helping implement technology changes, helping teams work together, helping M&As.

I hope you get excited by the possibilities now available for helping congruent, integrous, change happen. There hasn’t been a model that works with the unspoken, hidden, inside activities around change and buy-in before. Now that it’s possible, there is a whole world of possibilities now open to us.

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Want to learn Buying Facilitation™? Try out my new modules.

StrategyDriven Magazine Interview is a post from: SharonDrewMorgen.com

I decided to give you all of the podcasts, videos, and audio files of the interviews I’ve done so you can kick back and enjoy some ‘easy listening’ if you find listening easier than reading. I believe that you’ll be able to upload many of these onto your MP3 player for when you’re working out at the gym and need to get your mind off of the pain.

• Tony Parinello Interview: Listen while long-time friends Tony and Sharon Drew banter about sales, how buyers buy, and what to do once you’re in front of VITO.
• Tony Parinello Q&A: Hear Sharon Drew and Tony take audience questions – and hear how much fun they have as they come up with joint answers.
• Maestro: With a few dozen attendees, we ran a training session in which I lectured and did a Q&A about Buying Facilitation™ and sales. It was great fun.
• Brian Carroll: Brian and I speak about how decision facilitation can help sellers become leaders for their clients/prospects.
• Lee Glickstein: Lee is the fabulous thought-leader who developed Relational Presence and Speaking Circles. He and I discuss some ‘dirty little secrets’ and how sales folks can truly serve clients.
• Clayton Shold: Clayton and I discussed how sales people can be better/better/best!
• Lee Colan: Lee really wanted to understand Buying Facilitation™ and how it could be used with sales.
• High Velocity Radio: This was a fun interview: Stone asked me about the development of Buying Facilitation™ and why it’s important.
• Gravity Free Radio: Eric was the perfect foil: he made typical assumptions about selling, and we used our time to show how sales fails and what you can do about it.

If the time comes that you wish to actually learn Buying Facilitation™, and if you haven’t purchased Dirty Little Secrets yet, here is the link, the best way to go is with the Guided Study program. It’s a very very complete step by step learning tool in 26 complex learning sessions. For those of you suffering from the economy and need to pay out over time, or want to discuss what it is and what it does, contact me at sharondrew@newsalesparadigm.com

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And have a great holiday weekend. Get some rest, and travel safe.

Podcasts: Easy Listening is a post from: SharonDrewMorgen.com

Lee interviewed me about the sales model, and how “Dirty Little Secrets” moves the sales model forward. Enjoy.

Click here to listen to the interview.

Listen to Sharon Drew Morgen speak on MaestroConference on Oct. 14 at 12P.M. PST

Check out my new book coming out October 15: Dirty Little Secrets: why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell and what to do about it. Read two free chapters. Sign up for presales deals, and announcements.

Or have a look at my book Buying Facilitation: the new way to sell that influences and expands decisions. Click here for two free chapters. It will teach you how to understand and manage the route through the internal decision process. Will it help you make a sale? Maybe. Maybe not. But it sure will help you make a client.

Sharon Drew speaks with Lee Glickstein is a post from: SharonDrewMorgen.com