RSSA buying decision is based on more than need.
Mar 12, 2010 Sales Related
Because the ultimate goal of sales is product placement, technology, presentations, pitches, and information gathering are based on discovering prospects with appropriate needs to fit the solution.
That means your questions are biased, the answers are biased, and the data you get is such a small subset of the necessary data that precludes buying decisions that sellers end up making costly assumptions: they’ll close ’soon,’ the buyer is a ‘hot prospect,’ for example. It makes it so difficult for sales managers to predict the real pipeline, and for sellers to know who to spend time with.
Think about it: when your baseline assumption is that just because you’ve ‘uncovered a need’ that you have a prospect, you have no idea who is really going to buy, or you would have closed a lot more business.
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Tags: buying decision, sales, status quo
Facilitating Buying Decisions: a definition
Mar 8, 2010 Sales Related, Top Posts
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Recently, I’ve noticed many folks using the term ‘facilitating buying decisions.’ First, let me state that we have a program by that title, that can be licensed to train in companies. It’s a very fun program, teaching sellers how to sit in a buyer’s seat and learn every aspect of how they choose vendors and solutions. Learners not only learn how their buyer’s buy, but I teach them the 6 most powerful Facilitative Questions to help buyers make a decision in their favor. Here’s a preview of one of the questions: How would you and your Buying Decision Team know when it was time to bring in an additional resource that will fit with the ones you’re currently using?
Tags: Decision Facilitation, Dirty Little Secrets, Facilitating Buying Decisions, Facilitative Question, GPS system, neutral navigator, sales
Partnering: Who’s appropriate? Who’s not? And how can you tell?
Mar 5, 2010 Sales Related
I get approached daily by folks wanting to partner. I, too, attempt connections with maybe 10 people a day for the same purpose. So how do we know who is right for us to partner with and who isn’t? And how can we tell before disaster strikes?
Of course, we all make mistakes – like that time I partnered with a man in India (Ok, ok. I should have known, right?). The idea was to make me a recognized brand throughout India, and then have him represent me as a trainer and speaker. We were to share the costs. Except we didn’t. I paid my half, and then was forced to pay his, when I received a call from our publicist 5 months later asking me if I’d please please pay him. When I asked my new partner about it, he said, “Oh, right. Well, I didn’t like what he did.” He did a fabulous job, I said. “I agree, but he didn’t give me the type of follow up paper (outside the contract) I wanted. So I didn’t pay him, and I don’t want you to either until he does what I asked.” Next.
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Tags: Facilitative Questions, mistakes, partnering
Make the Phone your Best Friend
Mar 1, 2010 Sales Related
Do you believe that to close a sale you must ‘get in front of prospects?’ Why? Really. Have you ever asked yourself why? Do you tell yourself that you MUST have that eye contact? That ‘face-to-face’ juice? Do you tell yourself that if you’re not in the field, you’re not selling?
In 1937, Dale Carnegie advocated it. What else are you using from a 1937 playbook?
Untold billions of dollars have been misspent following this industry-wide belief: planes, hotels, time. And? The industry still has a 7% average close rate.
Here is a rule: Don’t use your body as a prospecting tool.
Here is a secret: your sterling personality, your great outfit, your Rolex watch and Prada shoes don’t close an account. Nor does your great insight or knowledge of the buyer, their need, your industry, or your solution. Nor does that great rapport you create over lunch. Otherwise, you would be closing a lot more sales. Amazing how much push-back I get from an industry with such a low success rate.
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Tags: buying decision team, closing, identified problem, phone, sales
Drive Business to your Site – Then Convert the Leads
Feb 26, 2010 Sales Related
You do all the right things: you drive business to your site; you capture data and follow visitors around your site via a digital footprint; you know who has been looking at your site and what their interest are; you have folks who attend your webinars and buy your white papers.
We have fabulous technology these days. Almost anyone, regadless of the size of their company, can get their name and business proposition out there for the world to see.
But are you closing the commensurate amount of business? If not, why not? Are you not managing your leads properly? Converting properly? I regularly hear complaints from marketing folks that they bring in the leads but the sales folks aren’t converting them.
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Get onto the Buying Decision Team on the First Call
Feb 22, 2010 Sales Related
When I tell sales folks their sales cycle is double what it should be, they assume I’m lying. But I’m not. I’m just using a different model than sales to being my client contact: Given that the typical sales model builds in time delays and leaves the seller out of the behind-the-scenes discussions going on, there is no way to get onto the Buying Decision Team on the first call.
My clients consistently close sales in a minimum of half the time it used to take them. Why? Because Buying Facilitation® gets them onto the Buying Decision Team on the first call, and they immediately being helping navigate the buyers through their often unknowable internal decision issues.
It’s not rocket science: the sales model pushes against the status quo, causing the status quo to defend itself. Sales treats a buyer’s alleged need, or ’problem,’ as if it were an isolated event; it has no capability to support buyers as they discover and manage the off-line change management issues they must address internally and privately prior to making a purchase. Indeed, the buyer’s internal system fights any chaos that would take place if the new solution entered too soon, and thereby rejects outside influence.
Think about coming home with a brand new luxury car before discussing the purchase with your wife or managing the budget or garage space: just because the family might need a car, until or unless all of the internal factors are managed, no change can take place without chaos.
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Tags: Buying Decision Teams, Buying Facilitation®, Facilitative Questions, partners
