We are all very familiar with the latter: that’s what sales handles so well. But sales does not handle the former at all:

• we are not there when buyers choose the Buying Decision Team, or the machinations of  how they will work together;
• we are not there when the powers that be decide it might actually be time to resolve a problem that has been working well-enough;
• we are not there when internal politics get into gear and people jocky for position in re a new initiative or resolving an historic problem;
• we are not there when the decision is made to either use a familiar provider, or go outside to seek a new one, or do nothing.

To give you some understanding of the order of the steps buyers go through to make the above decisions, think about a time when you decide to purchase a new car, or a new house (or a new something). The very first thing you did was NOT seek out a solution or a vendor. Let’s walk you through the process.

1. consider that maybe, just maybe, your current situation isn’t good enough. Just a thought.
2. take a look around at the ramifications of the existing situation vs what a different  solution would do to your status quo.
3. talk with your spouse, kids, friends – your Buying Decision Team. Is the status quo ok for a while longer? What would be important to consider in the decision: money? the time involved in figuring out a new solution? What do you do with the existing solution – keep it? get rid of it? how will you choose – do you need to do some research on the costs of having 2 solutions? And, what will go on with your daily lives when you decide to make a change? Is it a time issue? a money issue? a space issue? What is involved? And what criteria will be used to choose. What about the relationship issues involved? How does each member of the Buying Decision Team get weighted? involved? How do you know when you’ve got the right people in the team? How do you include those you’ve left out?
4. Figure out the costs (time, people, money, resource, political/relationship capital) in change. It’s easier to remain with the current situation – but is the status quo too costly? Is the cost too high to make a change? How do you and your decision team go about assessing your internal costs? And whose needs are weighted higher than others? How will you know when one of the Buying Decision Team members is resisting – and how do you all handle that?
5. Figure out all of the criteria that will have to be met to keep everyone happy. Everyone. Including your bank.
6. Once everyone has agreed to
   a. changing the status quo;
   b. the type of solution;
   c. the criteria that the change/solution must meet;
   d. the roles people will play in a purchase choice and adoption activities,

then it’s time to start researching solution choices and providers, get agreement for action from Buying Decision Team.

And this is where sales takes over. Not before.

OUR CURRENT STEPS MISS THE IMPORTANT DECISION FACTORS

Here is what is happening now — and you’ll see why it doesn’t work. Let’s again assume you’re buying a new car, and let’s assume a car sale is similar to other sales calls (a bit of poetic license, please):

1. car dealer contacts you to see if you need a new car. Invites you down to showroom to see the car, take you to lunch, sit down and chat with you, etc.
2. you have nothing better to do, and the showroom is near your work. You’re thinking of a zippy car for this time in your life. You visit during lunch. You get the whole schpiel – car details, price discussion, a few drinks.
3. you are excited – but you’re not sure if this car will be acceptable to your spouse. You sit down with your spouse to discuss your desire to get a new, zippy car.
4. spouse is not happy. Spouse wants to buy a vacation cottage with that money; you have an arguement. You decide to put it on the table for a few days and think about it.
5. lots of discussion. After three weeks of discussion and no agreement, you and your spouse haven’t gotten further. Your current car is ‘fine’ although with the kids gone you were hoping for something sportier. Your spouse reminds you of the grandkids that now live around the corner. Is there enough money to have two cars?
6. seller calls you. What’s up? Great price for the car if you want it. Want to come back in?

See the problem? We wouldn’t buy the way we sell – why do we think our prospects will? Why do we forget the basic facts about people? Why do we treat a problem/need as if it were an isolated event? Why haven’t we adopted new skills to help buyers manage their off-line, private, personal decisions, in the way we would need to for ourselves?

Why do we forget that just as we discuss decisions with family, our buyers discuss decisions with colleagues, and weigh several types of considerations (internal stability, balance of internal political/relationship/timing factors, maintainance of status quo) before they can even consider a new solution?

We forget that if they had found their situation terribly problematic they would have changed already. We forget that choosing our solution – like choosing the car to purchase – is the last thing that goes on in a buyer’s mind. We forget that sales doesn’t offer a different set of skills to help with the different set of decisions.

Think about it. How will you know when it’s time to add Buying Facilitation™ to your current skill set, and help buyers manage their behind-the-scenes decision issues before you sell? How will you know that learning an entirely new skill would sit comfortably with your current skill set and enhance your success?

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I’ve developed a new set of learning Accelerators for those folks seeking to put a toe in the water and just learn a few of the skills to add to their sales skills. Have a look.

And, of course, my newest book Dirty Little Secrets: why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell and what you can do about it will explain it all – and give you an intricate case study to follow each aspect of the decision making with Facilitative Questions to help influence the decisions. Enjoy.

The Steps to Buying: remembering the human element is a post from: SharonDrewMorgen.com

To help you understand how foreign systems are to outsiders, here’s a personal story from a trip to India that made me realize I’d never understand another system as an outsider…. and what I needed to focus on instead of trying to manipulate or make sense of a situation that I wanted to effect change over, but was foreign to me.

In this funny story I was so confounded by my inability to understand another culture that I ended up having a spiritual experience.

INDIA HAS NO SYSTEMS

I was on a speaking tour through India titled Spirituality in Business. India is a wonderous place that teaches you how to be authentic: there is no other way to be, since the only system they live with (outside of the strict rules of relationships) is chaos. And with my systems-thinking Asperger brain, that makes me horribly uncomfortable.

So I was going nuts. Absolutely bonkers. Nothing worked as I thought it should. Nothing was where it was supposed to be. No one did the job they were supposed to be doing. There were no rules, far as I could tell. I had no idea what to do, how to fit in or act. I was living in a state of confusion that hurt – every moment of every day.

I decided that the best route would be either murder or suicide. I didn’t much care which, so long as there was death involved.

I made such a fuss that the organizer of the speaking tour got me the name/number of a travel agent who would get me to HHDL (the Dalai Lama) in Dharamsala in North West India. One of the things to note about India is that your plane/train/bus will be late – or early, who knows – but whenever it does show up it will be yesterday’s transport, or tomorrow’s, and you’ll have to wait til, til who knows when. People wait for days. Calmly.

Anyway, I took the number and went to a nearby village to stand on line (with the goats and chickens, babies and arguing adults) to use the phone – a make-shift deal tied around a tree. It was probably the only phone for miles.

When it was my turn, I contacted Mr. Singh. “Ah, Miss Morgen. Yes. I have your plans to Dharamsala. Please hold while I get your file.” As I waited, watching some children play with a dog, I began smelling smoke. I looked around and saw nothing burning, until I looked down: the phone cord was dangling off of the tree, and on fire. That’s right. And that’s not even possible.

Obviously, I wasn’t going anywhere. No phone, no transport, no way out, no understanding, no choices. Typical of every moment in India: total confusion, all the time.

I sat down on a nearby rock, rolled my eyes upward, defeated: “OK. I’ll stay.”

ONE STEP . AND THEN ANOTHER.

What had to be true for me to remain in India and not commit Death of some kind? I had to learn how to take one step at a time, put one foot in front of the other, have no expectations, and live totally in the present without needing anyone else to behave in any particular way and without needing to understand anything. One step. I’m OK. One step. I’m OK.  One step. I’m OK. The anger, fear, rage, confusion slipped away; each moment was just fine.

After a day of taking very small, slow steps, I realized that not only was I (and folks around me) still alive, but that I felt free: I realized that much of my life had been based on assumptions of what I wanted to happen – what I expected, and what I thought I could influence, and the frustrations and annoyance when I didn’t get what I expected.

I took this lesson back to my life and job as a seller. I realized it’s not possible to understand a buyer’s systems. Sure, I understand the facts about a need and how it fits with my solution, but my ability to understand ends there.

What are the systems in your client’s environment? They must navigate their daily routines, decisions, jobs, relationships so that work gets done and excellence accomplished. But you don’t understand their system. So, what has to be true for you to help prospects traverse their systems and consider purchasing something?

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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. Read two free sample chapters.

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

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

We can never understand a buyer’s buying environment is a post from: SharonDrewMorgen.com

Yes. It is easy. But not with the sales model alone.

THE JOB OF THE SALES MODEL: LIMITING THE PURCHASE CHOICE AND BUYING DECISIONS

The sales model is meant to place a solution. It was designed for a simpler time in history, when there were fewer solutions, precious few ways of marketing them, no internet or FEDEx to get solutions from China delivered to your front door in two days. It was not designed:

• to bring together disparate players on a Buying Decision Team,
• to circumvent many creative solutions that can address a problem besides yours,
• for a bad global economy.

Sales places solutions. But if it were that easy you would have closed more.

You know those sales where the buyer shows up and buys almost immediately? What’s the difference between them and others who take forever? The difference is they are one of the 80% who will buy a solution within 2 years of working with a solution provider (and left behind a trail of dead sales people) and NOW is their 2 year mark: they have finally discovered and gotten agreement on a route to move forward and all of their ducks are in a row. Their need is defined; the new job descriptions are described, the users are ready, the new material will fit comfortably with the old so as to avoid disruption.

The last thing the buyer does is find a solution. Sales enters at the wrong time, offering the wrong data, to the wrong people. If you do the exact same thing you’re doing now, but after you use Buying Facilitation® to help them navigate through their behind-the-scenes decision path, then you’ll close quickly.

MUCH SHORTER SALES CYCLES USING BUYING FACILITATION® AND SALES

Here are some numbers that my clients (using Buying Facilitation® AND sales) tracked against their control groups:

• A large insurance company went from 110 visits and 18 closed sales to 27 visits and 25 closed sales.
• A large tech company selling a small piece of software ($10,000) went from a 6 month sales cycle to a 3 call close.
• One of the Big 3, with a $50,000,000 solution went from a 3 year sales cycle to a 4 month sales cycle.
• One of the world’s largest banks went from closing 2% with an 11 month sales cycle , to closing 37.5% in 2 months.
• One of the well known boutique brokerage houses when from $400 Million to $1.2 Billion in revenue in 4 years.

They did this by become true Trusted Advisors; they used Buying Facilitation® to facilitate the buying decision, and then they sold.

Your sales cycle is long because buyers have to figure out how to get the right people and policies aboard before they can buy. It’s not about your solution. Do you want to sell? Or have someone  buy? They are two different activities. Which do you want to focus on? And how will you know if it’s worth adding something new to what you are doing?

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Get a hold of Dirty Little Secrets: why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell and what you can do about it and read it. Then contact us so we can train you.

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

Why Your Sales Cycle is So Long (Hint: It’s Not About Your Solution) is a post from: SharonDrewMorgen.com

In other words, when choices are made that go against what the world deems rational,  they are, by definition, irrational. So if we get accepted to Harvard, for example, and choose to go to Podunk, we are being irrational.

HOW WE DECIDE

As a person who thinks in systems (I have Asperger’s), I’m here to tell you that decisions do not get made based on information but on beliefs – personal, idiosyncratic values that we each uniquely hold dear: what may seem rational to one person is not rational to another. And  it’s all subjective regardless of what end you sit on.

If you have good data that the new software you’re being asked to use will be superior to what you’ve been using, the rational decision would be to accept/adopt the material. Yet you have a fear that when using the new technology your job will change, you won’t be competent at your job, you’ll suffer some diminished deference from your colleagues, and you won’t be able to ever get as competent as you are now with the existing software. Those internal voices – the fears and the resistances, the avoidance and the confusion – are what determine your decision, not the ‘rationality’ of the potential solution.

Your ability and willingness to change – to buy, to learn, to choose – is directly proportional to your skills at examining and shifting our criteria. You weight/re-weight your beliefs regularly. So if I asked you if you wanted to learn to kill someone, you’d probably say ‘no.’ But if you knew that someone were going to come into your home to harm your family members, you might re-weight your beliefs about knowing how to kill.

When you assume you understand what a ‘rational’ decision should be, and notice someone making what you deem an irrational decision, you have no ability (as an outsider) to understand what might be appropriate for that person, at that moment, living as they are living, with the people, policies, relationships, emotions, and history of their lives.

SALES TREATS NEEDS AS IF ISOLATED EVENTS

When there are others including in decision making – a team, for example - the range of decision criteria gets complex. And buyer’s decision paths are no different from any other decision path: the time it takes the person or team to recognize and manage the full extent of their decision criteria, and come up with a way to enable the appropriate buy-in from the appropriate people at the right time, is the length of the buy/decision cycle.

The first phase that buyers address as they start their buying decision journey involves lining up their internal criteria, the players, the old vendors, and understand relevant systems issues that have maintained their status quo.

The need we can resolve with our solution  actually sits in a tangled web of gooey systems issues that not only created their problem, but maintain it every day, and until or unless there is appropriate buy-in for systemic change, the problem will remain as it is: the need is thrown under the bus if a solution will severely disrupt the system.

In fact, buyers buy solutions with personal criteria that usually has nothing to do with a need or a solution. People buy homes with personal criteria that usually has nothing to do with the details of any specific house; software often gets purchased only when the tech team is willing to work with the marketing team – none of which is directly related to a specific solution.

So what’s rational?

There is an assumption that with the right data, at the right time, offered in the right way, to address the right solution, the person receiving the data will accept it. But that doesn’t happen as often as we would like. As a result, we often judge the person ”stupid” or irrational. But what is happening is not information-based.

As you move toward making new decisions, or helping buyers manage their buy-in cycle, start off with helping them manage their decision criteria, rather than beginning with the last thing they do (choose the solution). Buying Facilitation® is a decision facilitation model that actually teaches buyers how to walk through and reweight their decision criteria. Help them discover their own ‘rationality’ so they can buy. They must do this anyway – with you or without you: it might as well be with you.

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My newest book: Dirty Little Secrets: why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell and what you can do about it is about how decisions get made. While seemingly about the buying decision path the book is usable for any people involved in decision making  and it breaks down the root all decisions take. Read two sample chapters free.

Listen to  Sharon Drew’s podcast series called Making Change Work.

Buying Facilitation® licensing program: July 1-7, Austin TX.

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

Behaviors aren’t rational 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

These numbers are far lower than they need to be: so long as your primary focus is on making a sale and you focus on needs assessment and solution choice (factors which are the buyer’s final considerations), and ignore the change management issues buyers must handle before they choose a solution, you are delaying a close by a factor of 8.

By using a different focus and changing your ‘first contact’ criteria, you can enter your prospect’s world and get onto the Buying Decision Team much earlier. And close more/quicker. But it requires a new skill to add to your sales model.

WHAT ISN’T WORKING WITH CURRENT APPROACHES

Here are some numbers my clients have given me over 20+ years:

When using a non-marketing-automation selling model (any form of needs-based consultative selling), and your first contact is to make an appointment as your first outcome, you close 2% from first call (with no idea who might be a prospect, you must start counting your ‘close rates’  from this first call – not from your appointment). It might show up as 15% if you track from first appointment.

When you go through lead scoring and lead nurturing, and then attempt to make an appointment, you are closing much less than 1%. And when counting from first appointment, the close rate shows up as 17% — real, only if the names ignored by lead scoring had no probability.

As a rule of thumb, any time you begin your sale with an attempt to get an appointment, you are being rejected by approximately 90 – 97% of perfectly good prospects.   

At least 50% of the people you are calling are viable prospects. Easily half of  these can close. Are you closing at least 25% of all of your raw leads? These folks are going to buy something similar to your solution within 2 years – but not from you. If you employ a change management model from the first call rather than attempt to get an appointment, you will close more, help put together – and become part of - the Buying Decision Team on your first call,  and making you invaluable immediately.

Note: until or unless the entire Buying Decision Team is on board, buyers will not have the full fact pattern to understand what a solution must include, regardless of what their need or ‘pain’ looks like to us. And generally, buyers do not know all of the Team members until they are close to the end, thereby delaying a purchase.

If you first connect using a qualification process that includes change management criteria, you can turn around a lead from ‘potential interest’ to ‘qualified prospect’ within 10 minutes, and reduce the sales cycle by 50% regardless of the size of the solution.

HAVING A NEED DOES NOT MAKE SOMEONE A BUYER

When you attempt to Qualify using need, purchasing capability, or timing,  or use a Trusted Advisor approach, you are omitting all of those pe0ple who

1. don’t know know exactly what they need yet and are not quite ready for solution data,
2. have not managed the off-line change and are not ready to buy – but are indeed buyers and know they have a need,
3. are doing their due diligence, but have assigned others to do on-line research for them and don’t seem to be relevant leads,
4. have not the full solution criteria because they are still getting their Buying Decision Team members on board.

The last thing buyers need is solution information, and they need very little of this on the first contact. Until or unless they get feedback on all who touch the solution, and then know how to move forward with change and solution adoption in a way that will create few ripples in their system, prospects cannot buy – separate from their need.

Personally, you may not care about the private, back-end buying journey. But by collapsing the buyer’s journey between first thought and purchase, by helping them get ALL Buying Decision Team members on board early to define the solution and change processes, and get the right policies in place quickly, you can find more prospects, close a lot more sales (400-800% higher close rate over sales alone) and waste a lot less time – not to mention forecast more efficiently.

THE BUYING FACILITATION METHOD® CHANGES THE NUMBERS

With a cold call and a good list, using the Buying Facilitation Method®, my clients close 35% from first call – often without an appointment, and always at least 50% quicker.

Buying Facilitation® facilitates the behind-the-scenes change management issues necessary prior to a purchase, puts you onto the Buying Decision Team immediately (first call) , and teaches the buyer how to recognize and manage their internal systems  issues up front. The model works in any situation in which back-end decisions get made:

• Periodic upsell  for new solutions
• Client recovery to re-engage with lapsed customer relationships
• Prospecting, telepromoting/telemarketing, and follow up from marketing automation
• Managing negotiations
• Pipeline reviews/management
• Qualifying – for proposal management, sales, marketing, pre-lead scoring

How are you currently adding new capability to your X?

At what point would you and your decision team be seeking to add something new to what you’re already doing successfully?

Let’s add Buying Facilitation® to every sales process – as a front end to marketing automation, or a new skill for sales folks - and close in half the time, manage our pipeline in a timely way, find the right buyers immediately and get rid of the time wasters immediately. And start the process from the very first contact.

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Call me. I can discuss self-directed learning, or site sales training, or the development of custom playbooks and sales scripts. We can also design front-end technology to enter the buying decision journey earlier. To help you learn:

• Dirty Little Secrets: why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell and what you can do about it.
• Buying Facilitation®: the new way to sell that expands and influences decisions.
• MP3
• Learning accelerators

First Contact: What to Do, Why, and How to Get Better Results is a post from: SharonDrewMorgen.com

There must be a better way to do this, no?

1. if we knew who would be a prospect on the first call, and get rid of those who will never buy, how much time would we save?
2. if most gatekeepers would get us to the right person, how much time would we save?
3. if we can connect with all of the folks who will ultimately be (or are already) on the Buying Decision Team, how many more sales would we close?
4. if there are no more objections of any kind, how much time would we save and how much more money would we make?
5. if buyers could make a buying decision in the time frame that we believe is possible (i.e. those buyers who call up and purchase quickly are good examples of what’s possible for every sale),

how much more business would we close? And why can’t we make these things happen?

THE REASONS YOU ARE NOT GETTING THE RESULTS YOU DESERVE

To begin with, you are beginning at the end of the buyer’s journey – the purchasing decision – and must wait while they catch up. As sellers, you have been trained to find appropriate prospects: you have not been trained to help them begin or traverse their journey through the behind-the-scenes decision path that is change-management/systems based, and has more to do with internal politics and time lines than it does with purchasing a solution or choosing a vendor.

As a result, you have learned ways to manage the fallout you’ve received from attempting to offer a solution at the wrong time. Or from attempting to offer a solution that folks might not know they need, or aren’t ready to concede that they might need. Or know they need but haven’t figured out how to get buy-in.

Pushback, objections, time delays, buyers who seemingly don’t know how or if to buy. Prospects that stop returning calls. Prospects who make promises they don’t keep.

The only reason you aren’t closing more sales, and the reason you end up wasting time with non-buyers and delayed sales cycles,  is not because of your solution. Your solution is fine. So is your care and respect and personality.

You’re wasting your time trying to place a solution before the buyer has lined up the change management issues they must contend with. But sales doesn’t offer you any other tools.

THE BUYING FACILITATION® MODEL WORKS WITH SALES TO MANAGE THE BUYING DECISION.

OK. I’m a hammer looking around for a nail. But it’s the truth. Buying Facilitation® is another model – like sales only different – that you must learn in addition to sales to manage the back end issues buyers must address privately before they can buy.

• Gatekeepers will help you find the right people to talk to rather than put you off.
• You can help buyers put together their entire Buying Decision Team on the first call.
• You will no longer get objections (fallout from the sales model) – price or otherwise.
• You will be differentiated from your competition immediately.
• Your buyers will buy in approximately 1/8 the time (sometimes with very large sales the number drops to 1/4).
• You will know who is a buyer and who is not, on the first call.

It’s not sales. But really – do you want to keep having those super long sales cycles and getting objections? Do you really want pipelines that aren’t converting? Take a look at my site www.newsalesparadigm.com and see what options you have to learn. There is no reason you shouldn’t be doing Buying Facilitation® AND sales, and stop wasting time. The sale model is great to understand need and place solution – but by using it too early in the buyer’s change management process, you’re not helping buyers buy. You deserve better.

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Read about Buying Facilitation® in these books: Buying Facilitation®: the new way to sell that expands and influences decisions and Dirty Little Secrets: why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell and what you can do about it. Or buy the bundle with them both.

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!

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How much time do sales people waste? is a post from: SharonDrewMorgen.com

Confused? You’re accustomed to just using the sales model to place your solution. But the buying decision process is more complex than just choosing a solution.

Here is a graph that shows you the issues buyers must manage as they go from idea to purchase:

Unfortunately, we’ve tried for years to use just the selling model to help buyers choose our solution. But until or unless

• the buyer’s entire Buying Decision Team is on board,
• everyone who touches the solution is bought in to bringing in something new,
• everyone who will touch the solution is comfortable with their new roles and tasks,
• all systems issues (rules, roles, relationships, old vendors, etc) are in alignment with the change a solution will bring,

they will not, cannot, buy. And the sales model doesn’t manage that part of the buying decision path – hence your long sales cycles and paucity of closed sales relative to the number of prospects.

That’s where Buying Facilitation® fits in: it’s a wholly different model than sales; it’s a change management model that uses systems thinking (Ater all, buyers live in systems, and sales treats a ‘need’ as if it were an isolated event.) and operates as a neutral (i.e. not solution-directed) GPS tool to be the lighthouse, or neutral navigator, to steer our buyers through the confusing, non-solution/non-need related systems issues they must address behind-the-scenes.

ENTREPRENURIAL SELLING GETS YOU FROM BUYER’S IDEA THROUGH TO CLOSE

But on it’s own, Buying Facilitation® is incomplete. Buying Facilitation® works with the sales model, as sales does the needs assessment and solution placement. Obviously, we’ve got nothing to sell if we can’t understand our buyer’s needs and have the right solution – even if they’ve got the Buying Decision Team sitting and waiting to make a change.

It’s with this thought in mind – both/and rather than either/or – that I introduce you to a wonderful new product:  RAIN Group has developed  Entreprenurial Selling and includes the finest thinkers in sales today (including yours truly). It’s the definitive program for those  wanting the best.

I am lucky enough to be a part of this phenomenal group of sales leaders who put together a program that will bring you from the buyer’s idea, formation of the Buying Decision Team, and will get you in the door, with the right thing to say to the right people, to close the deal.

The folks at RAIN have done a lovely job of capturing the environment of today’s selling/buying experience. And not only do they have the top in the field represented, but they’ve put together a learning experience that fits nicely with a collaborative community experience for all who purchase. They use videos, exercises, and experiential learning to lead you through both ends of the buying decision path – from idea through to purchase.

Here is a link to purchase this training/learning package. It’s not inexpensive, due to the quality and depth of the material. But for 8 days, there is an introductory price.

Is it worth it? Well, here is a Facilitative Question:

What would you need to know about a learning package to understand if your sales might increase as a result of your investment?

Enjoy.

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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!

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.

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Selling AND Buying Facilitation®: facilitating the buying journey from idea to close with RAIN Group is a post from: SharonDrewMorgen.com

This guy was talking to me as if I had never been on a computer before: “Do you know where the backspace button is?” “Now hit Send.” I kept thinking that if I said, “Got it” ”Did it” enough times he’d understand that maybe I knew how to follow higher level orders.

Finally my patience wore thin: “I’m pretty computer savvy. Do you think  you could speak with me as if I knew how to follow higher level directions?” His response:  “But I talk to everyone this way.” And I, given my high annoyance factor by then, said, “How can you really serve your clients if you don’t know how to speak in the language patterns they listen in?”

SELLING PATTERNS VS. BUYING PATTERNS

So here’s my question: What’s the difference between your selling patterns and your buyer’s buying patterns? Because if you don’t know the difference, and merely use your selling patterns, you will only sell to those people whose buying patterns match your selling patterns, and will turn off the rest. Regardless of your solution. Regardless of their need.

Think about the old telemarketing industry. They folded. The entire industry. Why? Their products were fine. The problem was their selling patterns were annoying. So annoying they were put out of business.

I had a monthly column in TeleProfessional magazine in the 90s. Every month for 2 years I told them that if they didn’t adopt a new skill set they’d be out of business. Every once in a while the editor would write a column telling people to read my column and wake up. Between the two of us we tried to save the industry. But they liked doing it their way, all the way to failure.

Right now, sellers are losing a lot of business because of many reasons:

1. the vast array of choices on the  internet;
2. meeting clients too late in the sales cycle to have influence;
3. buyers find different/creative solutions they hadn’t originally thought of;
4. the economy is forcing them to use internal resources as much as possible.

Flexibility is urgent now.

WOULD YOU RATHER SELL? OR HAVE SOMEONE BUY

By using your conventional, habitual selling patterns – say, calling for an appointment, or calling and asking about needs immediately and THEN asking for an appointment – you will only sell to those prospects who buy the same way you sell. It’s uncomfortable otherwise, and given the range of possible choices they have, they would prefer not to deal with someone that makes them uncomfortable.

When you use Buying Facilitation®, there are no selling patterns. You are merely using Facilitative Questions to lead buyers through the behind-the-scenes decision issues they would need to address if they were to seek excellence. “How are you currently adding new sales skills to the ones you’re already teaching your sales folks?” “”How would your Buying Decision Team know if it were time to consider training a broader range of skills that would incorporate into what you’re already doing successfully?”

These sample Facilitative Questions (used in a specific sequence that matches decision making) show you how it’s possible to interact with a prospect to get them to begin their change journey. Because if they don’t know the answers, they can’t buy anyway.

Here are some Facilitative Questions for you:

What would need to happen to start using your buyer’s buying patterns from the first call? From the first moment of the first call?

What would that look like? What skills would you need? What would you need to understand before you begin learning Buying Facilitation® to recognize the possibility that you might get more business doing it that way?

What would you need to know or belive differently to be willing to begin your calls collaborating around excellence, rather than trying to sell a solution?

Stop trying to start your conversations with a solution/sale focus. You’re wasting a high percentage of your time with folks who will never buy (over 90%); you might as well start with helping them discover how to want to be excellent. And then you can sell. I’m not suggesting you not sell. I am suggesting that you first teach buyers how to buy.

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Listen to Sharon Drew do live prospeting/qualifying calls: MP3

Read 2 sample chapters of books on Buying Facilitation® and change.

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®

“But I talk to everyone this way”: the difference between selling patterns and buying patterns is a post from: SharonDrewMorgen.com

Too often, we position ourselves according to what we perceive our market will pay for, or what we must say to prove our concept, or our own biased belief of how our market wants to buy.

Sometimes we end up vying for customers in a price competition. Sometimes our offering seems similar to others - obvious to us, but indistinguishable to our prospective clients.

How do we develop a strategy that uses our competitors to help us get clients and differentiate ourselves according to how the buyers want to buy?

YOU AREN’T MARKETING IN A VACUUM

Let’s start by thinking about the areas of distinction between you and your competitors.

Who are you in the market?

Who do you want to be perceived as – the new ones? The young ones? The smart ones? The innovative ones? How do you want people to choose you over the competition – by price? By service? By capability? By brand?

How do your competitors do this? Do you want to be similar? Or do you want to be really, really different? What are your options for achieving this? And how/when will you know whether or not your choices were appropriate, or what you might want to change? And what is the fallout?

How do you want to be seen?

Do you want to be seen as The Experts? A lovely group of service providers to solve every problem? A collaboratory between customers and provider? A company that is always developing new capabilities?

Notice how your competition is perceived. Do you want to be different? The same only better?

Defining the market

Does your competition define the market differently than you? What demographic do they appeal to? How is this made obvious? Are there areas within the market that they aren’t addressing but are blazingly obvious to you? What modality are they using to position themselves within the market? Is it effective? What’s working? What’s not? Have you enlarged or diminished your solution to go after the corporate market or the small business market?

How similar/different do you want to be from your competitors – i.e. do you want to appeal to different market sectors or the same? What will you get from each?

Price

Is your solution is similar to your competitor but with different price points? Has your competitor priced their solution higher to go after the corporate market, or lower for the small-medium business market? Where do you fit in? How does your competition advertize on price – or not? Do you want to shriek with pop-ups, or quietly suggest a conference call?

How do you want to position your pricing in relation to your competitors? Note: I’ve always taken myself out of the price competition by pricing myself out of the market (i.e I’m more expensive). That way people buy my services based on quality. Or not.

Marketing

How are your competitors getting their name out? Ezines, blog, webinars, white papers, social media, discussion groups? Do you want to meet them head on?  Be different? How?

Websites

How can you translate who you are onto a one/two dimensional screen? How are your competitors using color, font, style, verbiage, other technology like chat avatars or contact sheets? Who are you, and how do you look/act on a site.

WHAT ARE YOUR COMPETITORS SAYING THAT YOU MUST HEED?

What do you like about your competitor’s sites? What do you not like?

Take a look at your competitors sites. Do some research on Google to find out where they are advertising, or who they are partnering with, or where they have articles placed or when they are doing webinars. In fact, sign up for a webinar of a competitor so you can get a good understanding of who they are and how they position themselves.

Use Google Alerts with key words to find out who is using the terms that are important to you. Decide if you want to use similar terms in similar ways, or re-orient the market to your way of thinking.

Go onto your competition’s site and see who their clients are. Are they the same as yours? Why? Why not? What are they doing/not doing that attracts those clients and how do you want to position yourself differently…or the same?

What is most important about how buyers perceive you or them? Do you want to change your image?

MY CHOICES, AND HOW I DEALT WITH MY COMPETITION

I have a very specific problem with my brand. I’ve developed a wholly original change management model that sits on the front end of the selling model to help buyers navigate through those internal, behind-the-scenes human/political issues they must go through to move forward. You know, that stuff they do while we wait and have little to do with our solutions.

Unfortunately, the material is in the field of ‘sales’ so my competition is the entire field of, and history of, sales. That’s right: every single sales method and sales training company is my competition.

So I have a solution no one wanted (i.e. the sales model has been ‘fine, thank you’ for centuries, regardless of the abysmal success rates) and no one wanted to change, regardless of the dramatic results my Buying Facilitation® model offers. In fact, the model itself is so different there are no points of similarity between my solution and sales. No competition, right? Wrong.

So I’ve had a multi decade problem. First, I tried to match my marketing materials to the field I was supporting (i.e. sales) and failed miserably because no one understood why I sounded so different if I were offering something so similar.

Then I decided to pit myself against my competition and spend years explaining how silly sales was. That just got me a lot of hostility.

Then I decided to align myself with the field and say that I had a complementary solution (this is true) and coined new terms that the field is now using (i.e. buying decision path, how buyers buy, etc.). In effect, I dumbed down my message.

I then began writing a blog that used my thinking to open up all of the problems with sales and position my material as as an adjunct to sales – thereby aligning with my competition fully. With syndications, webinars, podcasts, and articles in various ezines and magazines, I met my competition in all of the places it showed up (it’s SALES for goodness sakes!) and offered the counter viewpoint.

I had other, smaller decisions to make. How did I want to be seen? I decided I wanted to be accessible, since my solution was visionary and would attract other visionaries with lots of questions. I designed sites in a way buyers could find me easily, so my phone number and email address appear everywhere.

The main point is to be flexible and thoughtful. Be ready to change on a dime when something isn’t working, and know the difference between what success and failure look like.

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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®

How to use competition to win business is a post from: SharonDrewMorgen.com

What would need to be true if your priority were to truly serve a customer? Would you need to get paid more? Would there have to be some sort of directive from the top? Would you need to learn new skills? Would your job be different? What would it look like? What would be different?

Years ago I attempted to get a publisher for a book about customer centric selling (a decade before that term became commonplace) and was told there wouldn’t be a market for it. The book was based on concentric circles, with the customer in the middle circle, and technology and sales in the next outter circle, and management, etc. moving out to the largest/last circle where the Board sat. The idea being that everything everyone did was based on the central concept of serving the customer.

Instead, we have corporations that put customers in different silos with different people serving each of their needs – silos that don’t talk to each other, I might add. We promise clients things we cannot do because we’re told we’re not allowed to. We don’t return phone calls because we get busy, and expect customers to understand. We change technology, or programs, because it’s expedient, without keeping the customer in mind. We develop solutions because they fit with our product line, rather than targeting them to the customer’s wishes. We outsource our help desks to other countries because it’s cheaper, and we don’t heed customer complaints about service.

OUR JOB IS TO SERVE

I believe a seller’s priority is to serve clients. It’s the only job a seller has. If a solution is the correct way to serve, then that’s what’s needed. If just a discussion and support for a different solution is what they need – even if it’s a competitor’s – so be it.

We’re in it for the life cycle of a client, not just one transaction, so we must set up our technology, our internal report structure, our support services, with our customer’s needs at the forefront.

And we must get rid of those damn silos. Customers hate when they get put on hold for each person they need to speak with for each problem, or when they speak with one team member who knows nothing of a conversation they had with a different team member.

WHAT SKILLS DO WE NEED

Do our sales skills give us the capability to serve our clients in a way they need to be served?

I suspect our sales skills do little more than attempt to sell our solutions. What would we need to be doing differently if our jobs were to really, really serve our clients? And what skills would we need?

Of course I”m going to talk about how Buying Facilitation® will help you help the client navigate through their change management journey and bring all of the right people together in a way that takes them forever to do on their own. But think about it: facilitating the buying decision path does more than serve our customers: it shortens the sales cycle, differentiates us, and gives us the tools to be great Trusted Advisors.

So let’s make ‘serving’ a priority, shall we? Facilitating our clients, making more money, helping our company, and making everyone’s lives easier.

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Listen to Sharon Drew do Buying Facilitation® and hear the difference between sales and helping buyers navigate their behind-the-scenes decision issues.

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

What is a seller’s priority? is a post from: SharonDrewMorgen.com

Yesterday, I left the office and noticed a mailer sitting there: it was to have been picked up the day before. I had to go in that direction anyway, so stopped at the post office to ask the manager if there was going to be an ongoing problem.

Here was our conversation:

SDM: Hi. I have a question. You folks have been picking up mail at my door for quite some time now. It’s a really efficient process, and I appreciate it. But yesterday you never got there. Was there a problem? And do I need to adjust for changes?
P.O. Manager: Sorry about that. Yesterday there was a big turnover when folks retired.
SDM: What? I don’t understand what that means to me.
POM: That means some of the new guys don’t know the customers.
SDM: What, exactly, does that have to do with me? I scheduled the pick up.
POM: People are allowed to retire, you know.
SDM: What?????
POM: Retire? People retire! Don’t you get it? The new folks didn’t know what they were supposed to do.
SDM: But I filled out the form online, scheduled the pickup and here is my confirmation.
POM: I know, but maybe they didn’t know. They were new. You’ve got to make some allowances for new people. It’s not their fault.

That was a real conversation.

How often do we have internal problems and not take the responsibility of making it right for our customers? You make promises to your clients. Regardless of your issues on the back end, they are promises. Keep them. And your clients won’t mind when you make a mistake; they will mind when you don’t communicate.

PS: The same problem happened today (one week later) and a package was at my door for days. I went in to the PO, met with the same woman, and her response was totally, totally changed.

POM: Hi. Oh. You’re back! I’m SO sorry you continue having this problem! This isn’t right! You’re one of our good customers. There must be a glitch in the system! Let me fix that for you! Give me your details and I’ll look up on our system what the problem might be, and I’ll call you to let you know what happened and how we’re fixing it for you. And here is my cell number in case there is a next time. That way you can track me down and I’ll take care of it from my end. We’ll get this fixed! I’m SO sorry! And thanks for your patience!

Obviously the woman had had a customer service course in the last week :)  Good for her.

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

To learn how to create the sort of dialogue that supports your client interactions, take a look at Dirty Little Secrets. It’s more about the collaborative communication than being ‘right’ or ‘wrong’.

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

Don’t make your issue the customer’s problem is a post from: SharonDrewMorgen.com

Let’s think about this for a moment. The buying path itself is far more complex than we can understand: we have no capability of actually being there when prospects have meetings or political in-fighting. With sales, ‘solution choice’ is the focus, and buyers are left on their own to navigate through the internal politics and human biases they address before they can get agreement to buy.

CLOSING LESS THAN 1% OF WARM LEADS

As part of my prep work when developing sales training for a few new clients recently, I tracked the success of their marketing automation initiatives. These numbers coincided with other numbers I’ve procured, regardless of industry:

• Out of 100 names determined to be prospects (out of a total of 10,000 contacts), 3 will agree to an appointment.
• One quarter will cancel, leaving 2.25.
• Of these, 75 percent will express interest and possibly get as far as pricing.
• Of these that express interest, 38 percent will close, or .59 percent.

Based on these numbers, you have to wonder if there is something missing in our process. And, there’s no telling how many of the thousands of originating leads might have been good prospects.

Why is it OK to waste such a high percent of a seller’s time, making 10-15 calls to each lead, over months and months, to get an appointment that has such a small chance to close? Or is this the new norm? With the existing strategy, we’re left to question how can we identify…

• The number of real prospects within the thousands who came to our sites and weren’t called for an appointment?
• Those that got as far as pricing might have closed if sold to differently?
• Whether they would have purchased from the original 100 if they were not first approached to take an appointment?
• Who would buy if they weren’t first called for (and turned off by) a request for an appointment?

WE CAN HELP MANAGE THE BEHIND-THE-SCENES CHANGE ISSUES

Supporters of marketing automation, to date, have maintained the thinking that has driven sales: bring people to a site, follow their online activity, assume they are leads because they exhibit a certain amount of interest, nurture them to make sure they receive the right data, score them according to some unique criteria, and then try to close.

Let’s go back to the main problem: as a solution placement activity, sales merely addresses the final 10 percent of the buying decision path, and has little input as to how buyers manage change and buy-in. But buyers will take no action until their Buying Decision Team and those who will touch the solution buys-in to making a change.

Using current practices, there are five fundamental questions that remain unanswered…

• From all names gathered, who will be a real buyer?
• What is the interest level and role of the person who filled out the contact sheet?
• What stage of the buying journey are they on and what data is relevant to that stage?
• How is the received material being used and who is it being shared with (i.e. competing vendors? In-house teams)?
• Is the entire Buying Decision Team on board? Are all who touch the solution in agreement?

Whatever selling model you’re using, unless the entire series of unique behind-the-scenes issues are not managed, the buyer cannot buy. And current marketing automation technology does not even address this area.

HOW CAN MARKETING AUTOMATION HELP BUYERS NAVIGATE THEIR BUYING PATH?

Far too often, sales addresses a need as if it were an isolated event, but buyers don’t buy in isolation from their people, policies, rules, politics, or market forces. Marketing automation is uniquely positioned to actually help buyers manage the entire route down their buying decision path. While the path to purchase often starts with one person and an idea, it includes managing politics as well as people and their diverse relationships.

With marketing automation it is quite possible to:

• Lead visitors through their entire buy-path, starting with an idea;
• Know exactly what stage of the buying decision journey buyers are on;
• Identify the appropriate material to send for that stage in the buy path (even make it possible for the site visitor to choose the exact data they want).

Marketing automation is a very powerful concept that is being underutilized, causing us to miss the opportunity to lead a lot more buyers through their non-solution-related, off-line decision issues. They must manage the buy-in and change issues anyway – with us or without us.

Instead of us wasting resources following folks too early in their buy-cycle, or sending the wrong data for the point they are in their decision making, we can better target our efforts to facilitate the entire decision journey, know who’s ready, help others get ready, and nurture them all at an earlier stage.

Let’s add some thinking around navigating and facilitating the entire buying decision path, from idea through to purchasing decision. By thinking of the buying decision path differently than the solution sale, we can close more, and serve more people.

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Sharon Drew Morgen is currently using Buying Facilitation® to develop content to use with technology at each stage of the decision path. Contact Sharon Drew to discuss needs and capability.

Buy Dirty Little Secrets: why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell and what you can do about it and learn all of the stages buyers go through on their decision path.

Listen to Sharon Drew prospect/qualify using Buying Facilitation®.

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

Marketing Automation can facilitate the entire buying decision path is a post from: SharonDrewMorgen.com

BLOGS ‘Everyone’ has a blog. So simple to set up. So simple to maintain. Use a template or hire a designer. Get WordPress. But do it. Just do it. Start writing a few times a week. Even if it’s 300 words. Write about what you know, what you think, what you’re annoyed with.

Because my selling model is so unique, my challenge is to find visionary thinkers – hence the need to write interesting material that will help them find me. I write two unique 750 word articles a week to broaden my range of readers and trial new ideas. My blog is my free playground.

One day I was truly annoyed with a vendor and decided to vent my annoyance on my blog. I named it Cranky Tuesday, and now I have a separate readership for Tuesdays (that brings more eyeballs to my Buying Facilitation® material), PLUS I get to be heard. A couple of weeks ago I was angry that Les Mills exercise group was using a song that promoted violence to women and my angry blog got the song changed. One little post changed the world.

You have a voice. You have ideas. Get provocative – we don’t want to read the same-old/same-old. Give us fresh ideas. Be all you can be. What a perfect venue to show off!

SYNDICATIONS Ezines seek content. Whether it’s one of the big aggregators such as iMedia or Alltop, or a focused market such as BizyMoms, go to your favorite article aggregators and get your writing accepted. It’s simple. Just ask, and send a copy of one of your favorite posts. But get your name/brand/ideas out there via articles.

LINKS Find clients/colleagues/competitors you like. Write a post about them and what they are doing. Link to their site. Call them in advance and tell them you’re writing about them and ask if they’d like to recommend a link they’d prefer you linked to. They will be appreciative. They will link to you. They will announce your post on their site. You will have access to their friends and visitors. You will increase your audience.

Or, if you have no blog yet, Tweet about these folks. They will then retweet you.

Start a revolution! Get your brand aligned with others who are where you want to be: make sure you offer to help them, and they’ll be delighted to help you.

RSS For my blog, folks sign up for an RSS feed. All of my sales related articles go out to friends, subscribers, press, and syndications with the push of a button. Sometimes an article gets picked up. Sometimes it gets ignored. But make sure it’s possible for folks to get whatever they need, in the way they need it.

TWITTER My favorite technology is HootSuite. My audience trippled overnight after I began using it. Set up HootSuite to run every, say, 3 hours, and plug in the tweet and tiny URL for the article/idea you want promoted. Magically, your tweet gets posted all by itself!

INDUSTRY ARTICLES Take a favorite idea that your brand represents. Contact the industry magazines and blogs and ezines. Get them to agree to an article you’d like to write. Then send the link to the article out to everyone as soon as it’s posted. I wrote an article for a marketing automation service provider. I got so many responses from it that I now have several new business partners, had an interview on me published by a very prestigeous ezine, and am developing a new piece of software that will be ready for trial in about 3 weeks. All from responses to this one thought piece.

WEBINARS, PODCASTS Go to sites/groups that are in the vacinity of your ideas. Approach them with 3 or 4 ideas about a joint webinar that will incorporate your best thinking with theirs. They need fresh material. Let them promote you.

INTERVIEWS Spend an hour on Google. Find interviews some industry leaders have given – on radio shows, or in print or blogs. Call the same interviewers and let them know they need to interview you. They are always seeking new ideas. Another reason to always publish/discuss your most provocative thinking.

FACEBOOK/LINKEDIN I use these two to 1. link to my blog posts; 2. check out backgrounds; 3. seek buddies when I’m going to travel; 4. join groups with folks who think like me or to whom I want to promote new ideas. I’ve gotten clients, readers, friends, and dates from LinkedIn. (I bet I could get in trouble on Facebook but I don’t have time in my day to be personal.)

People are looking for ideas on the net. Lend your ideas, your brain, your brand. People are hungry for new voices. And if you don’t like your writing style, either make it simple, joke about it in the article, or have someone ghost write it for you. But do it.

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Here are some of my recent articles that I’ve tweeted or written about:

Article for MarketingAutomationSoftware.com: Close the Gaps to Close More Sales

Podcast with StrategyDriven: The Problems of Change Management

Article on my Own Blog: When Do Buyers Buy?

Interview with Steve Gershik: B2B Marketers are Getting it All Wrong

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Listen to Sharon Drew use Buying Facilitation®: MP3

Read sample chapters of Dirty Little Secrets so you can understand the buying decision process.

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

9 easy ways to get your brand recognized is a post from: SharonDrewMorgen.com

As a sales professional, do you forecast which sales will close when your contact tells you they’ll be ready? Or when it seems to you they’ll be ready?

How accurate have you been with your predictions?

WHY DO WE THINK SALES WILL CLOSE?

Frequently, sellers believe a sale will close when they

• hear the prospect asking questions that relate to the use or implementation of the solution;
• have connected with the prospect over a period of time and are being told that the right people are finally interested and discussing time frames;
• have had a meeting and presented the solution information and were very well received – lots of questions, requests for call backs;
• are told that it’s going to happen ‘next month’ or ‘when the CEO is back from holiday and can get the paperwork started’;
• are assured that the decision is being made by the big-boys ‘soon’ and that ‘everyone likes your solution and is on board.’

In other words, they have no idea. It’s a guess. Sales people hoping to close hear things like:

- “he just got back from holiday and needs a week to catch up before he focuses on this” or

- “we just found out that we have new partners who need to be involved and must wait a month” or

- “one of the other department heads needs to be involved and he’s finishing up a project now so we need to wait about a month.”

Or something equally plausible.

Whatever it is, it’s out of the seller’s control, and often something they knew nothing about.

CAN WE KNOW WHEN A BUYER WILL BUY?

Unfortunately, using the sales model, it’s quite difficult to predict when a prospect will close. Because the sales model focuses on a solution placement, and the seller has little more knowledge than the specifics of the need and (possibly) a few of the relevant Buying Decision Team members (I’ve never met a sales person who knows the entire Team.), it’s impossible to understand – or influence – the full extent of the buying decision path.

Until or unless everyone who will touch the solution has added their 2 cents to the criteria for solution selection, and an entire change management plan has been developed, a buyer cannot buy. So we take what seem to be ‘buying signals’ and assume we’re going to close. I’m not sure why we do that: the odds have been bad, historically.

USE BUYING FACILITATION® TO FORECAST

Big question: what would you need to consider differently to be willing to add a different skill to your current selling skills? And how would you know that adding a change management model will increase your sales — before you started to learn it?

The Buying Facilitation® model enters early in the decision path and actually enables buyers to navigate through their decision path quickly, leading to the ability to forecast more accurately – not perfectly, given the nature of the change and people issues buyers must align prior to being able to make a purchase.

Buying Facilitation® focuses on the buy-in, the change management issues, the creation of the Buying Decision Team, and the steps the buyer must go through to align all of the systems issues that will touch the new solution and therefore must be managed carefully before they can buy anything. All that stuff we sit and wait for them to do.

As sellers, we are not privvy to this data. As buying facilitators, we are acting as a GPS system and navigating our buyers through their change issues, so we actually help them do all of the activities necessary to ready themselves. As a result, it’s easier to predict and the forecasting is much more precise: we will know who is doing what, when; we will know what activities need to be managed and who is managing them (or not); we will know how our solution will fit with their status quo and be introduced to the old vendor if need be.

There is a difference between selling and having someone buy, between understanding the need and helping manage change, between having the right solution and getting the buy-in from the appropriate people.

Add Buying Facilitation® to your sales skills, and get your forecasting right. Otherwise, you’ll just continue guessing and not knowing who is going to close.

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Listen to Sharon Drew use Buying Facilitation®: MP3

Read sample chapters of Dirty Little Secrets so you can understand the buying decision process.

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

Forecasting closed sales: how you will know when a buyer will close is a post from: SharonDrewMorgen.com