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

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

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

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

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

SELLING VS. BUYING

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

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

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

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

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

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

YOU CAN HELP BUYERS BUY: BUY NOT WITH YOUR SOLUTION

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

That means, they wasted 80% of their time (and either had to hire more people to make up the slack, or not have enough consultants to deliver and close real business).

How could they know, before spending time and effort, which of the proposals were in the winning 20%? Or even expand that percentage to, say, 40%?

The sales model does not help with this, as it assumes that if gather the right data and ‘understand’ the problem, you can give great data and service to whomever shows up as a prospect and win the business. But that is obviously false: the sales model fails 93% of the time in conventional selling, 99% of the time when using marketing automation, or 80% of the time when there are only a few vendors receiving the RFP – more than 80% when there are many vendors (proposals of lesser-known companies win about 10% of their proposals).

When my client – let’s call him Dave – told me he and a few others were working ’round the clock on a proposal after receiving an RFP from a large airplane manufacturer who had historically used the now-defunct Arthur Anderson, I asked him why the prospect wasn’t going to use AA again for this job? He had no answer, but he called them:

DAVE: Why aren’t you using AA for this job?
AIRPLANE COMPANY: We are. We just needed a second bid.

Obviously, this was not going to be KPMG’s business. So instead of writing a proposal, we carefully went over the RFP and discovered all of the assumptions within, that weren’t being addressed as part of the RFP, recognized the change management issues they would have with the implementation, and realized the buy-in issues many of the departments were going to experience as they faced massive change and disruption once the project was underway.

We put together a list of Facilitative Questions on a couple of pages, such as:

• How will you know when you have the adequate amount of, and appropriate, buy-in before you begin, to diminish any disruption as you move toward implementation?
• What would you need to do, prior to choosing a vendor, to know if one vendor over another can build an implementation to avoid disruption entirely?

Instead of sending off a proposal, we sent the FQs. Of course, AA won the business. But 6 weeks in to the project, they fired AA and called KPMG to come and do the work. Why?

When we saw your questions, we realized we had not considered the implications of bringing in this type of change. When AA was not addressing these issues, and moving ahead, we realized we would potentially have a disaster on our hands as many of our folks weren’t buying-in and we had not properly managed the change. We would like you to take over, and start with the change management issues before you move ahead with the work.

Sales folks assume that buyers merely need info about a solution on your RFP. But they are using your proposal to gather the data they need to manage the change. Instead of responding merely at the solution level, make sure your RFPs address the change implementation problems your solution will incur. Who knows: you might not even need that proposal – especially if you use Buying Facilitation™ on them before you get the RFP and they know how to choose you over the competition because you’ve used Facilitative Questions on them throughout your sales cycle.

Because if a buyer knows exactly how to choose one vendor over another, or one vendor has helped them (before choosing a solution) consider solutions for all of the internal change issues that must be addressed as the solution is implemented, they would not need an RFP.

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Listen to, and read about, change management solutions using decision facilitation on www.facilitatingbuyin.com.

Learn about how to help buyers think about the implications of what a change issues a solution will create. Read Dirty Little Secrets: why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell and what you can do about it.

Winning the RFP business: a case study is a post from: SharonDrewMorgen.com

What has finally become obvious (and I’d like to think that I had something to do with it being so obvious) is the yawning gap between the Implicit buying decisions buyers must make on their own, and the Explicit ones that sellers play such a large part in helping them make.

The Explicit decisions include everything to do with fixing the need (I call it an Identified Problem – certainly not ‘pain’ cuz they would have fixed it already if it were ‘pain’): making sure the issues are resolved and work far more efficient, possibly even Excellently; that the decision makers are happy and make sure the solution fits well and is affordable with minimum risk; that the sellers are available before, during, and after to manage the implementation, the fit, and making the buyers comfortable with their choices. Once the Explicit decisions are made, the solution is purchased.

But if that were all it took,  we’d be closing a helluva lot more sales than we’re closing. The problem is the Implicit decisions.

What happens when the guy in the next department doesn’t want to collaborate – and you share one tech team and budget? What happens when there is no precedent for bringing in an external vendor? How does it get managed when the Senior Manager wants a solution and has the budget for it, but the team doesn’t want anyone to come in. What about when the current vendor has been around for a decade, works in every department with great professionalism, and everyone wants this vendor to just design something new rather than bring in a new vendor? And what about the work-around that’s been managing the Problem Space until they choose a better solution – does Fred in Accounting get fired because the boss is bringing in a new accounting package?

Buyers have managed these decisions on their own while we wait. There is really no way that an outsider – even a smart one – can understand all of the unconscious, historic, hidden, mysterious, and highly personal decisions that need to get handled before buy-in can occur. Sales has had no model to help buyers manage these implicit decisions. One of the ‘dirty little secrets’ that I talk about in my upcoming book (The Dirty Little Secret: why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell and what to do about it) is that the buyers have no idea how they are going to handle these decision issues either, if for no other reason than they don’t know what they are going to find when the start picking up the rocks. In other words, sales enters the buying decision cycle far too early.

One of the problems is that because the buyers don’t know the exact route they need to take, and sellers can’t know these personal and idiosyncratic systems issues, no one really knows how to manage the Implicit decisions. I’ve coded the system behind how decisions get made in systems (cultures, environments) and can lead folks down their decision cycle generically so they can pick up the pieces they need to address along the way and bring in the right people. Very often, they can figure this out immediately with me, rather than taking one month or one year, and deciding to bring together their buying decision team for a phone meeting (or whatever) within a week of our first conversation. And we do this consistently, time after time, in every industry or size of sale.

Buyers have to go down this route anyway, and goodness knows we sit and wait for them while they figure it out. This fact alone is the cause of the huge delay in the sales cycle.

I’m  not competing with sales; I’m adding a new piece – a front end, if you will – to the typical sales model. It’s not about gathering data. It’s not about understanding the buyer’s needs. It’s not about ‘being there’ when they are ready (Buying Facilitation teaches them how to be ready). It’s  not about becoming a trusted advisor or a relationship manager.

It’s about being a decision facilitator and taking a leadership role to help buyers walk through the Implicit stages of their buying decision process BEFORE they are ready to answer questions about their Explicit needs.

Let’s start using a two pronged approach to sales: first help buyers walk through their unconscious Implicit decisions; then they can walk with us through their conscious Explicit decisions. Because by not doing this we’re losing a lot of sales, spending too long in the sales cycle, causing objections (yes, we cause our own objections) and NOT serving our buyers.

So, do me a favor: start thinking of sales as a two-phased process, and the sales models we’ve been using for decades handle the Explicit decisions. And Buying Facilitation(R) – which is NOT SALES but a decision facilitation model that handles buy-in – can handle the Implicit. After all, would you rather sell? or have someone buy? They are two different activities.

I’ve been teaching this stuff for over 20 years, and we have had quite extraordinary results (remember that it’s NOT SALES) with many global corporations in every industry.

For more, go to www.newsalesparadigm.com

Buying Decisions: The Implicit Vs. The Explicit is a post from: SharonDrewMorgen.com

But, while seemingly doing different jobs, they are really doing the same thing: finding and creating the environment for the right people to purchase the company solution. But as we know, there is great failure built in to both jobs: marketing has no idea who it is reaching, and sales only closes a small fraction of those who appear to need the solution.

The failures do not lie in the job descriptions, but in the sales and marketing skill sets: neither have the ability to go inside the buyer’s environment with the buyer during their meetings or discussions or planning sessions. Both sales and marketing are external – outside/in – and therefore have absolutely no idea what is truly going on behind-the-scenes, nor an ability to actually be there. They work with guesswork (good guesses, but guesses nonetheless) and hopes. Demographics provide good guesswork, recognition of need; relationship building and great solutions provide the hope. But at no point – no point – until the check has been sent (and cleared!), do sellers actually know which prospect will end up buying: All prospects seem like buyers….until they’re not.

CHANGE THE GOAL

Imagine if both groups could add another goal? Imagine if the over-riding belief was this:

until or unless buyers figure out how to recognize and manage all of the internal elements – relationships, politics, initiatives, vendors – that maintain their status quo and figure out how to change (buyers must go through some sort of  ’change management’ internally to mitigate the habitual activities that comprise the status quo) without disruption, they will buy nothing, do nothing different.

Both sales and marketing operate from the underlying belief of Build it and They Will Come: if we offer good data to the right people in the right way, find a ‘need’ we can target, and make our presentation or relationship trustworthy while differentiating ourselves from the competition, buyers should know to buy. But we all know that isn’t true or we’d make a lot more sales and buyers wouldn’t seem so ‘stupid.’ (See my latest book Dirty Little Secrets to understand exactly why, when, and how buyers buy.)

If sales and marketing professionals change their goal to actually helping buyers figure out HOW to buy, rather than WHY or WHAT to buy, they work together to create a plan that manages both ends of the sale.

For marketers: Maybe an ad that says

How will you know when it’s time to buy a luxury car? on a car ad. Or a set of facilitative questions on a site: What is stopping you from being as effective as you’d like? And what would you need to see from us to think we can help you?

When doing demographic testing, rather than pull data, find out what would cause a buyer to do something different (note that whatever they are doing  is successful-enough or they would have changed it already). How will you know when it’s time to change to an X system? What will you need to be facing to consider making a change? Of course, marketing and surveys are often one-sided but it’s possible to shift the questions to help people think about change rather than give you data on their status quo.

For sales folks: Use the beginning of your conversations to help buyers elicit their change criteria. I’ve written extensively on this, so go back to my historic blog posts and books.

WORKING TOGETHER

Once you’ve both figured out how and why to shift your job descriptions, sit down together and formulate an action plan. 1. what are the new goals? 2. what do buyers need to change internally before they will be willing/able to make a purchase? 3. how can sales and marketing act together to help buyers manage both ends of their buying decisions - first managing those pesky personal and political issues they must manage privately to get the buy-in to add something new, and then choosing the right solution.

Then you’ll be able to be more successful and sell more product. Not to mention that buyers will be happier knowning how to get what they need in the way they need it. You may have to change your site, your marketing materials (when I train Buying Facilitation™ my clients end up changing their marketing materials), or your pitch. But you’ll close more sales, faster. And you’ll work together.

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Have Sharon Drew help you design a survey that will gather buy-in data. Or coach your sales and marketing teams to work together on a project.

Sales and Marketing CAN support each other is a post from: SharonDrewMorgen.com

By any objective standard, I’ve been successful: It’s been a blessing that an out-of-the-box idea has had the opportunity to have a world forum – imagine: one woman with a revolutionary idea making a difference in an age-old field. But my active outreach to gain a broader market is now complete.

I not only have said all there is to say (my latest book Dirty Little Secrets presents the complete strategic thinking), but my Asperger’s makes it difficult for me to do what’s necessary to take the idea further. Indeed, the more I procrastinate leaving, the more harm I’m doing to Buying Facilitation® - fine, important material that is being underutilized, possibly because of my lack of appropriate communication skills.

THE LIMITS OF MY CAPABILITY: THE ROLE OF ASPERGER’S

I suspect I’ve done a bad job helping mainstream sales understand how Buying Facilitation® offers sellers tools to help buyers navigate through their behind-the-scenes decisions and why it’s a necessary part of the sales process. I’m guessing that it might have taken a non-Asperger’s person less time (with more success) to get the thinking into the field. Maybe someone less pushy, or less obnoxious, less direct, or less annoying - all traits of my Asperger’s that I’ve spent decades learning to contain (sometimes successfully, when I’m aware), but are impossible to  eliminate.

But maybe it took my focused personality, determination and vision to develop the full set of skills and design learning programs that have achieved the global success we’ve had. Maybe this time line has been appropriate and necessary. I’ll never know the answer to that, of course. It is, as they say, what it is.

Frankly, I have to work hard to not blame myself for Buying Facilitation® not being in the hands of every single sales person by now. My rationale is that it’s not unusual for a new concept to take this path. It took the telephone over 60 years to be adopted. That’s right. People preferred Morse Code over the telephone. For 60 years. I guess my 23 years wasn’t enough. :) But maybe the field of sales truly doesn’t want to add the capability of facilitating the buyer’s change management issues. Or maybe a combination of it all.

I’ll never know the answer. What I do know is that it’s time for me to move on. I’ll continue working with coaching clients, do occasional keynotes, and do Buying Facilitation® training for a few select companies if they are ready and the opportunity is fun. I’ll continue supporting my licensees to make sure the work stays alive. And although I won’t be writing much fresh material, I’ll keep my blog up, and regularly change out articles: with over 550, there is plenty of reading matter for those interested in learning.

But I will end my daily activities around placing Buying Facilitation®. If anyone else wants to carry the ball forward and make the material ready for mainstream, that would be great. It’s a model that can be trained for decades, with conventional sales models, and it’s now at its Breakpoint. Fingers crossed it crosses the chasm and eventually gets trained along with sales training in both companies and in universities. I understand it might not happen.

I am clear that I’ve done the best I could and feel quite proud that I’ve made a contribution to the field.

Hopefully, I’ll be remembered as the woman who first discussed ‘helping buyers buy’ or ‘the buying decision path’ or ‘the buying decision journey’ or the Buying Decision Team. Or the concept that a purchase is a change management problem. Or that by using Buying Facilitation®, sales becomes a servant-leader practice. Or that a buying decision is 90% based on what goes on behind-the-scenes and is not solution-related.

MOVING FORWARD

I’ve recently become excited about putting my model into Marketing Automation, and I’ve developed the EXpediter©, an intelligent contact sheet that actually leads buyers through their buying decisions using technology. I’m still getting pushback on this idea, but far less than from the sales field.

I’m also putting together the skeleton for my life-long dream: The Institute of Practical Decision Making in Abu Dhabi, so I can offer my collaborative decision making system to teachers, doctors, entrepreneurs, negotiators, coaches, parents, couples, or teachers. (My material was never meant to remain in sales.)  Maybe I’ll sit on a mountaintop in Peru and let my brain create something wild. Or catch up on my reading, and write a book on practical decision making.  Or just languish in Paris eating crepes and getting fat.

Whatever it is, I’ll hopefully still be making a difference in the field of practical, collaborative decision making, as that is my life’s work. But I must rediscover my creative spirit that has been lost over the past few years.

So if you’re looking to learn Buying Facilitation® read my books and articles. Or get the Guided Study program. Or one of my licensees can teach Facilitating  Buying Decisions. Or listen to me use the Facilitative Questions on an MP3.

Thank you for the opportunity you’ve offered me to make a difference and help make sales a spiritual practice. And what a fine opportunity it has been.

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For those of you wishing to learn Buying Facilitation®, the best course of action is to get the Guided Study program. It’s quite a serious program, for serious learners. It takes a bit of time do complete, but by the end you’ll be almost as good as me ;)

For those of you just wishing to dabble, and learn just a few new skills, get the Automated Learning modules, or the MP3s, or the flash drive with both the Ebook Buying Facilitation: the new way to sell that expands and influences decisions and the MP3s.

There is plenty of material to read, especially articles on how Buying Facilitation® differs from sales, and the skills necessary to learn it. It is not just an idea – it is an actual skill set that involves wholly different thinking and behaviors (and outcomes) from sales: Buying Facilitation® and Sales: The Dynamic Duo; A Buying Decision is a Change Management Problem;  Selling Doesn’t Cause Buying; The Buyer’s Buying Process vs. The Sales Model: Two Divergent Roads; The Heart of Sales; Buying Facilitation® is a Method, Not Just a Term

Good luck, folks. And for those of you who are serious students, I’m here for you.

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—————–

Sharon Drew,

What a beautiful, happy, sad, thoughtful email you sent Friday. You’ve carried the Buying Facilitation torch for so long, courageously and intensely.…  You’ve given and written and spoken far beyond generously….So many articles and books and tools… So many “almosts” and dead ends… You’ve been a model for others of us who are trying to bring ideas to market.  And you have moved the sales field forward.   I can’t imagine your sadness and disappointment. I admire your courage and resolve to let it go and move on with your health intact (I hope), focusing on clients that are fun, developing the Institute for Practical Decision Making, and restoring your creativity. We’ll strap ourselves in when we feel the earth rumbling again.

Nick Miller, President, Clarity Advantage

Sharon Drew’s ‘retirement’ & the Future of Buying Facilitation® is a post from: SharonDrewMorgen.com

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

THE PROBLEM WITH STARTING WITH A ‘NEEDS’ FOCUS

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

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

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

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

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

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

What’s the difference? Or this example:

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

What’s the difference?

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

BUYING IS A CHANGE MANAGEMENT PROBLEM

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

To understand and influence the buyer’s buying decision process and all of the people, politics and relationships that buyers must manage internally to be ready to make a purchase, it’s necessary for sellers to learn a new language. Not the language of sales, but the language of decision making, the language of systems, and the language of change management.

The sales model disregards the complex issues – both human and corporate - that buyers must handle behind-the-scenes. It’s the tech guy not wanting to outsource, or the management team not wanting training, or the sales and marketing folks who can’t work together. Human issues regarding change, or ego, or relationships. And sales does not facilitate this.

WHAT IS A BUYING DECISION?

The majority of a buying decision takes place before the consideration of a solution or vendor and includes

• collecting an entire Buying Decision Team that includes all of the people and job functions that will touch the potential solution;
• figuring out how to incorporate all of the appropriate systems/people issues so that when bringing in something new, the status quo will be able to maintain itself;
• reviewing current work-arounds and current/favored vendors to ensure there is no possibility that familiar resources can resolve the problem;
• getting the appropriate buy-in from the appropriate people to ensure there is support for change, no sabotage, and internal creativity/leadership;
• the solution/vendor choice;
• agreements and implementation strategies to ensure success.

Until or unless these things happen, a buyer cannot buy. Regardless of their ‘need.’ This is where buyers go when they disappear. You can help them manage this – but  not with the sales model.

THE BOTTOM FUNNEL – DECISION MAKING and SOLUTION CHOICE

The problem, in terms of lost revenue, lost prospects, overlong sales cycles,  and leads that come in at the top funnel but do not ‘come out’ the bottom, is that sales doesn’t offer the capability to enter the complete decision journey: you don’t enter early enough in their buying process. Not to mention, people do not know what to do with solution  information if they haven’t already opened a place for change and you are wasting their time and yours by presenting solution data too early.

At the ‘top of the funnel‘ you’ve collected names. You don’t know if they are leads, or prospects, or buyers. In some instances, they don’t know either. But when you approach them, not only do you have no idea if your solution is really what they need (you are merely assuming and hoping) and will fit in with their status quo, but they most likely have no idea either.

Sometimes you get lucky and the prospect has done all of the work already. But this is merely 5% of the leads you have – the ones who are easy, who are ready to buy. So you are pushing for appointments, doing presentations and pitches, to 95% of the lead population who needs something more from us: help with the off-line end of the buying process.

There is a way to enter the buyer’s buying process earlier, and help them manage their behind-the-scenes issues. But it’s not called ‘sales’ and it’s not solution/need driven.

Buying Facilitation™ is a very different skill, with a different focus, than sales. It’s a decision facilitation model that works alongside of sales and actually helps buyers navigate through the early part of their internal decision journey, much like a GPS system helps drivers navigate their route.

Your choice is to sit and wait for them to accomplish this, or hope that your pushing, or presentation, or product pitch or price reduction will result in a sale. And entering the buying process on the very first call makes the entire process much quicker and far, far easier.

Only 1-6% of sales are now closing. Obviously something is going on that you are not handling or you’d be closing far more.

Learn a new skill set to add to the sales model, and first help buyers manage their buy-in, change management journey. Differentiate yourself. Enter the buying process at the beginning. Buyers have to do this anyway – with you or without you. Rather than sit and wait for them to do it, be the GPS system for the buying process, and help buyers buy.

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To learn more about the Buying Facilitation Method®, here are some learning tools:

• Learning Accelerators
• Guided Study program
• MP3s of Sharon Drew using Buying Facilitation™

The buyer’s buying process vs. the sales model: two divergent roads is a post from: SharonDrewMorgen.com

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

SOLUTIONS VS. CHANGE MANAGEMENT

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

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

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

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

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

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

OUR BUYERS WILL BUY EVENTUALLY – BUT NOT FROM US

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Selling with Integrity is a post from: SharonDrewMorgen.com

But the model is fraught with guesswork and hope, manipulation, bias, and persuasion, white lies and exaggerations – not to mention highly ineffective when the time spent vs sales closed ratio is examined [sellers waste approximately 40 hours a month on sales that never close, with an average close rate of 7%].

Because of the global nature of our staffing patterns, with decision makers in different time zones, it’s taking 30% longer to close sales these days. As a result, the seller’s job of gathering data, understanding needs, pitching and presenting product data, gets mitigated by time and space. And the very nature of the web makes most pitches and presentations moot. In fact, many buyers know more than sellers.

AS IS, SALES IS UNNECESSARY

Indeed, the job of ‘sales’ is unnecessary – so long as it retains its original focus. But what if we could harness the ‘manpower’ and positioning of the person who is the only company representative to walk between the company and the client, and make sales a spiritual practice.

There is a way to have sellers be true spiritual guides and servant leaders, and not only sell more product, and sell more quickly, but also become part of the buyer’s team with commensurate integrity and values. But we’d have to change what we’re now doing.

What would be the difference between what we’re doing now and what sales would have to become in order to have sales be a spiritual practice? To begin with, we’d have to shift our beliefs about our jobs, our ability to collaborate, and our outcomes. Then we’d have to learn the new skills that would create a collaborative dialogue that would truly serve each end of the equation.

First things first. Let’s start by defining ‘spiritual’. To me it means:

• always having a win-win (there is no such thing as win-lose);
• understanding that the whole is greater than the parts;
• understanding that we are all here to serve each other;
• recognizing that there is no right answer;
• believing that no one has an answer for someone else.

Different from sales, which

• sometimes has a ‘win-lose’,
• believes that the parts might be greater than the whole,
• seeks to serve the buyer but ends up serving the seller,
• has the ‘right’ answer in their solution,
• might have the buyer’s ‘answer’.

Let’s change the focus of sales. Instead of making sales about placing a product/solution, let’s give sellers the role of a facilitator. Let’s make the sales job one of a Guide to leads buyers to their best decisions, based on their own criteria. Then the seller becomes a Servant Leader to the buyer, and the buyer gets to make better, quicker, more congruent decisions – and there will be more buyers, less tire-kickers, better differentiation, and no competition, and sales close in 1/8 the time. And it is a true Servant Leader role at the same time.

What would our jobs look like with this new set of beliefs? Let’s begin by making sure we all agree as to what ‘spiritual’ looks like.

Always have a win-win

Having a win-win means both sides get what they need in equal measure.

I realize that sellers tell themselves that by placing product, there is an automatic win-win. But the dialogue is much, much bigger than product placement or problem resolution. The dialogue must include resolving the entire system that created and maintains the status quo. And it is only when this system is repaired, and the buyer knows how to fix the obvious problem while repairing the bits that got it and keep it that way, does the buyer have a true win.

[How did the Identified Problem (IP) show up as it does? How is it kept in place daily? Why hasn’t it been resolved until now? What are the issues that would have to be managed in order to bring in a new/different solution and not create havoc? What sort of decisions would the decision team need to address to consider a new vendor and solution?]

Until now, sales has handled only the solution end of the equation, not the buying decision end. Yet a complete sales process is not so simple as placing a new solution to resolve what looks like a problem.

Buyers can’t make a decision until or unless buyers address the internal systems that not only created but maintain their status quo. All of the time sellers spend before this happens is misplaced, mistimed, and misguided, leading to the win-lose quality of sales: sales becomes a product/solution push into a closed and idiosyncratic system, rather than a collaborative experience between seller and buyer.

Imagine having a product-needs discussion about moving an iceberg and discussing only the iceberg’s tip. That’s what the conventional sales model does, ignoring the entire range of hidden, unique systems issues that created and maintain the policies, relationships, and rules that make up the status quo.

Having a win-win means that not only will the seller supply the product solution, but the buyer will successfully manage all of the necessary internal decisions and create minimal disruption as they adopt a solution.

Internal issues that buyers must address prior to being able to make a purchase: Must the current vendor relationship be shifted somehow? Does one department, or do people, have to relinquish a job function? What about changes in policy? Or people’s egos? What about historic rules that have kept the Identified Problem in place? Or how have departments and job descriptions evolved so that the status quo is relatively functional – and would need to unravel once a proper solution gets brought in? How do they replace the item or skill that they’ve been using until now and the people or policies or habits around that?

Having a win-win means that all of these issues get resolved first so the buyer is free to make a good policy decision. It’s not about product, problem, or need.

The whole is greater than the sum of its parts

There are several pieces to the puzzle here. There is

• the buyer and the system the buyer lives in, including people, policies, job titles, egos, relationships, politics, layers of management, rules, etc.
• the historic issue (the Identified Problem) that needs a solution and still resides relatively comfortably (or they would have changed it already) within the buyer’s system
• the seller and the seller’s product
• the seller’s relationship with the buyer
• the purchase and implementation and follow up.

The sum of all of these parts is the Whole. And each of the parts must work congruently together for there to be a win-win.

Generally in sales, sellers see the IP, recognize their solution can fix it, and go about creating a relationship that appears trustworthy (along with the product data), so the buyer will choose them for the fix. But because the sale is solution based, they are left out of the entire internal decisioning process that the buyer goes through and instead wait for the call to come in.

For the whole to be greater than the sum of its parts, the seller and buyer must work together at both ends of the decision cycle: the first decisions to manage, regulate, and resolve the systems issues that created the problem, keep it in place, and need to change in order to accept a fix, and then the final decisions on product features that meld the seller’s solution into the buyer’s solution design.

We are all here to serve each other

Right now, sellers believe they are meant to serve the buyer through their product placement. And what if that were expanded to serving them by being neutral navigators to their decision. Additionally, imagine the buyer serving the seller. What would all that look like?

By inviting the seller onto the buyer’s decision team, by offering the seller respect, by choosing the seller’s solution, the buyer is serving the seller. By helping the buyer line up their internal decisions and to recognize all of the issues that need to be resolved before any change can happen, and by supplying a fairly priced and supported product, the buyer and seller are serving each other.

And when this occurs, and both recognize the value of the other, price is never an issue. And the sale is made quickly, with no competitive issues.

There is no right answer

Sellers often believe that buyers are idiots for not making speedy decisions, or, worse, for not choosing their product. The solution seems obvious to sellers who have seen the same ‘problem’ so many times. But they have never gone beyond the tip of the iceberg as they don’t have the skills, the tools, or the motive.

It’s necessary for us to expand the definition of a buying decision to include management of the people, policies, relationships, and history – the systems issues – that keep the buyer’s status quo in place and are responsible for the Identified problem. Until now, sales has only concentrated on product placement and the surrounding issues that sellers feel they need to manage to sell. This includes managing gatekeepers, closing techniques, objection handling, for example. What they never realized is that once buyers can figure out the necessary underlying systems decisions, they have nothing to object to, will close themselves, and everyone involved knows what to do (therefore no gatekeeper problems or competition issues).

Working with the buying decision in addition to the product sale eschews having the ‘right answer’ and replaces it with having the ability to support the buying decision.

No one has anyone else’s answer

As per the previous discussion, by adding decision support to the seller’s tool kit, no one is working with answers: everyone is working together to uncover the right questions, and make collaborative decisions that will serve everyone.

THE NEW WAY

Buying Facilitation™ is a collaborative decision making model that sellers use to help buyers recognize, align, and manage all of the internal, and sometimes unconscious, systems issues that need to be addressed before any change is possible. Until now, buyers have fumbled around, doing it themselves: they get to their answers eventually, and the time this takes is the length of the sales cycle.

What Buying Facilitation™ does is codes and sequences the unconscious decision making issues that people filter through on their way to some sort of change or decision. Make no mistake: until they do this, they will take no action. Until you know when or how or if you are ready to move, you will not abruptly purchase a new house, or car, etc. on a whim. When there are others involved, an intricate dance happens in which buy-in occurs before action is taken. And whether someone is purchasing a lipstick or a hammer, a house or a horse, and whether a team is purchasing new software or training, there are unconscious criteria that need to be addressed before any change will take place.

What’s been missing from sales has been the concept of systems. Each buyer lives within a system of rules and roles, policies and relationships that both create and maintain the status quo. As seller’s our tools have helped us help buyers recognize the Identified Problem (IP) and how the seller’s solution could manage the IP. But the buyer has remained on their own, figuring out how to make their decisions. And sellers sit and wait for the call back, occasionally getting on the phone and leaving helpless messages.

Now we have a new model that sits on top of the product decision portion of the sale and leads buyers through their internal sequence of decisions. They need to do this anyway – with a seller or on their own. But now, using Buying Facilitation™, sellers can actually be a part of the process from the first call. And become servant leaders.

No longer do we need to just sell: we can actually serve the buyer buy aiding the unconscious decision process without bias and without manipulation.

Indeed, sales can be a spiritual practice.

For those of you wishing to learn more, please visit www.newsalesparadigm.com or purchase the Buying Facilitation™/Dirty Little Secrets Bundle.

Sales As A Spiritual Practice is a post from: SharonDrewMorgen.com

The sales model was designed for a different time in history, when there were fewer decision makers and products could be easily described in a magazine ad. With the advent of the web, global business practices, and the ability to communicate ideas across distances, there has been a sea change in not only what we can create and deliver, but also in the process buyers must go through prior to being able to make a purchase. The sales model itself hasn’t kept up in important ways.

Let’s take a hard look at what sales is, and how it must shift to keep up with our global economy.

WHAT IS SALES NOW?

1. The sales model merely manages the needs assessment and solution placement end of the buyer’s decision path.

PROBLEM: The majority of the buying decision path occurs off line (buyers must know how to manage the change, get the right people to buy in, address the implementation issues, etc.) so we are merely catching the low hanging fruit – there when they are ready to buy.

IMPLICATIONS: We aren’t entering the buyer’s decision journey early enough to become part of the Buying Decision Team (i.e. helping navigate through decision issues and collapsing the sales cycle); we sit and wait while they do their internal change management, with no direct skills to enter that area of the buyer’s decision journey.

SOLUTION: Start your conversation by helping facilitate change right from the beginning and save the needs assessment/solution discussion until the prospect sees a path through to change (all can be done on the first call); take the role of a buying facilitator and decision facilitator; help the prospect become a buyer (or not) immediately.

2. Sales treats a ‘need’ or ‘problem” as if it were an isolated event rather than recognizing that a ‘need’ sits within a system: a set of rules and relationships that maintain the status quo (including their ‘pain’) daily. Until this entire system agrees to, and is made ready for, something new, no solution can be purchased.

PROBLEM: We end up focusing on one small aspect within a sea of issues, and then pushing/waiting/pushing/waiting until they get to the point they’re ready to buy, or missing ways to support the necessary change management issues.

IMPLICATIONS: We end up presenting possibly the wrong data, too early, to the wrong people, and waste our time following around folks who don’t buy.

SOLUTION: Buying is a change management problem. We can facilitate this with an additional skill set to help them facilitate change – right from the first call.

3. Sales focuses on understanding needs and placing solutions, but until or unless all of the people who need to be on the Buying Decision Team are on board, and until all of the change management issues are managed, buyers can’t make a purchase.

PROBLEM: We are entering too early, offering data they don’t know what to do with yet.

IMPLICATIONS: The time it takes buyers to come up with their own answers is the length of the sales cycle. We end up following prospects who cannot close (and don’t know that until they don’t close) and don’t have a different skill set to open up prospects who didn’t know they need to buy, but are buyers. Plus we can shorten our sales cycles by at least half.

SOLUTION: With Buying Facilitation®  (a change management model that works alongside of sales) we can lead buyers through the decision steps, help them discern who must be on the Buying Decision Team, and become a member: we become neutral navigators rather than solution-placers.

4. We have assumed that if we can find a need, and our solution fits, that we have a sale. But if it were true, we’d be closing more, and sooner.

PROBLEM: Sales methods such as ‘objection handling’ ‘closing’ ‘getting past gatekeepers’, manage the fallout when buyers don’t buy according to the seller’s time frame. The problem is not a solution choice problem, but a buying decision/change management issue, and needs a different (i.e. non-sales) skill to manage that end of the path.

IMPLICATIONS: Because we don’t know who is a buyer until, well, until they buy, we waste over 90% of our time (and our company’s time) chasing prospects who don’t buy. And we can’t tell the difference until it’s too late.

SOLUTION: Using Buying Facilitation® you enter at the beginning of the path, and help buyers develop a pathway to handle the people, policies, relationship, and change issues necessary before they can buy. Once everyone is on board, and there is a path to a successful implementation, and everyone who will touch the solution is on board, THEN use sales – with no objections or delays.

Sales is vital. It manages the solution choice end of the buying path. It uncovers and supports needs. But it has no direct tools to do change management. We need to do more than sell. I believe the time has come to add a new skill to sales, and use Buying Facilitation® as part of your sales skills to truly help buyers buy. It is possible to eliminate objections, price issues, and closing issues, while greatly speeding up the sales cycle. Would you rather sell? or have someone buy?

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Read samples of “Buying Facilitation: the new way to sell that influences and expands decisions”(PDF) and “Dirty Little Secrets: why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell and what you can do about it.” (PDF)

Listen to Sharon Drew discuss Buying Facilitation®.

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Does the sales model do what we need it to do? is a post from: SharonDrewMorgen.com

But are they stalling? Are they really ignoring their needs, working with sub-optimal functionality, for a reason?

No. No. No. Yes. Not stalling, not ignoring their needs. Not working with sub-optimal functionality. Yes, there is a powerful reason.

Buyers can’t buy until all of the people, policies, market drivers, partners and historic choices that maintain their status quo have bought in to, and added their voices to, the changes that will result when they make a purchase. The time it takes them to manage this change is the length of the sales cycle. Your solution cannot be chosen until it’s all figured out.

Buyers aren’t ignoring their needs. And they are not in pain. In fact, they are operating relatively efficiently because they have developed some sort of a work-around that manages the problem well-enough. A new solution will create some sort of disruption, in and of itself, and therefore bring its own brand of sub-optimal functionality until the change is integrated.

Enough reasons?

WHY AREN’T YOU BUYING?

A question for you to ponder. From my vantage point, your selling skills offer you suboptimal results: it takes you far too long to close, you spend too much time running after non-viable prospects, and you’re only closing a fraction of the business you should be closing. It looks to me like you have a need that my solution can resolve.

I know that my solution will work in your situation, and make you far more effective. But you’d have to change – add to – what you are doing because the sales model has been your work-around . Therefore, you’d have to go through some sort of change management process internally before you’re ready to buy…. regardless of how well your need and my solution match: maintaining your status quo is a powerful deterrent to change, as you’ll note.

The sales model does not manage the behind-the-scenes change issues buyers must handle before they can buy. But using Buying Facilitation® as an additional skill you’ll have the ability to

• help buyers buy quicker as they manage their internal change issues,
• find the best prospects on the first call,
• get onto the Buying Decision Team on the first call,
• avoid time wasting,
• be able to forecast effectively – i.e. know who is closing and when,
• become an integral part of the buyer’s change management activities,
• increase your current closing rate significantly.

The question is: how would you know when it was time to add a new skill set? or know in advance that new skills could make you more effective? or know in advance if it would be worth the time and effort?

HOW DO YOU KNOW WHEN IT’S WORTH THE TROUBLE TO CHANGE?

Think of yourself as a potential buyer of sales tools that can enhance your success.

When do YOU decide that what you’re doing could be better? Are you stalling? Ignoring your needs to close more and make more money? Telling yourself that your status quo has worked ‘well enough’ for years and you’re making ‘enough’ money so why change? How do you decide when it’s time to change your status quo or add something new?

Note that your status quo – the way you sell, the way you’re paid, the way your company operates - is operating at some level of efficiency and comfort and hinders your desire to change. Note that it’s not about your need or my solution, that you would have to go through a series of decisions and get buy-in for you to change, separate from the initiating problem or potential solution.

What would you and your management need to know or believe differently to be ready, willing, and able, to add a new change management/decision facilitation capability to your current sales skills? To learn Buying Facilitation®?

Whatever thoughts you come up with, apply to your buyers. You’ll note that regardless of the need, the solution, the available data, or proof that a purchase is necessary, until or unless there is a path through to the change so that disruption is avoided, buyer’s won’t buy.

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Learn Buying Facilitation® with a Guided Study program, or a corporate or public training with Sharon Drew.

Start by reading these books or listening to Sharon Drew’s tapes (MP3).

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When do buyers buy? is a post from: SharonDrewMorgen.com

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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’.

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

What happened? Are they stupid? Did they lie to you? Are they making an emotional decision?

Not stupid. Didn’t lie. No emtional decision making. Maybe the need shifted, or the two new members of the Buying Decision Team added buying criteria, or they were able to get a partial solution from a current vendor.

But most likely, it just took them quite a while to recognize all of the folks who needed to be on the Buying Decision Team and once they were all on board, the criteria for choosing a solution shifted.

Whatever the truth is, we’ll never know how buyers choose one solution over another so long as we’re using the sales model alone. Without adding some Buying Facilitation® components, sellers have a tough time becoming part of the change management process that buyers must manage to not only implement the solution, but actually define their criteria for selection.

BUYING CRITERIA

Here are some criteria buyers will need to figure out as they move through their solution selection process:

• have all people who will touch the solution defined their criteria for what they achieve from a new solution?
• do they know how they will implement the solution and ensure the new and old will work together?
• how will they prioritize the timing and resource for bringing in a new solution?
• how will a new solution effect their job description, their relationships, their daily responsibilities and activies?

Generally, when we meet a prospect, they haven’t figured out all of the above because all of the right people aren’t on board yet to lend their voices to what a solution would need to be for their jobs. Until they do, they can’t buy – regardless of how well our solution matches the need they discuss with us.

The choice of the actual solution is the very last thing the buyer does: until or unless there is appropriate buy-in and everyone who touches the new solution knows how to implement, and all change management criteria have been met, and everyone on the Buying Decision Team has similar buying criteria, they won’t buy – regardless of how friendly you are, or how well your solution meshes with their need.

Think about making a purchase yourself. Well before you hand over your money, you’ve had to make internal decisions. Do you need X right now? Do you need to do Y first? How will your family be involved? How will your behaviors change – and how much change are you willing to take on? Do you wait until a new version comes out?  Do you need to have a handover or integration or learning curve between the old and new… and how will that get done? When do you have the time to research, change, discuss? Who do you want to get ideas/input from?

It’s not about the solution – until it is.

How do you plan on helping your prospects think through all of the issues they’ll need to manage prior to being able to use your solution? How will you enter the conversation once you realize that a prospect’s need and your solution are the last things you discuss?

Buying Facilitation® will help you enter the conversation to help buyers uncover their approach to being excellent. After all, if they have no road map to thinking it all through, it will end up being a long, messy process that will seriously bias the timing of the purchase. But you can help guide them through all of the ins and outs of making the necessary decisions and getting the right people on board.

Yes, it’s a different skill and focus than just using sales alone. But would you rather sell? or have someone buy?

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Listen to Sharon Drew use Buying Facilitation®: MP3

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Solution Selection: do we know how buyers choose one solution over another? is a post from: SharonDrewMorgen.com

I know that Dale Carnegie told you to meet face-to-face. But what else are you doing that was initiated in 1937? Oh. That’s right. The typical sales model of focusing on solution placement.

Buyers only buy when their entire Buying Decision Team is on board and when there is buy-in to bring in something new without causing major disruption. Trying to make an appointment before they know how to manage the elements that will touch the final solution will incur the following problems:

• It’s a double sale
  - first selling an appointment and then attempting to sell the solution to only those people who will see you (although many who don’t want to see you still need your solution). You will lose over 90% of your prospective buyers this way. [But if you begin by helping them first recognize their own excellence/change criteria, you can begin your sales job immediately - and without an appointment.]
• You will end up seeing only one or two people at your appointment and may need to make several visits. Trust me: the Buying Decision Team is much, much larger than the folks you will initially meet — although a prospect will probably not know the full complement of Decision Team members until they are almost ready to buy. [Until buyers know all of the idiosyncratic and political issues that might be involved with bringing in a new solution, they cannot know who needs to be involved in the final decision. You can help them, starting on the first call.]
• You are turning off people that can and might buy you. Buyers buy using their buying patterns, not your selling patterns.

2. Treating the ‘need’ as if it were an isolated event. A need never exists on its own. It sits within a system of people and policies and workarounds and relationships. Until everything around it has a plan to get resolved simulteneously, they will not fix ‘the problem’:  there is no such thing as one issue, sitting and waiting to be fixed. And the adjacent issues are not part of your solution or your sales initiative.

3. Offering solution data too soon. Until or unless the entire Buying Decision Team is ready and willing and able to purchase a new solution, the data you are offering them is too much, too soon. They do not need the data. For example: You don’t need data about the new gym until you have already decided to lose weight, get fit, get up at 3:00 a.m to get to the gym before work, etc. It’s not about the gym. When you start by gathering/sharing data, you are beginning at the wrong end of the buying journey.

4. Assuming the need should be resolved on the sales person’s time frame. Contrary to your belief, the buyer is not sitting and waiting – with bated breath – for you to show up as SuperSeller and fix their ‘problem.’ If they had such a strong need, they would have fixed it already. They are managing fine without you. Maybe not perfectly, but well-enough to maintain their status quo while getting the necessary buy-in for change.

5. Trying to find The Decision Maker. The Decision Maker? What does that MEAN? If the gatekeeper doesn’t let you through, she’s the decision maker. If the CSO suddenly and inappropriately gets involved and disrupts the forward trajectory – and it isn’t even in his/her area of responsibility – s/he is the decision maker.

Every. Single. Person. Who. Touches. The. Solution. Is. A. Decision. Maker.

Clear?

Two things need to happen before you can sell a solution: 1. the buyer has to figure out how to get appropriate internal buy-in and traverse the route (not merely understand it) from where they are to where they want to be; 2. the buyer must choose a solution and manage all of the fallout that bringing in your solution would involve.

No matter what their need – which they’ve lived with until now – or how well your solution fits, nothing will happen until the buyer’s decision journey is complete.

Would you rather sell? Or have someone buy? They are two different activities.

sd

Read my latest book for more on these topics: www.dirtylittlesecretsbook.com or buy some of my learning accelerators so you can learn how to add a new skill set www.buyingfacilitation.com

The 5 selling mistakes that lose business is a post from: SharonDrewMorgen.com

What, exactly, are the skills we need to help make a difference, to help people choose to do ‘the right thing’? I’m going to offer some new thinking that’s in line with my biases.

WHAT SKILLS ARE THE DIFFERENCE THAT MAKE THE DIFFERENCE?

At the very least, we need to be able to influence/lead with integrity. What does this mean? It means we don’t push change, or buying, or ideas just because we believe they have merit, without enlisting buy-in from our audience. I’m suggesting that along with our beliefs about doing the right thing, we must consider changing some of our long-held beliefs about how to influence others.

Unfortunately, we have a belief that if we offer the right data, in the right way, to the right demographic, that people will buy, or acquiesce, or agree. Yup: I”ve got the important data that you need - now let me tell you about it and explain to you why you need it.

But that premise is false as we’ve seen time and time again: in our daily lives, in how we run our businesses and how we sell and market. Yet we  continue to use the same approaches and expect different results.

Why doesn’t this model work? Because people don’t make decisions based on data: we listen through biased filters, and all decisions are made according to our internal values/criteria/beliefs (There is no such thing as an emotional decision, even if it looks that way to an outsider.). We do not choose to do something that goes against our values, so all behavior is a rendition of our beliefs in action. It’s a problem because often, our choice criteria are unconscious.

When we create data-driven vehicles for marketing or change management, we have no idea if the mode, the message, the presentation, the actual verbiage, go against someone’s internal criteria. As a result, we have no idea how our message will be received. That means, we’re either lucky or we’re unlucky. Bad odds. And it also means that with the best will in the world, with the best message, we are dependent on luck for our results.

THERE IS A WAY TO INFLUENCE WITH INTEGRITY

But there is a way to have folks open to change and use their values. Instead of offering data, let’s help them decide to make a difference, choose to treat their colleagues with care and respect, lead with a collaborative spirity and trust, donate because it’s the right thing to do, turn off the water because the world needs each of us to be sustainable.

If people don’t already have those values, or have these values stored in some unconscious way, how do we help instill them? Because that is what we need to do. And not by giving them good data.

Let’s help them recognize all of the internal decision issues they need to address in order to come up with sustainable, values-based behaviors they can buy-in to and take action on. Let’s use Facilitative Questions (a new form of question I’ve developed to help people uncover their unconscious criteria so they can examine it or change it) to help folks make new decisions, or re-weight old beliefs. Questions like:

How are you playing your part to help the earth – our habitats and animals – thrive? What would stop you from being an active participant in a sustainable universe?

How would you know that collaborating with employees in a way to allow them each to be a leader will give you and your company a richer environment in which to grow? What would you need to trust to recognize that by facilitating leadership and creativity among all levels of staff your business can make more money?

What would you need to know or believe differently to be willing to contribute more to organizations that are helping the environment or problems experienced in disaster areas? How would you know that you could trust that your money would be used in a way that would make a difference? That a contribution would make a difference to you, personally?

What would need to be different for you to be able to meld your company’s work-life balance recommendations with your need for revenue – and how would you know that employees who have a balance will offer you (and your clients) a greater level of commitment and creativity?

Those are just a few of my Facilitative Questions to help you think about raising awareness. My material (Buying Facilitation™ ) has been used in the sales environment until now. But the premises and skill sets are meant to be universally applied: until or unless people choose to reconsider all of the elements within their status quo, and can find a way forward that doesn’t disrupt their status quo irreparably, they will do nothing.

Rather than push data and attempt to manipulate the situation through good content or placement, help buyers manage the idiosyncratic decision issues they must address internally. It’s a good way to help people get to the very core, the very heart of the matter and create real change.

sd

The Heart of Business is a post from: SharonDrewMorgen.com