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?

sd

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?

sd

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

But sellers only close 7%  of their prospects (and far, far less if using marketing automation).

If you understand how buyers buy, why do you have less than a 40% close rate?

Indeed, it’s not enough to understand: so long as you are using the conventional sales model (and bas your interactions on placing a solution) you have no idea how your buyers travel through their buy path or who is involved. And you certainly have no way of influencing it.

MAKE YOURSELF THE BUYER

Let’s say you’re not closing all of the sales you deserve to close. You follow many prospects and are surprised at which ones finally buy and which ones disappear. You constantly shift the dates on your pipeline because the buyers didn’t close when they said they would. Things ‘happen’: the buyer’s company is going through X, or Y decision maker is now involved, or the old vendor has shown up…. always ‘something’  kinda dumb, when their need obviously fits your solution.

You’re suffering the same issues all sellers face: waiting, waiting, waiting for the purchase. From where you sit, it should happen any day. From where you sit, you know what’s going on: you know the players, you know the old vendor and old technology, you are best friends with the buyer, you’ve agreed on price, and everyone is bought in.

Or is that all true.

From where I sit here’s what I see:

• you don’t know on the first call who is going to buy and who will never buy;
• on the first call you haven’t taught your buyer how to put together the full Buying Decision Team or help him/her discover everyone who will touch the solution and helping them buy-in to change;
• you’re not closing all of the sales you deserve to close;
• you actually have no way of knowing if the right folks are on board at any point in the buying decision cycle;
• your sales cycle is at least 50% longer than it needs to be;
• you are not closing half of the sales you should be closing, or finding the right prospects, or spending too much time chasing prospects who will never close;
• you are entering the buying decision too early and attempting to place a solution before they have the proper buy-in to make a purchase, or even know the full data set of purchasing criteria.

From where I sit, you have a need for my solution. You have a need to add Buying Facilitation® to what you’re already doing, so you can manage the upfront change management piece buyers must go through prior to making a purchase, close at least 40% more sales, and close in 1/2 the time. You’re a prospect. You have all of the problems that my buyers exhibit and need my solution.

So your need and my solution fit. Does that make you a buyer?

You have budget constraints. You don’t know how Buying Facilitation® would fit as an addition to your current sales skills. You don’t have the time/money/management support to make a change. Your sales manager is concentrating on, oh.. say Closing Skills or Negotiating Techniques, and doesn’t have the bandwidth to allow you to sell differently from the others. But I don’t  understand how you buy.

THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN SELLING AND HELPING SOMEONE BUY

I am an outsider. The difference between what I, or anyone, can know as an outsider, and what the insiders must do/know to manage their internal politics, or get all the right people onto the Buying Decision Team, is the difference between your need, your change issues, and my solution.

The difference between what you need and how/when/if you buy is the distance between how you consider/seek Excellence, and how you envisage your status quo, and what you need to manage to be ready to make a change.

Do you have a manager that has created a selling environment based on his own sales skills and wants his team to replicate his success of long ago? Does the CEO not want to spend money – regardless of the training funds sitting in your budget (making the CEO the gatekeeper)? Does HQ want all training to come from them? Is there a training roll out happening now and there is no way you can learn anything new until the roll out is complete?

I might understand your need, and I might even know everyone on your Buying Decision Team (but I probably don’t): but your buying decision issues must match the internal, idiosyncratic, unique, and personal issues that make up your status quo, and I can never, ever understand the politics, or relationships.

Stop trying to undertand. Instead, learn Buying Facilitation®. Add it to the front end of your selling skills. Learn to lead your buyers through their entire series of change management issues so they can avoid all of the delays you’re watching them go through. Then you can find more, close more, close faster, and stop wasting time. And you’ll know who will close, and when.

sd

Learn Buying Facilitation® as a Self Study program.

Read Dirty Little Secrets: why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell and what you can do about it to really understand how buyers buy.

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

Do you really understand how your buyers buy? is a post from: SharonDrewMorgen.com

Would you bring in a leadership training without getting the buy-in from the people who would be trained? Or know their criteria without their voices?

Would you choose a web designer without getting the buy-in from the current design team and the techies? Would you know what they would want included until they offered their opinions or knew what parts they wanted to do themselves?

Why not?

I recently had a coaching call with a SVP at a well-known CRM Management company. The man had a Harvard MBA, had been a partner at Accenture, and now was running the Texas sales operation for this CRM company. This is not a stupid man, obviously, but a man steeped in the ‘sales’ thinking modality.

During his session he wanted to put together a set of Facilitative Questions that would help his prospect (a hardware company with a sales force of 1500) buy his solution during his ‘big meeting’ that he finally got. Who was going to be in the meeting? I asked.

SS: There will be 10 people there: the head of sales and her team, and the head of marketing and her team.

SDM: So you’ve got 2 people.

SS: No! Ten! And it took me 2 months and 3 meetings with the head of sales to have her set up this meeting.

SDM: But there are only 2 members of the Buying Decision Team who will be present. Who else would need to be on the Buying Decision Team?

SS: Well, the head of technology, obviously, but he’s on board. He loves our solution. Besides, he’s only an influencer.

SDM:  So if he doesn’t want a CRM system, the company will ignore him?

SS: No. They wouldn’t buy. I guess that makes him a decision maker.

SDM:  And  there won’t be a problem with him working together with the heads of sales and marketing? They have no relationship issues?

SS: Oh. I guess I wouldn’t want to be there while they decided on stuff together. Hm. Who else do they have to get on their Buying Decision Team?

SDM: Not only do you not know, but they don’t know yet either. Let’s start with users. There must be user groups with 15oo sales people.

SS: There are 6 user groups. I guess we’d need their buy in.

SDM: I’m curious about the tech group. Your solution has a complicated implementation process and takes quite a bit of collaboration with the in-house folks. Does the tech team know they will need to free up folks for the implementation? Or are they going to outsource all of this? Or some combination?

SS: I have no way of knowing that.

SDM: That’s correct. And neither do they. And until they figure that out, they cannot buy your solution. In fact, until they have the entire Buying Decision Team on board, they can’t buy. There are too many people who need to have a voice, too many unknown decisions to make, too many buying and implementation criteria to take into account. And you can’t understand any of this – or be directly involved in doing it for the prospect. But you can lead them through their decisions so they have a path to follow. Otherwise you can wait until they figure it out themselves.

SS: So this meeting tomorrow is too early, with too few of the Buying Decision Team members, and giving them a big presentation right now is wasting my time and theirs because we don’t have all of the right people and they don’t have all of their buying criteria. This is why my sales take years to close. What do I do tomorrow? I bet you’re going to tell me not to make a presentation.

SDM: Let’s put together a list of Facilitative Questions that will help them figure out how to manage all of the issues we just discussed. And, at the end, if they still want a bit of your presentation, it’s fine. So long as you understand that their needs might change once all of the Buying Decision Team members have a say in the outcome. Obviously the tech folks will have different purchasing criteria than the sales folks, and the users won’t want anything new. And now, no one knows any of this.

Until or unless all of the members of the Buying Decision Team are on board, the buyer can not know their full set of buying criteria – or even the full definition of their need. When sellers go in and first attempt to ‘understand need’ or even ‘know who is on the Buying Decision Team [useless data as an outsider is not an influencer on the Team]‘ or offer solution data, they are wasting a lot of time and delaying the buying decision.

Facilitate buy-in, manage change, and help gather the correct Buying Decision Team members first. Then help them all figure out their buying, buy-in, and change criteria. And THEN you can focus on the need and your solution. And close a lot more sales a whole lot faster.

sd

Read sample chapters of Buying Facilitation®: the new way to sell that influences and expands decisions. This book is a very clear discussion of what Buying Facilitation® is and does. It’s tactical; my book Dirty Little Secrets: why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell and what you can do about it is strategic. You can get them both in a bundle with an additional illustrated booklet in a bundle at www.buyingfacilitation.com

Help Buyers Choose the Buying Decision Team: a case study is a post from: SharonDrewMorgen.com

The sales process discovers need, gathers data to determine a solution fit, and places the solution. Buyers need that data and the sales function is vital. But first they absolutely must make sure that a new solution fits comfortably, and causes no major disruption on a human or a strategic level.

BEHIND-THE-SCENES, BACK-END, OFF-LINE

The modern sales model came into full flower (although it’s been around since the Serpent convinced Eve to eat the apple) in 1937 with Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People.  At that time, gathering needs and discussing solution was simple: there were very few competitive solutions, and very little capability for buyers to get the information they needed.

Times have changed, but the sales model hasn’t changed its goals and thrust toward solution placement, even as astonishing technology is available to help.

The buyer’s entire behind-the-scenes pre-purchase buy-in process remains unaddressed and these back-end issues are far more confounding now than they were in 1937. And nothing about the sales model – even when marketing automation and sales enablement is applied – addresses these off-line issues.

Unfortunately, sales treats a ‘need’ as if it were an isolated event, and separate from the day-to-day activities and rules inherent in the buyer’s environment. But until everyone (EVERYONE) is on board with the level and specifics of the change that would be required if they were to make a purchase, buyers can’t buy (see my latest book Dirty Little Secrets: why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell and what you can do about it): the disruption to their system would be well beyond the positives of solving one of their problems.

It’s estimated that 80% of buyers will purchase a solution (yours or your competitor’s) at some point within 2 years of their first contact with a sales professional. That leaves behind a trail of dead sales people – most of whom probably had a great solution, but were either too early in the buyer’s decision cycle, or their Buying Decision Team just didn’t know how to adopt the change a new solution would bring.

QUESTIONS TO PONDER

Why is the personal, political, human side of the buying journey ignored during a seller’s outreach? Why is it assumed that the seller ‘knows’ what the buyer needs, or ‘knows’ what’s going on behind the scenes, and assumes that that ‘knowing’ is sufficient to sell a solution?

Why do sellers prefer to wait for buyers to ‘show up’ after they’ve traversed their perilous back-end, political journey rather than adding a new skill set to help them manage the change and buy-in issues (and close sales in 1/8 the time)?

Why is the focus on making an appointment, assuming that once the buyer sees your bright, shiny (and professional, naturally) face the buyer will just ignore the policy problems, and internal politics, they need to manage before they buy? Sales people lose over 90% of their prospects by focusing on an appointment, when it’s so simple to help buyers recognize their buying steps on the first call. And when they invite you to meet, they will have the entire Buying Decision Team.

What needs to happen for sellers to recognize that a buying journey is far, far more complex than fixing a need? Or that the need is sitting and waiting for the seller to show up? Or that the need is just sitting on a shelf, by itself, and can be plucked out and fixed and then put back where it was with no ramifications to the rest of the buyer’s system?

Why is it so difficult for sellers to want to add a capability to support the 90%+ of what buyers are doing off-line, without them, and prefer instead to contain their skills to solution focus and lose a very high percentage of prospective sales?

What would you need to know or believe differently in order to add a decision facilitation skill – Buying Facilitation Method® – to your current sales skills to help buyers achieve this buy in?

Buyers need to resolve a (business) problem – they don’t necessarily need your solution. But until or unless they manage their own off-line, back-end change management issues, they cannot buy.

Your job should be to help them manage the buying journey – and THEN you can sell.

sd

There are many ways to learn Buying Facilitation®:

• 3-Day Public Training in Austin in early June (contact Sharon Drew to discuss)
• Buying Facilitation® corporate training
• Guided Study program for individuals or teams
• Learning Accelerators

Sharon Drew is a featured speaker at the Search Insider Summit – May 4 – 7 , 2011

Buyers don’t sit and wait for sellers is a post from: SharonDrewMorgen.com

And you still expect different results?

Do you realize you’d rather suffer with the long sales cycle rather than actually enter the buyer’s journey much earlier and help them navigate through their decision issues and buy effortlessly? And when I suggest there is a way to do that, you don’t want to change?

Do you realize you’d rather think your customer is stupid than understand that their behind-the-scenes decision issues – their budget-sharing, their turf and ego issues, their vendor issues, or manager issues, or mergers, or or or – are keeping them from being able to buy? And that their buying decision and need is separate from your sales activities or outreach? Even separate from their need or your solution?

Do you realize that you spend time trying to ‘get to’ or ‘understand’ or ‘have a relationship with‘ the folks you consider to be ‘The Decision Makers’ rather than realize that the entire Buying Decision Team not only has to be on board (and you’ll never, ever, get to meet or influence the entire team) but whoever touches the solution must add their two cents to the solution choice — and you can never find them, know them, understand them all – before they can buy?

That it’s not about their pain, or need your solution your relationship/kindness/trustworthiness and it is about

• their change management issues
• the buy-in from those who touch the solution
• their need design a path to reduced disruption when adding a new solution
• their policies, politics, and people.

We are using a scissors to cut a lawn, and complaining that it’s not acting like a lawn mower. And complaining loudly. For a long time. And getting paid for the extra time/output for using the scissors.

WHY SHOULD WE CARE ABOUT THE BUYER’S JOURNEY?

My friend Andy Rudin once cheekily said to me something like, Why should I care about the buyer’s journey? And he’s right! Sellers are getting paid to use a scissors. But they’re complaining about their results, and still not willing to buy/use the lawn mower right in front of them. What would you need to believe differently to be willing to consider that seller/buyer problems are change-management problems, not solution choice issues? That the last thing the buyer needs is your solution? That until there is buy-in from all folks who touch the solution they cannot/will not buy? And the sales model merely manages needs assessment and solution placement – not the necessary change management/buy-in issues buyers must first contend with.

Go beyond what is expected of you.
Earn more money.
Close much, much sooner.
Help buyers manage change as part of your solution.
Influence the Buying Decision Team from the first call.

You cannot do this with sales. Are you ready to actually do something about the delays and lost customers? Why haven’t you done so before now? You read my posts, buy my books, and yet aren’t changing your sales model. What would need to happen for you to be willing to add a decision facilitation capability to the front end of your sales model?

If you are ready to learn,  let us help:

Read sample chapters of my two last books – Dirty Little Secrets and Buying Facilitation®: the new way to sell. Then buy them both
Listen to podcasts of a recent interview with Sharon Drew on how buyers buy.
Let our licensees run a Facilitating Buying Decisions workshop for you.
Let Sharon Drew train your company.

But stop complaining, and begin actually helping buyers buy.

sd

Come to my loft in Austin and learn Buying Facilitation® with me or send a trainer to learn to train your folks. Buying Facilitation® licensing program that includes Facilitating Buying Decisions: July 2-8, Austin TX.

Webinar with Method Frameworks June 15th:
Buy-in: A Radical Approach To Change Management

Consider purchasing the bundle: Dirty Little Secrets plus my last book Buying Facilitation®: the new way to sell that influences and expands decisions. These books were written to be read together, as they offer the full complement of concepts to help you learn and understand Buying Facilitation® – the new skill set that gives you the ability to lead buyers through their buying decisions. In addition, you will also receive a bonus illustrated booklet.

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

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

Selling doesn’t cause buying 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?

sd

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.

sd

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

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.

sd

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.

sd

—————–

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

I recently began watching The Big Bang Theory – a TV show about a group of Asperger’s people. They are charming and delightful, and act as I would like to. Everyone seems to accept them. In my world, this isn’t the case. I can’t make up a lengthy list of rules and get the world to buy-in to them.

In the world of business, where I have been living for 30 years, there are different sorts of rules than ones I easily comply with: Multinationals with silos, so purchase orders have to go to 6 countries (really) before I can get paid months later; People who promise to call on Tuesday but never do; Colleagues that stop speaking to me for nothing I can discern – but obviously something I”ve done or not done as great ‘friends’ disappear; Prospects that think I talk too much (I’m sure I do). Each hour of each day is fraught with land mines I must maneuver – all well outside of my comfort zone or capability. Visiionaries, though, have been kind. As the mainstream comes in to adopt my concepts, the path is more difficult for me.

Wherever I turn I am hit between the eyes of being a round peg in a square hole. I can see the world from where I stand, but it operates with rules that make no sense to me – and the ones I”ve adapted are useful merely a portion of the time, when I remember to use them. Otherwise, it’s all confusing, annoying, undecipherable, or inane. It’s soo much safer when I’m alone.

WHAT TO DO WITH CREATIVITY

My biggest problem is my highly creative mind. Since I was a girl, I”ve studied systems and decision making, and have spent my life developing ideas and models far ahead of conventional science. I have patents, trademarks, and copyrights. I develop technology around decision making and decision making games, and marketing automation concepts and new sales paradigms. I have made most of them into money-making entities through grit and good friends (plus the ideas are pretty good).

But the work would be so much more successful and reach a much wider audience if I didn’t turn off so many people with my annoyance, or my demanding/pushy nature. If I could do nothing but think, invent, create, I wouldn’t have to deal with folks who demand normalacy.

I’m not even aware that I’m being pushy or annoying. It’s just that often, the system I’m being presented with makes no sense to me, and doesn’t follow any rules of logic I understand. In The Big Bang Theory, Sheldon once said that he had to leave his friends in his apartment because they were “Having fun wrong.”

Note that many of the original thinkers (and most are probably Asperger’s sufferers) have been known to be rude, pushy, obnoxious – Glenn Gould, Bobby Fisher, Einstein, Steve Jobs – as well as brilliant. They have either gotten others to do the work of managing the external systems, or they go off into solitude and live a monastic life. And, most of them are men, whose wives or assistants pick up the social pieces, and accept and love them because they are brilliant.

It’s so much easier to live alone. No one to hurt, or annoy. No rules to break. No faces that fall as they relate with me at a party. I get a knot in my stomach each time I think about going out to anywhere other than the movies, or the bookstore, or to meditation.

THE DEMONS I LIVE WITH THAT ARE THE NORM TO OTHERS

Of course, I have friends who love me just as I am. But I don’t live with them, and when I’m not in their company I’m fighting demons – the world of business, for me, is fraught with pain on a daily basis. I’ve devoted over 20 years to changing a paradigm in a field that didn’t want me, or didn’t want to change, or didn’t accept me with my uniqueness. Thankfully, the material was good enough to work beyond me, enough for me to have made a difference.

Of course, if I were more normal, it would have been far easier for them to accept/welcome the change. But that said, if I were more normal I wouldn’t have had the brains to have invented the concepts. And because I”ve known that my models are so important, I’ve spent years taking programs to learn to relate better – group therapy, coaching, therapy, holotropic breathwork, nlp… whatever it took to keep me going and make me capable of being ‘good enough’ to put some pretty good stuff into the business world. Folks with my level of dysfunction don’t often get as far as I’ve gotten; and I’m aware at how far there is still to go that I’m incapable of achieving.

So I’m going to quit working, and seek ways to be happy – in an accepting community, hopefully. I’m now going to take some time to figure out what is next: maybe sit on a mountain top in Peru, or move to another country.  So long as there is a spiritual element, a place to create, and joy on a daily basis, I’ll put it on the list.

For now, I’m completing my Buying Facilitation® work in the sales industry, and stopping my blog. I’ll continue working with my new IP around decision making contact sheets (because it’s fun), and be here for coaching clients. But whatever makes me unhappy will be, forever, off the list. I’ve done my work in the business community, and hopefully I”ve made a difference. Now it’s time to make a difference in my own life.

I’ll end with a quote written by John Parker that appeared in the Sunday New York Times Book Review regarding John Lennon: “Cruel at times, chaotic, dissociated: on his bad days little more, so it seems, than a gigantic human flaw through which the shifting light of genius displayed itself.”

It’s so good to know that I’m not alone.

sd

Wanting to learn more about Buying Facilitation®? 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.

Work, Asperger’s, Fun, and The Future 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.

sd

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

I’m here to tell you that cold calling can be one of the most effective ways to meet new prospects and close sales. And it’s a whole lotta fun.

I know, I know. Most sellers eschew cold calling, preferring instead to network, get referrals, golf, meet face-to-face or make friends through facebook and twitter.

Did you ever ask yourself why you don’t like cold calling?

Think historically: Dale Carnegie, in How to win friends and influence people published in 1937, told us to meet prospects in person (and his choices then were….. were what?). You can think about trying to ‘get through’ the gatekeeper. You can think about trying to gather information or pitch product with no ability to understand or share personal expressions on a phone.

So let’s say you do your networking, getting referrals, golfing, face-to-face meets and tweeting. What does it give you? Well, it gives you a connection, but it doesn’t necessarily help you close more deals: buyers still need to do their part to manage their behind-the-scenes systems (change management) issues and get buy-in at all levels, or nothing will happen whether they need you or like you.

The bigger problem than meeting someone who might buy is how to help buyers manage those off-line issues, because until they do, your sterling personalities are immaterial: If you start your conversations by shifting from making a sale to helping manage the internal buy-in issues, you can use the phone effectively AND make a sale in at least half the time.

WHY ARE WE CONNECTING?

Let’s begin with the question: Why are we attempting to make contact?

If you begin by trying to understand need, push product, or influence with your personal charm, then I agree; cold calling sucks.

But when you begin as a true consultant to help buyers manage the change of a buying journey, cold calling is wonderful. Buying Facilitation® is a change management/decision facilitation model I”ve been teaching globally for decades that employs a totally different skill set than sales, and helps buyers understand and manage the off-line portion of the buying decision. And then your sales skills are necessary. First manage change, then place the solution. Different way to think, right?

Given the space we’ve got on a blog post, I’ll give you a simple example.

I read about California Closets in the late 1990s and wanted to have them deliver Buying Facilitation® throughout their franchises. I did some research, and found what I later discovered to be a ‘bad’ number – but at the moment I called, it turned out to be a lucky error. A man answered:

SDM: Hi. My name is Sharon Drew Morgen, and I’m an author and developer of a new selling model. This is a sales call. Is this a good time to speak?

EL: No. It’s terrible. But I’ll give you 5 minutes.

SDM: I can call back. It’s only a sales call and I don’t want to disturb you. We didn’t have an appointment.

EL: Let’s start now and we can finish later. I already like your style. How can I help you?

SDM: Thanks. And at any point you want to end, we can stop and pick it up at another time. I was wondering how you are currently adding new sales skills to the ones you’re currently training your sales people and designers.

EL: Are you using the model you’re teaching? Because if you are, I’m buying. I’ve been looking for a new model for 2 years, and from what I’m hearing, I’m happy. How ‘bout if I get the heads of Sales and Training on a call next week, and think about doing training, or training our trainers at the end of January. Call me in a week at this number: XXXXX. Nice job.

And he hung up. We’ve been working together since then. And this was a cold call. Of course, I did get a bit lucky. But if I had used conventional sales techniques, or twitter or facebook, these folks would not have been my clients – even if I had managed to get in front of them.

DON’T USE YOUR BODY AS A PROSPECTING TOOL

When I understand that my job is to be in a ‘We Space’ (the conversation was all about him) and truly serve by helping  prospects discover how to move toward excellence, it doesn’t matter if I’m in person or on the phone, because there is no manipulation or personal persuasion tactics. Also, the focus of the entire call at this early stage is about the internal issues they need to manage (that a seller can never be a part of) within their system. It’s not about their need, or our solution. Sales does that way too early.

In the Buying Facilitation® model, every interaction, every comment, is based on helping buyers traverse their off-line buy-in issues. I understand that my solution can only be purchased AFTER buyers have managed the needed buy-in. And the telephone is a very handy tool. Of course, once the buyer manages their off-line decision issues internally, and their decision team discovers it’s ready to change and add a new solution, it will need to know more about our solution. THEN we can go visit them, and the entire Buying Decision Team will be there, with us on it. Try it. You might like it :)

So focusing on each cold call as if it were a puzzle, and you are the puzzle master who is not in front of the puzzle, but whispering in the ear of the person doing the puzzle, you can have fun. You won’t have to try to get an appointment, you’ll save travel time and funds, you’ll find a whole lot more prospects, and when you do go to the client site, it will be to sign the contract.

sd

Learn Buying Facilitation® on your own with our Guided Study program, or with a training program from us.

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

Cold Calling Works – and it’s fun! 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.

sd

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

Buyers live in a ‘system’ that maintains their Identified Problem (or ‘pain’)  over time, creating work-arounds that become part of the system and, well, comfortable. Indeed, if the buyer really needed to make a change, they would have done so already. It’s only when a group of dedicated, internal  change agents are willing to push the river, that a purchase is even considered.

Before buyers can buy, there must be buy-in to the proposed change, a plan that minimizes disruption, and a way to foster agreement between the people, policies and relationships that touch a new solution. A buying decision is far more complex than just fixing a problem.

I’ve developed Buying Facilitation® – a decision navigation model that is an add-on to sales and helps buyers bring together the right people and issues - to enable agreement and ensure change procedures are  in place to make a purchase. Here are a few Buying Facilitation® skills to use with sales:

9 STEPS

Help the gatekeeper discover who your best point of contact would be.

Don’t try to ‘get through’ the gatekeeper. She knows the best person to connect you with. And don’t attempt to ‘go to the top.’  The top person usually delegates to the appropriate people. Ask for the CEO’s assistant, and she’ll get you to the right people. Question: who is in control of the conversation – you? or the Gatekeeper?

Use Facilitative Questions to get into rapport and have buyers begin to examine how/if/why they would consider changing their status quo.

Until or unless prospects determine to make a change and get all appropriate folks on board to buy-in to change and ensure there is minimal disruption, it doesn’t matter whether

• you can see their need,
• your solution is perfect,
• they think they need you/your solution,
• they love your solution, price, personality, etc.

IT’S NOT ABOUT YOU. Do you need to be working out more? It’s not about the gym.

Here is a Facilitative Question I use to start conversations: How would you know if it were time to add new sales skills to the ones you’re already offering your sales folks? This question helps them think about necessary steps and new choices they must consider.

Remember: discussing solutions and needs assessment are irrelevant at this early stage. Facilitative Questions help the BUYER see the whole picture of what is going on strategically and tactically. Until or unless they know how to manage their system first, they will take no action. This is where buyers go when you’re sitting and waiting.

Lead prospects/buyers through the systems issues they must consider in order to determine how any proposed change will disrupt their status quo.

Facilitative Questions and Presumptive Summaries are used to help buyers look at their status quo with an unbiased eye. No matter what their ‘need’ or ‘problem’  if they don’t think they can change in a way that maintains systems congruence, they will do nothing. Remember: the buyer’s environment/culture/system has lived with the Identified Problem until now, and can continue to do so. If they had known how to resolve it differently, they would have.

Facilitate prospect’s discovery of what sorts of strategic issues they must manage to get folks on board with potential change.

There are 3 levels of decisions necessary: systems, strategic, and tactical. Addressing them in this order is optimal  although it’s usually an iterative process.

Lead prospects/buyers through tactical issues they must manage before they can choose a solution.

Once they determine that

1. their system would be willing to shift to add something/change/resolve something,
2. their rules, relationships, people, are willing to change,
3. they know how to shift congruently to minimize disruption,

they will then be willing to bring in a new solution. Until or unless their status quo is reconfigured in a way that the insiders are willing to support, they will do nothing: the risk to their functioning is too high. Hence the longer-than-necessary sales cycle.

Buyers must do this with you or without you – so it might as well be with you.

Help the prospect choose the members of the Buying Decision Team.

Help buyers recognize the right people to include. Usually they don’t know who it will be until way down the road, much like you don’t know all the trials you’ll face before you start a move.

Discuss how your solution fits with the internal issues that they must manage.

This step is about melding your solution with the entire range of issues they have to manage internally, including the people, policies, and relationships.

Discuss/present your solution and show the prospect/buyer how it would fit with their need/problem.

Once they do all of the above and get appropriate buy-in to manage change, they will know how and when to buy, and you can discuss needs/solutions according to their buy-in issues.

Follow up to see if there is anything you can do to help the prospect/buyer decide to purchase.

This is part of a good sales job, of course.

SALES TACTICS THAT ARE NO LONGER NECESSARY

Make an appointment to get in front of the prospect

This is a hold-over from another era. Until buyers put together their decision team and figure out how to change without disruption, your bright shiny face and the efficacy of your solution is irrelevant. You can do all of the above without meeting a client. And then, when you get there, the entire Buying Decision Team will be there and you wouldn’t have wasted any time/visits.

Manage objections and differentiate yourself from the competition.

The sales model creates objections because it pushes data/solution info against a ‘closed system.’ When you hear an objection, it’s merely the system defending itself against change and nothing whatsoever about your solution. Once you teach the system how to manage buy-in without disruption, there are no objections.

80% of your prospects will buy within 2 years – but not from you. The time it takes them to manage the buying decision to ensure there will be no disruption is the length of the sales cycle. You can either sit and wait for them to do it, or you can learn Buying Facilitation® and become the GPS system to help them navigate. Would you rather sell? or help someone buy?

sd

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.

9 Sales Steps that Influence a Buying Decision is a post from: SharonDrewMorgen.com

What does your GPS system do? It gets you from here to there without any input other than coordinates. It knows you must go left one mile, and then hang a right at Route 26. It knows you will drive about 40 minutes. It knows there is one alternate route. But it doesn’t need to know what you are wearing, or the gift you brought. It doesn’t need to know that there was an accident ahead that would cause you to slow down. It knows how to get you to where you want to be: it does not concern itself with the details of your personal issues.

Why am I putting sales and weddings and GPS systems in one article? Because I’m making a parallel between the buyer’s decision path and the sellers involvement with a solution choice.

THE TWO JOBS OF SALES

As a seller (if you can follow me here) you need to know the needs to help determine the right gift. You need to understand who is involved, what they like, how much money is budgeted. You need to understand as much as you can to determine that your solution and the buyer’s needs match. It’s the equivalent – using the above analogy – to understanding why you chose to go in your car, or what you decided to wear.

As a buying facilitator, you just need to understand systems and how change happens to bring in something new – the path from here to there.  A GPS system does NOT need the details of the activity. It does not care if you are going to a wedding or a funeral. Just left, right, left, right.

BOTH SELLING AND BUYING FACILITATION® TRIGGER THE BUY-PATH

Imagine if you had 2 jobs as a seller: one, to understand need and place a solution appropriately; one, to help buyers traverse their internal change management/systems issues so they get the buy-in and path to bring in something new.

You know how to do the needs assessment and solution placement. That’s sales. But do you know how to enter a buyer’s system with no questions about need? With no reason to gather data about how they’ll use a solution, or choose a vendor?

Do you know how to interact with a buyer to be their GPS system and manage their internal change? Because until buyers do this, you’ll be sitting and waiting and hoping for them to close.

What do you need to know or believe differently to be willing/able to put aside your curiosity as a sales professional, and put on the hat of a GPS system in order to teach your buyers how to put their ducks in a row – to go down the path of finding the right people, developing the right criteria, figuring out the change issues – so they can buy your solution.

Buying Facilitation® is a wholly different skill set than sales. It is a change management model. You use this to help buyers maneuver and discover, just like a GPS system goes from here to there. By using this model, you can get buyers to the point of being ready to buy – just like the GPS system gets you to the front door of the wedding. And then you can bring your gift and have some fun.

sd

Learn Buying Facilitation® on your own with our Guided Study program, or with a training program from us.

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

The differences between the solution sale and the buying decision: let’s go to a wedding is a post from: SharonDrewMorgen.com