It’s the Consensus, Stupid*

aghastBuying decisions happen well before buyers consider your solution regardless of their need or the efficacy of your solution, marketing, or content. In fact, a purchase is the very last thing that occurs in a string of events buyers must handle as they seek to solve a business problem.

One of the first things they must do is assemble the complete Buying Decision Team to garner the consensus necessary for change.

Studies from the CEB show that a Buying Decision Team includes approximately 6 decision makers and untold influencers who must achieve consensus before considering how to resolve their problem, whether it’s a purchase or another fix. Let’s look at this from 3 angles:

1.      Buyers don’t initially know who belongs on the Buying Decision Team. The time it takes them to assemble the right people and hear their voices around fixing a business problem is part of the buying decision path. These issues are political, systemic, relational – not focused on need. We are not facilitating the assembly of the team.

2.      An external solution is considered only when there is consensus that an internal problem can’t  be resolved with familiar resources. We are not facilitating the systemic discovery process that has little to do with our solution.

3.      An external fix causes disruption. It’s necessary to have consensus as to when, if, or how to bring in a new solution so disruption can be either avoided or planned for. We are not facilitating consensus as it’s unique and systemic.

4.      Any solution – internal change or an external purchase – must address the change management issues that result from anything new entering the status quo. We are not facilitating change but merely offering content on what might be a solution.

CONTENT IS NOT KING

Content is merely one way the decision makers and influencers can learn about possible solutions when they are ready to begin thinking about options. Other solutions being considered include internal workarounds that will manage the problems more simply. A purchase is merely the very last thing buyers consider. We are limiting our success to a small segment of opportunity and should be facilitating decisions point before pushing solutions.

We can facilitate a buyer’s consensus from sales, marketing, and social, but not with the current sales or marketing models. Add Buying Facilitation® to your sales and marketing and enter earlier by first helping facilitate consensus. It’s not sales, nor is it solution driven – it’s a change facilitation model. But buyers have to do it with you or without you. It might as well be with you. And THEN you can sell your solution.

Call me. We can add my Buying Facilitation® model to your sales or marketing solutions. Then you can influence the entire decision path, not just the back end.  Sharondrew@sharondrewmorgen.com. You can also purchase for you or your team the Guided Study & Coaching. 

*Thanks to Bill Clinton: “It’s the Economy, Stupid.”

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See my new Entrepreneur Programs: Getting Funded; Creating a Selling Machine; Marketing to Buying Decisions

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Sharon-Drew Morgen is the NYTimes Business Bestselling author of Selling with Integrity and 7 books how buyers buy. She is the developer of Buying Facilitation® a decision facilitation model used with sales to help buyers facilitate pre-sales buying decision issues. She is a sales visionary who coined the terms Helping Buyers Buy, Buy Cycle, Buying Decision Patterns, Buy Path in 1985, and has been working with sales/marketing for 30 years to influence buying decisions.

More recently, Morgen is the author of What? Did You Really Say What I Think I Heard? in which she has coded how we can hear others without bias or misunderstanding, and why there is a gap between what’s said and what’s heard. She is a trainer, consultant, speaker, and inventor, interested in integrity in all business communication. Her learning tools can be purchased: www.didihearyou.com. She can be reached at sharondrew@sharondrewmorgen.com 512 771 1117
www.didihearyou.comwww.sharondrewmorgen.com

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