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.

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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

My client was a visionary. He knew Buying Facilitation® would differentiate them, and give them higher closing ratios and shorter sales cycles. We were able to enlist the appropriate Buying Decision Team members, get the necessary buy in and create the change management container before we started. But in the end, one of the “C” level people – not ‘directly’ on the Buying Decision Team – was the decider. He was the one who had most to lose by changing.

CSO AS UNCHECKED LEADER

The CSO was quite a despot. Somewhat smart, but certainly ruled the roost in a very mainstream way, and with such seeming passion (turned out to be fear) that folks just did his bidding, regardless of whether he was doing the best thing for the company. And since there was no time for anyone to check, his ideas were just accepted. To the company’s detriment, it turns out.

Constantly in self-imposed motion, this man gave the go-ahead to do my training but never read my book  Dirty Little Secrets to get an understanding of what I’d be teaching and the implications for  the organization.

Turned out that the CSO was quite a negative player. He routinely called people late at night and wielded his power through tantrums and denigration. Folks were afraid of him and did his bidding, never questioining the efficacy of his decisions.

FUNNY NUMBERS THAT EVERYONE BELIEVED

As part of my training, I spend quite a bit of time with sales managers to deeply understand how they sell, and their numbers. But this group didn’t have real numbers. They claimed to close 17% of their sales but I couldn’t figure out where this number came from. Finally I spoke with enough of the sales managers to put together a picture, and it wasn’t pretty.

Actually, their sales process made it difficult for them to succeed. They:

• spent 3 months (and appx 15 calls each, and over 90% of their time) getting 97.5%  ‘no’s’ and 2.5% appointments (that mostly led nowhere) to present product data,
• pushed extremely hard to close, with a huge discount at the end of the quarter, which was industry knowledge so  buyers waited to get the best deal,
• were fired if they didn’t make their numbers.

They counted their close rate  from the time they got their first appointment. Of course, that presupposes that none of the first 97.5% of the leads/names would have purchased, because if any of those could have been buyers, then you start counting from #1, not #97.6. They actually had a .6758% close.

When I told the CSO the real numbers, he had a tantrum. “That can’t be true. Who told you that?! Don’t tell anyone else!!!” Of course not. If the CEO or Chairman of the Board knew the real numbers he’d be fired (and of course he sandbagged the targets to match what he could achieve, thereby diminishing the company’s possible ROI).

I discussed this with my client, who agreed with my results once he saw the real numbers. He was further committed to Buying Facilitation® training as it would bring in 35% close from the first name/lead, with no end-of-month push or price break. We’d easily be able to double business within a year.

PROTECTING FAILURE

One week prior to the training (which the CSO had rescheduled already, two days prior to the original scheduled event), he called late one night and fired me (even though he wasn’t my direct client). “I told you not to tell anyone the numbers.” “I didn’t” I said. “I just called the managers that gave me the numbers to check on their accuracy one more time. And they are accurate.” “But I told you not to talk to anyone. You’re done.”

Then I sent notes with all of the numbers to the CPO, one of the advisory board members, and the CSO’s coach. No one called me back, except their lawyer who wanted to ‘clear up a few loose ends.’ No idea what those were as I never took the calls.

So here are the most confounding thoughts:

1. this man is keeping the company’s ROI down dramatically because everyone is following his lead. The ROI would be SO much higher if they stopped attempting to get appointments (and throwing out the first 97.5% of their prospects) as their first contact;
2. no one knows this man is inflating the numbers by counting from an artificial beginning. Indeed, there were NO numbers to show how many calls were being rejected, how many times a sales person had to call (up to 15) to get an appointment, and how much time was being wasted.
3. the company has a horrific reputation in town for being abusive to their sales people – a truth that the CSO thought was funny: “Yup. I”ve heard that a lot myself. hehehehe.”
4. everyone colluded to maintain the status quo and stand behind this man. No one was willing to stand up to the CEO and offer the truth.
5. a whole system was built around doing sales his way: probably 40% more sales people were hired than were necessary, and they were losing market share and reputation. Buying Facilitation® would have given them a closing rate at least 400% more than the one they were currently experiencing.
6. this man was putting his ego needs above the company’s success.

The entire company’s ROI is a fraction of what it could be. And I was fired for speaking the truth. And the senior people in the company either don’t know, don’t care, or don’t realize they could be so much more successful. They certainly aren’t willing to do anything different because they were ‘meeting their numbers’.

How many times does this sort of thing happen to external consultants? They are the bearers of the Truth, and get let go because the company wants to maintain their secrets – at all costs. And what is the real cost here! To the companies, the consultants, to the people (customers and staff). Is there no way to circumvent these sorts of issues? And what has to be true for a company to prefer to be far less successful and maintain their status quo rather than change and be successful?

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To find out how you can make sure you have the skills/tools to get the highest ROI for your company, read sample chapters from my latest book and then buy it! And then call me (512-457-0246) so we can train your sales folks to close 40% of their lead population.

The Consultant as Whistleblower 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

Traditional Sales, spearheaded by Dale Carnegie in his book How to Win Friends and Influence People, published in 1937, is about the product sale. How to position it, how to make its features, functions, and benefits relevant, and how to discuss it so buyers will recognize a need.

Consultative Sales, spearheaded by Linda Richardson in the 80s, added the customer to the mix. What are their needs? What sort of a solution will be relevant? How can we gather the right data so we can ensure that our product/solution can fit with the needs and be positioned in a way to ensure the prospect understands the fit?

But both Tradtional Sales and Consultative Sales (and Permission Marketing, and Values-based Sales, and Relationship Sales, and Trusted Advisor Sales, and Question-based Sales, etc.) are based on placing a solution. By using questions, relationship management, being trustworthy because we care, etc. we work hard at being the chosen vendor. And yet, looking at the numbers, we still close the same number of sales we’ve always closed: plus/minus 7% from first prospecting call to close. And we waste far too much time with customers who won’t buy, and don’t know the difference before we expend all of that time.

Why aren’t we more successful? Because the sales model only manages the solution placement end of the buying decision. And this is the last thing the buyer does as s/he seeks to find a solution.

Think of a time when you wanted to buy something. Say, a new watch. Did you go into a store to buy one as soon as yours broke or became old? Probably not. First, before you went looking or gathering data, you had to decide what sort of watch you wanted. Do you want the same type of watch? Do you want a watch merely to tell time - or be a status symbol? Do you want a watch to hand down to your son or daughter? Do you want to buy several watches to match your work and play outfits? Do you want a watch made in this country, or one imported from Switzerland? Or do you want to merely fix your watch? And do you need to have your spouse buy-in to your decision (if it’s going to be a large purchase)?

This is a very simple siuation. Not a lot of people need to buy-in to your choice, or work together with you to implement it. But until you figure out the above, it doesn’t matter how wonderful a watch’s marketing is, or its features and functions and benefits. Until you make sure that you’ve met your internal criteria for choice, the information about any particular watch is potentially moot.

BUYERS MUST MANAGE THEIR BEHIND-THE-SCENES DECISION ISSUES

Your buyers have personal, professional, company, and team issues to take into account. They have relationship problems and budget challenges. They must get buy-in from above AND below. Until they do all of these things, not only will they not be ready to choose a solution, they won’t even have the full set of their criteria for choice ready.

I recently heard a story that might have taken place  in any company, anywhere around the world. A client of mine in Australia wanted to start up a manufacturing group. He wrote up a very complete proposal and budget for his boss – located in a different country – and sent it off with a request for a decision within three months. He then found a company in Germany that could develop and supply the set-up materials. The sales rep from the German company flew to Australia three times with product prototypes, sales pitches, team intros. These conversations went on for months.

My client had not heard from his boss. Eventually, he flew to visit the boss to discuss the idea with all of the costs and photos of the prototypes in hand. But he and his boss did not get along. And the boss had no interest in a discussion. End of story. Really. End of story.

The cost? Oh, about $50,000 in materials, travel and time. Finally,the German company was just told “No. Sorry. The boss won’t approve.” But it didn’t have to happen.

If the German sales rep had used Buying Facilitation™ on the very first call, my client would have known how to manage his boss and potentially be given the go-ahead BEFORE the manufacturing company sales guy made his first trip to Australia. Or would have known right away that it wasn’t going to fly.

German Seller: What would you have that you haven’t had until now?

Australian Buyer: A new manufacturing division.

GS: What has stopped you from starting up this division unti now?

AS: I have wanted it for some time, but have not approached my boss about it, as he’s not much of a visionary. Besides, we don’t get along so well. He’s out of the country and he pretty much leaves me alone. I suspect we both like it that way and have developed lots of work-arounds to make sure we work together well at arms length. But it makes it difficult to come to agreements.

GS: I hear that until you and your boss figure out a way to decide if a manufacturing group would make sense for your company, it doesn’t make too much sense to have us move forward with a prototype. What would need to happen for you and your boss to be willing to sit down together and figure out what Excellence would look like for the company?

In this way, the seller could actually help the prospect figure out how to possibly heal his relationship with his boss, and possibly move forward. Because until or unless this happens, no sale can take place anyway.

This is the first  job of the buyer: figure out how to recognize, align, and manage all of the internal issues that need to take place so that a problem can be resolved in a way that maintains the congruence of the system. Because until or unless the internal system maintains congruence and integrity, it cannot go forth and choose a solution. And sales – consultative or otherwise – does not manage this.

All sales models manage the solution end of a buying decision. Buying Facilitation™ offers new skills to help buyers figure out how to manage their internal, private, off-line stuff that is keeping them from success, and that sales does not address. Read my new book, Dirty Little Secrets: why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell and what you can do about it. It will give you a new skill set to help the buyer do their first job: manage their internal system. And THEN you can do Consultative Sales.

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Purchasing a solution is the last thing a buyer does is a post from: SharonDrewMorgen.com

• maneuver through their internal, behind-the-scenes buy-in issues to ensure a trouble-free change process, and
• choose a solution that will address their stakeholder’s criteria for systems excellence while maintaining the integrity of the system.

Sales addresses one of these jobs, but not the other. In fact, we’ve never been taught the skills to help with the off-line issues buyers address: as per the explanations and skills offered in my new book Dirty Little Secrets, helping buyers maneuver through their off-line buy-in issues requires a wholly different skill set.

We need to have the ability to be a GPS system for our buyers. You see, they need to meander through all of the internal systems issues that created their problem to begin with, to get to the route cause, figure out how it got there and has been maintained over time, and address all of the elements that hold it in place daily so that a new resolution can enter without fallout, without sabotage, and with acceptance and support.

As a simple example, let’s use fitness. Let’s say I’m not working out as often as I should. Getting good data about a gym, understanding why I’m not working out, or knowing that there are great trainers available to help me get fit, doesn’t address my baseline issues. I will not only have to figure out what has stopped me from working out and being fit until now, but I’ll have to manage some unconscious, unknown ‘stuff’ that has allowed me to ignore the gym issue until now.

• How do I currently handle my belief that I’m a healthy person if I only do those activities that make me comfortable?
• What has stopped me from attending the gym until now? And what sort of shift would I need to make to change my internal view of myself?
• What other issues do I need to manage to become a healthy person (i.e. eating issues, family issues, time issues, social issues) and what has stopped me from managing these until now?

As sellers, we treat the ‘need’ as if it were an isolated event and have no way to help buyers manage the off-line issues they must privately address as they consider changing to excellence. And, when we attempt to ‘understand’ what’s going on, it’s akin to you trying to understand why I choose to get up at 6:30 a.m. instead of 5:30 to get to the gym— and then attempting to convince me to do what would get me to the gym, rather than supporting me in managing my beliefs about my family obligations that you cannot influence because you are an outsider.

Indeed, we cannot – and should not – understand these personal, internal dynamics. But we can help buyers understand them. After all, until they do, and until they address them, they will do nothing, and we will sit and wait and wait until they do. We have waited helplessly in the mystery of what buyers do for decades, if not centuries.

BE THE GPS SYSTEM, NOT THE SELLER

We can use a different skill set to help buyers maneuver through their first steps. We cannot be there when they have to have those private meetings, or have an argument with the tech team, or handle a 3-year-old vendor issue, but knowing the environment – the system, if you will – that must be attained, generally speaking, before a buyer can buy, we can add a new skill set to our sales skills, and help buyers buy.

Think of the first decision issues as a GPS system understands the route. One mile, two left turns, etc. Think of the prospect as the driver who has to get somewhere (and who has not used a GPS system before, getting lost frequently but getting there eventually), the car as the system of internal, private issues that are on a journey and that will eventually find the ‘party,’ and the destination as the place you can sell your product.

The GPS system can’t know the scenery, or the fact that the car had been in an accident the day before. But it clearly understands what the generic route to excellence looks like and continues to know the route to the destination even after the driver has stopped for gas.

When we attempt to use our sales skills at the wrong time in the buyer’s decision cycle – and almost all buyers come to us well, well before they have figured out their route – we are helping buyers delay their purchasing decision, opening us up for objections and competition and money issues.

Sales only manages half of the buying decision process. For the initial issues buyers must manage, become the GPS system to help them navigate through their systems issues so they can buy. And with you as the decision facilitator, they will incorporate you into their solution design in half the time, with no competition or proposals or objections.

My new book will explain the buyer’s route, and offer new skill sets for you to help them buy. If you buy it before Oct 29, you’ll get freebies from wonderful sales luminaries. Not to mention you’ll learn how to reduce your sale cycle by half, and be ahead of your competitors.

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There is still time to get the freebies for: 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. 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. You still get the freebies with the bundle order.

Be The GPS For Your Buyer is a post from: SharonDrewMorgen.com

An answers for those of you who have asked how this book differs from some of my other books, and then I’ll give you 3 more ‘secrets.’

This book is very very different from Sales on the Line, Selling with Integrity and Buying Facilitation™. While those books talk about the buying decision process as being separate from the sales process and introduce some new skills, none of my previous books delve into exactly, EXACTLY what happens behind the scenes. I have thoroughly explained

• how systems maintain dysfunction and don’t want to change – and what they need to do to unlock possibilities (and how you can help);
• how the behind-the-scenes political and relationship issues are a far bigger indicator of purchasing p0ssibilities than need;
• the 10 steps to a buying decision (any kind of decision for that matter), and how to help influence them as an Outsider;
• the three phases that all decisions go through.. proving that buying is NOT an emotional decision but very very rational (even if we don’t agree with their decision);
• the problems closing sales using Sales 2.0 and how to mitigate them;
• the new Buying Facilitation™ model (you might want to get the bundle from my site and buy this book as the companion to the new one - www.buyingfacilitation.com), how it differs from sales, and the new skills and tools to tack on to sales to help influence the buying decision;
• very details Case Study that shows the behind-the-scenes details of a purchasing decision, and how to move a buying decision from a 36 week close to a 12 week close – and be part of the Buying Decision Team.

Now: here are 3 more ‘dirty little secrets’ from my new book. Enjoy. And BUY IT TOMORROW!

11. Information doesn’t teach people how to make a buying decision. Learning details of our solution is the last thing buyers need.

Sales has focused on having the solution to meet the need. As a result, sellers spend time and effort honing the appropriate messages for their pitches, presentations, and marketing. But buyers don’t know what to do with the data that early on in their decision process because they haven’t managed their buying criteria yet.

Now we can help buyers discern all of their decision criteria and buying criteria. When it’s time to pitch or present, we can massage our message to fit with the buying criteria and values.

1. Sales focuses on solution placement and has no skill set to help buyers maneuver through their off-line, internal, behind-the-scenes planning and decision making that must take place before they can buy.

It is impossible for any change to happen (including a purchasing decision) unless a system has identified the elements that need to buy in to the change. Our current sales model has ignored this invisible challenge since its inception. Rather than realize that a piece was missing, it instead builds in assumptions that maintain its status quo, provides work-arounds to manage the fall-out of the onedimensional approach, and accepts low close ratios.

Now we know all of the elements involved in how buyers buy, and can help them manage both ends of their decision making and change management. We can close sales in half the time since we will be severely shortening the buying decision cycle.

6. Until buyers have managed their internal systems, they have limited ability to use the solution information you would like to give them.

We’ve never been taught all of the issues that need to be managed before a buying decision can happen. Our buyers haven’t known that either. As a result we have unwittingly focused on solving their problem, giving them vast amounts of data about our solution, and have not realized that buyers haven’t known what to do with that data until later on in their buying decision process.

Now we can help buyers discover their systems and change management issues, and help them figure out their buying criteria that will match the values of their system.

8. Helping buyers maneuver through their buy-in and systems issues require a different focus and a different skill set from the one sales offers.

The typical sales scenario overlooks the systems issues that must seek homeostasis. Focusing on our solutions, we’ve created the rejections, the objections, the long delays, and the ‘dumb’ decisions. Not to mention the abysmal closing ratio of under 10% (from first prospecting call).

Now we have the skills to enter the buying decision end of the equation without bias and as a decision facilitator. We can help the buyer focus first on finding all of the right people, discovering the historic precedents, changing the rules, and getting buy-in so they can all figure out what needs to happen to achieve excellence.

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Did the book provoke you? Excite you? Anger you! Cool beans! Let the discussion begin!

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Listen to Sharon Drew Morgen speak on MaestroConference on Oct. 14 at 12P.M. PST

Check out my new book coming out October 15: Dirty Little Secrets: why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell and what to do about it. Read two free chapters. Pre-purchase the book or buy the bundle.

Or 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.

“Dirty Little Secrets” launches tomorrow: 3 more secrets unveiled is a post from: SharonDrewMorgen.com

1. Product similarity: Our products are pretty similar at this point. While we can recite chapter, line, and verse how our offering differs, the client hears similar stories from all vendors. They just want to get a business problem resolved in a way that causes the least disruption to their system.
2. Customer Service: We’ve all been taught to ‘make nice’ and give customers ‘good’ service. What that means is idiosyncratic to the situation and the company. And we certainly don’t know how that translates to the customer. I recently cancelled my phone service with Time Warner and went back to ATT, scheduling an appointment for a date after I’d returned from Europe. When I was out of the country, it seems they decided to give me ‘better service’ and come out to turn on new service 8 days before the scheduled appointment (when I was out of the country) and they turned off my phone service, leaving me without a business phone until we could straighten out the mess days later – which I had to manage from Scotland. Often, the definition of  ‘customer service’ is defined to meet the capability of the seller – not the true need of the buyer.
3. Face-to-face meetings: Sales makes the  faulty assumption that if the buyer has a ‘relationship’ with the seller, or at least ‘likes’ the seller, that there is a greater propensity for a sale. Obviously that is flawed, or we’d all close a lot more sales. Indeed, all of the competition is doing the same thing.

HOW DO WE OFFER A NEW CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE?

Basically, net net, we are all doing the same thing: discovering needs, creating a relationship, making nice, having a good product that we pitch well, marketing and branding as appropriate. It’s sales.

But if we go outside the model, and consider the real issues buyers face, we can add a new viewpoint to the problem. Since buyers must go off-line and garner buy-in from their people, policies, relationships, initiatives and vendors BEFORE they can make a purchasing decision, why not help them do that first – and THEN sell our product. After all, until buyers manage all of these issues, they cannot make a buying decision anyway.

Let’s differentiate ourselves by helping buyers manage their behind-the-scenes buying decision issues. Sellers are not doing this – and even when they attempt to ‘understand how buyers buy’ they are not helping the buyer at all, because buyers can’t know the direct route they will take to a buying decision until they have already done so. Think about your route through weight loss, or smoking cessation, or moving house. You might know the general things that must be managed – and you might find many surprises en route – but you can’t know what the journey will be until you’ve done it.

Sales enters at the wrong time, with the wrong data, seeking the wrong outcome. Decision Facilitation first. Product sale next. And they are two different skill sets, and two different outcomes. Buyers have to do this anyway, and the time it takes them is the length of the sales cycle.

Give buyers a new customer experience. Help them decide.

My new 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. It’s coming out October 15. I can’t wait to share it with you.

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Facilitating a New Customer Experience is a post from: SharonDrewMorgen.com

I know, I know. Most sellers eschew cold calling, preferring instead to network, get referrals, golf, meet face-to-face.

Did you ever ask yourself why?

We can 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?). We can think about trying to ‘get through’ the gatekeeper. We 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 we do our networking, getting referrals, golfing, and meeting in person. What does it give us? Sadly, we’re just making ourselves feel better because it doesn’t help us close more deals. Indeed, until or unless a prospect has managed their behind-the-scenes systems (culture, environment) issues and gets buy-in at all levels, nothing will happen whether they need us or like us.

The bigger problem is how to help buyers manage those off-line issues, because until they do, our sterling personalities are immaterial: If we shift our focus – and our skills – from making a sale to helping manage the internal decision issues, we 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 we are trying to sell, to push a product, to attempt to influence with our personal charm, then I agree; cold calling sucks.

But if we are trying to help buyers make a buying decision, cold calling is wonderful. Remember that Buying Facilitation™ employs a totally different skill set than sales, with a different outcome. We are actually employing a decision facilitation skill set to the off-line portion of the buying decision, and then employing our sales skills.

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, 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 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.

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Check out my new book: Dirty Little Secrets: why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell and what to do about it. Read two free chapters.

Or have a look at my book Buying Facilitation: the new way to sell that influences and expands decisions. Click here for two free chapters. It will teach you how to understand and manage the route through the internal decision process. Will it help you make a sale? Maybe. Maybe not. But it sure will help you make a client.

Cold Calling Works – and it’s fun! is a post from: SharonDrewMorgen.com

Where they go, in fact, is to get ahold of their colleagues and figure out how to get agreement for whatever outcomes the new solution will cause within the  buyer’s environment. We rarely think that way as sellers: we see a problem, figure out if we have the appropriate solution, and go forth, fearlessly, to match the need with the solution.

We forget the vast amount of internal politiking, or behind-the-scenes jockey-ing, or deals, or relationship management issues, that go on in the prospect’s environment around their search for a solution. Unfortunately, we don’t have the ability to be intimately involved with these off-line discussions and are left with the results.

It looks like this: hot prospects don’t return and go quietly into the night, never to be heard from again; prospects purchase a small portion of a solution with some excuse as to why they can’t buy the rest  (budget, timing, partners, initiatives, etc);  prospects return to discuss price; prospects want their internal folks to join the effort and work with you to implement.

In other words, they aren’t purchasing what you think they need. Why? Simple: Because they haven’t gotten the buy-in they need. It’s got nothing to do with your solution or their need. The tech team shows up and wants to do the project; the HR department wants to be involved; the old vendor develops something new that might take care of the problem.

It is possible to help the buyer choose you – but approaching the need resolution with the sales model doesn’t help much to help with the buy-in process.

Have a look at my video and send in some comments. Let’s begin a conversation about the buyer’s off-line decisions and how to help them make their best decisions.

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If you’d like me to write a White Paper for you on understanding the decision issues your buyers face, please email me at sharondrew@newsalesparadigm.com.

Check out my new book coming out October 1: Dirty Little Secrets: why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell and what to do about it. Read a free chapter. Sign up for presales deals, and announcements. I’ll be doing a webinar on the material close to the launch date, so stay tuned.

Or have a look at my book Buying Facilitation:the new way to sell that inluences and expands decisions. Click here for two free chapters. It will teach you how to understand and manage the route through the internal decision process. Will it help you make a sale? Maybe. Maybe not. But it sure will help you make a client.

Managing Off-Line Decisions is a post from: SharonDrewMorgen.com

Because sales unwittingly focuses on the very last stages of the buyer’s buying decision, sellers are trained to listen carefully for all of the details around ’need.’ Once sellers understand how their solution would fit into the ‘need’ or the ‘pain’, they work hard to advantageously place their product/service information so buyers will know how to buy. Which they do, around 7% of the time.

Of course, the need-based, info gathering questions that sellers ask are eventually a vital part of the sales model. But they don’t help the buyer understand how to address the internal stuff we’re not privvy to, and that they need to manage on their own, prior to any sort of solution choice.

Our questions, ultimately, don’t help the buyer make a buying decision. And we’re asking them at the wrong time.

By now we all know that there is a huge area of off-line issues that buyers must manage before they are ready to buy. Not to mention that once they go through this behind-the-scenes process of finding the right folks to put onto the Buying Decision Team, clearing time and initiatives to make room for bringing something new aboard, or resolving old vendor issues,  for example, their needs get redefined one way or another.

So the details we’ll hear about their ’need’ from the buyer at the beginning of the info gathering process is not the same as what we’ll hear later on. No one’s fault – just the fallout of the sales process being focused on the wrong thing at the wrong time.

LISTENING FOR SYSTEMS, NOT INFORMATION OR NEED

There is another form of listening necessary to actually help buyers address their off-line conversations so they can actually have help garnering buy-in to make a purchase. Note that this Buying Facilitation™ part of  a seller’s job is NOT SALES, but a different activity that needs to be added to the front end of the sales process as if it were a different language.

It’s a very different listening: You’re listening to serve as a guide and to facilitate the route without traveling it yourself. You are actually leading them through change. They can’t buy anything until they line up these internal issues anyway – it might as well be with you on their Team. Just remember that this guidance is not about their need!

So before listening for the DETAILS of need, sellers must listen for the SYSTEM that buyers live in to help them manage the behind-the-scenes elements that must agree to add a new solution.  I write about this entire process in my new book coming out 15 October, Dirty Little Secrets: why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell and what you can do about it. In this blog I’ll just mention a few elements.

Has your prospect figured out the right members that need to be on the Buying Decision Team? Asking them who will be on the Team is useless: at the beginning of the change process, prospects really don’t know all of the people that must  be involved… and of course, we can’t help them, because we’re not there with them.

Does your prospect know, and know how to manage why, the problem has existed so long? Who/what has kept it in place? What is the work-around that maintains it daily and how will it be addressed if change is occuring?

Since our prospects have to go off-line to manage change before they can buy, we can either wait til after they’ve figured it all out and they come back (as we do now), or learn a new skill set: facilitate buyers through all of the elements they need to address. We will do this as decision facilitators or change managers – NOT sellers. And, because so much of it has little to do with their need or our solution, we really, really have to add a new skill set to the one we’ve been using for so long.

We’re not taught to listen this way in sales. Confusing? Only if you have a seller’s hat on. Think about it. It’s a way to manage the 93% of the buying decision that has alluded us until now.

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Hear Sharon Drew live on Unity Radio: August 24 at 4:00 CT on www.unity.fm, Sharon Drew will be interviewed by Charlotte Shelton, the education director of Unity Church.

How To Listen To A Buyer is a post from: SharonDrewMorgen.com