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

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

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

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

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

And this is where sales takes over. Not before.

OUR CURRENT STEPS MISS THE IMPORTANT DECISION FACTORS

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

They split the sales team into an Inside Sales group that makes appointments, and Corporate and Field Sales teams to close them. The structure, as well as the compensation, promotes failure: Inside Sales is paid per appointment (with a tendency to push for an appointment with whomever they speak with, regardless of their appropriateness); the other sales functions are paid based on how many they close.

It’s a perfect storm: inappropriate leads are given to sellers who spend gobs of time pushing a solution to whomever ends up agreeing to an appointment (who may not be appropriate buyers, and certainly don’t represent all those who might buy), and get a very low percentage of closed sales. So the company hires more and more Inside Sales reps to get appointments, hoping that a higher percent of the appointment will result.

DO YOU WANT TO MAKE A SALE OR AN APPOINTMENT?

My clients came to me complaining of a very low close rate. It never occured to them that just maybe there is a problem with their selling model; they manage the problem by adding sales reps. They believe success is at their fingertips by playing the numbers game!

There is a very large elephant in the room here: Before a buyer can buy they must manage the behind-the-scenes change management issues that address the disruption, the people, the relationships, the rules, that must be handled behind-the-scenes to get the buy-in necessary to bring in a new solution in. Sales enters at the point of  ‘need’… but that’s the tail end of the buyer’s buying decision path.

Our continued fascination with making an appointment as a precursor to making a sale is based on the belief that a buyer will buy based on the strength of the presentation. And although we get extremely low closing rates, we continue to do it and often throw more sellers at the problem, doing the same activity. That’s the definition of insanity!

Imagine if it’s possible to discover leads/prospects who can be made ready to buy without making an appointment!

Imagine if it’s possible to close the buying decision path gap in a fraction of the time and closing 5x more sales without introducing your solution – or pitching, presenting, or creating a proposal.

START WITH A DIFFERENT SET OF ASSUMPTIONS

Once you begin with the assumption that buyers just need to understand your solution and how it would benefit them, you’re a solution looking for a problem. Then your sales folks are order takers, or tele-sales reps, or consultants running around looking busy. But all sales – regardless of the industry - close between 2-7%. Where do the rest go? And why are you pitching, wasting time, or making appointments with, folks who will never buy?

You end up hiring more and more sales folks to close fewer and fewer sales… especially these days when Buying Decision Teams are more diverse in geography and function.

Right now you are paying your sales folks to find the low-hanging fruit: buyers who most probably would have found you and bought from you anyway.

Let’s compensate our sales folks for helping buyers navigate through the entire buying decision path and help buyers where they need the most help to solve a problem – managing the buy-in of all who will touch the solution - something sales does not do at the moment, as it remains focused on needs assessment and solution placement.

Once you add Buying Facilitation® to your seller’s skill set, you will be able to close much more business. Because now you’re spending far, far too much time following prospects who will never close and paying your sales people for the wasted effort.

I’ve heard sellers tell me that they didn’t need to learn BF because they earn 6 figures doing what they are doing badly. Imagine if you compensated your sales folks on an expectation that they close 40% of their leads. It’s very possible – my clients do that easily. Then, there would be no reason to hire more folks just to get the numbers you’re trying to get. And you would have a much higher ROI.

Stop compensating your sales folks on meager expectations. Stop having your sales folks set up appointments first. Start with the very first ‘Hello’ and teach them how to buy. Would you rather sell? Or have someone buy?

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Buy Dirty Little Secrets: why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell and what you can do about it and learn the difference between selling and managing the buying path.

Listen to Sharon Drew make prospecting calls on this MP3.

Compensating our sales folks is a post from: SharonDrewMorgen.com

When I began using the terms in the 80s my meaning described a change management process to lead buyers through their non-solution/non-need-related, behind-the-scenes internal and political issues that enable all who touch the solution to buy-in. Lately I’ve noticed the terms applied to the sales end of the buying decision – that 10% of the buyer’s journey that manages the  pre-solution choice  behaviors, including  solution/vendor choice, time/money issues. In other words, sales.

But let’s stop a moment: We don’t buy this way.

HOW DO WE BUY?

Here’s is a case study to offer an example of how we actually buy.

Pretend you are the VP of Client Services of a $15 Million company, considering upgrading your website; you don’t like the job your internal tech folks have done. What needs to happen for you to get a site you need? Get your own guys to work better/smarter? Bring in a new vendor to fix the one you have? Let’s look at the actions you must take prior to moving forward.

1. start a conversation with a colleague/friend to discuss ideas about the status quo.
2. if the idea has merit, see if there is interest from the VPs of Sales and Marketing as they’d need to share budget with you.
3. go on line and do some research to: look at several possible solutions, see how your competition is managing it, and call colleagues for vendor possibilities.
4. talk with the internal Tech guys to discuss your displeasure and see what they’re willing to do differently, closer in line with what you’ve learned.
5. have a meeting with VPs or Sales and Marketing to get the lay of the land, share some new ideas, gather their thoughts, discuss options to move forward with their support. This is the foundation of the Buying Decision Team (BDT).
6. contact a few local vendors to ask them to give you a presentation so you can better understand what they do and what’s possible.
7. attend vendor presentations that focus on strength of design, strength of technical and programming skills.
8. meet with the BDT to discuss your take-aways from the vendor presentations. Everyone wants to do more research. Sales and Marketing  folks not talking with each other, and each want to take this in different directions.
9. meet with CFO who manages the technology department. She wants to keep all work inhouse.
10. meet to discuss with Sales, Marketing. Invite Technology folks, but they don’t come. Sales and Marketing must learn how to get along as they have a similar focus and don’t like the work the Tech team does.
11. decisions must be made as per changing mind of the CFO. Group decides to look at vendors again and gather different sorts of data to offer proof to CFO.
12. same vendors come in to do a presentation to you, Sales, Marketing. Tech folks refuse to come.
13. group decides to use vendors rather then tech team, but must find a way to get buy-in from CFO.
14. group writes a paper to convince CFO to use outside supplier. Head of Sales is chosen to get Tech folks on board.
15. meeting set up with Tech VP, CFO, heads of Sales, Internal Consulting, Project Management, HR (to manage any outsourcing) Marketing, and you – the complete Buying Decision Team. All decide to use the Tech team to do the programming; vendor to do the design. You all decide to take a look at the vendors again to see who would be most capable of collaborating as well as designing, as they’d need to hand over, and work with, the tech folks.
16. vendor meeting #3. The vendors with the slide about collaboration was chosen (that buying criteria was not even discussed with the vendors during earlier conversations or needs-assessment conversations).

This is a very very simplistic decision path during a year’s worth of meetings: there are only ‘people’ variables, and not any policies, internal politics, initiatives, etc.

SALES FOCUSES ON NEEDS AND SOLUTION PLACEMENT

In this situation, the sales model would have the potential vendors gather, and assume that the ‘need’ was for web design, rather than collaboration skills AND web design. And, the assumption would be that the entire Buying Decision Team – not fully formed until near the end – is already on board.

In this instance, you’d become involved in steps 6,7. You’d give a great presentation, recognize a need, get along well with your contact, and assume you were ‘in.’ When you didn’t hear back for a while, you’d start calling. And when you got your second presentation appointment, you’d assume you were in. And the rest is history.

If you were using Buying Facilitation® all of this would have been avoided for both you and your prospect. As the vendor, you would have helped the buyer recognize the problem lie with the CFO on the first call, helped design the make up of the full Buying Decision Team, and not gone in to do a presentation until there was agreement to have a vendor do some/all of the work. You’d go in only when the VPs of Sales, Marketing, Tech, and the CFO were present in the room. And it all would have taken a month or two.

If you want to learn how to do this, start by reading Dirty Little Secrets. Then get the Guided Study program and begin learning Buying Facilitation®. Or call me and we’ll discuss training.

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Start the journey to help sellers get the skills they need to manage both ends of the buying decision journey – the off-line political and relational buy-in as well as the solution choice. Read Dirty Little Secrets: why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell and what you can do about it.

Listen to insights and illustrative examples regarding: what change is and why its fundamentally the same regardless of industry or organization type, what systems are and their role in the change management process.

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

How do you buy? Steps in a buying decision is a post from: SharonDrewMorgen.com

This one person starts with with no buy-in and no buddies, and cannot initially know the full description of the problem/need or ramifications of the possible change. And certainly will not have the complete descriptors with which to choose a solution until much later in the cycle when all appropriate voices are brought in and the change management issues are recognized by everyone who will touch the final solution.

Before that person gets from here to there, there are many steps along the way, starting with putting together some personal thoughts through research, through discussions, to private think time. Then come a few friends and colleagues who lend a brain and an ear – friends who also want Excellence and are willing to put in time, put their jobs on the line, and be willing to stand up to resistance and the status quo to get something new brought into the environment.

That’s where the buy-cycle starts. There are actually 13 unique steps from the first thought to a purchase.

STARTING SALES TOO EARLY

Sellers show up early in the cycle, discussing needs, money, value and ‘deep understanding’ – the buyer’s last 2 steps. But the early portion of the journey – the 11 behind-the-scenes, private, idiosyncratic, and highly personal steps that buyers and their Buying Decision Teams must take along their path to purchase – is not handled by sales.

There is so much more we can do to help buyers maneuver from the first idea through their decision path.

Are we willing to add new skills, new technology, to what we’re doing now, both in marketing automation, inside sales, outside sales, telemarketing, and nurture marketing? Are we willing to add new skills that are not sales skills, nor influencing skills, nor negotiating skills? Are we willing to help manage the change? If we aren’t willing, we will continue to close a fraction of what we can be closing as we sit and wait to close the low hanging fruit.

All sales activities – marketing automation included – are needs assessment/solution placement focused. The underlying belief is that once we understand the buyer’s needs, or know their friends, or play golf with them, or network with them, or know who the decision makers are, we will know what, when, how, if to place a solution.

Yet only 7% of buyers buy through normal sales channels, and less than 1% through marketing automation channels. And – here is the kicker – 80% of our prospects (whom we followed and called and contacted and nurtured) will buy our solution from a different vendor within 2 years of speaking with us.

In other words, even though there is a need, and it appears that our solution matches, something is stopping the buy-cycle.

WHAT IS A BUY-CYCLE

A buy-cycle is an entire set of change management and buy-in issues that buyers must manage internally, behind-the-scenes, to get agreement from people and policies in order to make a purchase.

The buy-cycle starts with an idea, and ends when the entire Buying Decision Team is on board (no mean feat) and everything that will touch a new solution knows how to manage the change that the new thing will create.

The buy-cycle is 90% complete by the time the buyer is considering one solution over another. Until then, buyers must get all of the right people to agree (hah), make sure technology will not crash, ensure people can work together, change job descriptions, bring in outsourced folks to help with implementations, ensure the new works with the old….

The buy-cycle does not start with a seller understanding needs and matching a solution. That’s the last thing that happens. Note: the fact that a seller can recognize a need means it has been there for a while … and nothing has been done about it. So the system it lives in is willing to maintain the problem.

Here are a few thoughts that are important to remember:

• If the buyer needed to fix their problem they would have done so already.
• The time it takes buyers to come up with their own answers and figure out their internal change management issues is the length of the sales cycle, independent of their need.
• A seller (the outsider) will never, ever, ever ‘understand’ the political, relational, personal, or historic issues that buyers must manage. It’s necessary to understand the full need, however, and that can occur once the entire Buying Decision Team is in place.
• Information does not teach a buyer how to buy. They must manage their internal, off-line, systems issues.
• The system is sacrosanct: buyers will maintain the integrity of their system at all costs, regardless of their need or the efficacy of your solution.
• Something new threatens the integrity of the existing system.

If you are selling technology, the buy-cycle must include buy-in from whoever will use it, plus a set up for the change implementation, plus a relationship with outsourcing groups, plus a way to ensure the new will meld with the old, plus some sort of project leading component.

If you are selling training, the buy-cycle will include buy-in from those who will take the training, internal trainers, matching the new program with the existing material, change of materials/software to match the new skills, plus buy-in from, and a working relationship with, the internal training department with a knowledge of maintaining the new learning over time.

For small, inexpensive solutions, possibly one person has to discover how the new solution would disrupt the system and figure out how to re-arrange, or shift technology, etc.

The buy-cycle is not about our solution. It’s about the buyer making sure that at each step there is agreement and change management and buy-in to ensure all of the right people are on board and willing to allow an addition to the status quo. The reason we lose sales is not because of our solution, but because the Buying Decision Team hasn’t figured out how to bring in change without disruption.

Ask yourself this, and answer honestly: do you really, really want to begin selling at the beginning of the buy-cycle? I can teach you the skills and give you the technology for this to happen. But you’d have to add something to what you’re doing – i.e. change.

How would you recognize, upfront, who would need to be included in a decision to change? How would you know that Buying Facilitation® will give you the results you deserve BEFORE you begin the change? What would you need to do differently to get the buy-in you’d need?

I can help. I can offer you Facilitative Questions to share with teammates to help them decide. Or you can listen to podcasts and watch webinars that I gave to explain Buying Facilitation®.

For those of you who recognize a problem, and want help navigating through the entire change management journey to get buy-in to add new skills to your sales and marketing, contact me. I can help you walk through the entire route with a minimum of disruption.

I just need to speak with one person with a hope for something better.

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Listen to these podcasts;

watch these webinars;

read this book – Dirty Little Secrets: why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell and what you can do about it.

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

Where does the buy-cycle start? is a post from: SharonDrewMorgen.com

Does this make sense – to keep doing what is not working, regardless of the ‘rational’ choices that would resolve a problem?

Actually, it does. Because making a purchase, or doing something different, means

• some sort of change management to ensure that the new and the old work together
• helping folks who touch the current practices be willing and able to change.

Make no mistake: bringing anything new into an existent system - whether it’s a purchase or an implementation – is a change management problem.

A BUYING DECISION IS A CHANGE MANAGEMENT PROBLEM

Sales, marketing automation, and the new telemarketing field, ignore the change management aspect of what buyers must accomplish and instead focus on figuring out how and what and to whom to push. And push we do.

Let me back track a bit. Givens:

1. sales manages the needs assessment and solution placement portion of the buyer’s decision.
2. neither sales nor marketing go behind-the-scenes, into the environment/culture in which the buyer lives, to help facilitate the non-solution-focused internal political or relational issues buyers must address to get the necessary buy-in to make a purchase.
3. buyers don’t know their route through the systemic decision path when they begin to think about resolving a problem.
4. the time it takes buyers to get the appropriate buy-in from all who will touch the solution is the length of the sales/change cycle.

These are the issues we come smack up against as sales folks: when buyers try to push a solution into a group that haven’t progressed through their entire change management path, they offer objections and time delays as they figure out how to figure it out.

Buying Facilitation® is not sales, but it works with sales. It is a wholly different skill set that actually shows buyers how to manage the systemic change they will face when purchasing a solution or bringing something new in to their status quo. It not only teaches buyers how to get the requisite buy-in so their daily functioning won’t be compromised - managing the people, policies, technology, and old vendor, etc. issues – but shows them how to pro-actively manage the change that will happen once the new solution is on board.

A SOLUTION CAN’T COMPROMISE THE STATUS QUO

If the tech guy doesn’t want to outsource work; if the sales and marketing folks are not talking to each other; if the “C” level person has a favored vendor from 3 years ago; if there is already something in place that cost a bundle and the buyer merely wants to tack on yet another fix – if anything political or relational is going on internally that would compromise the system, the buyer will not buy: they will not buy if the system itself would be at risk.

Just as you are resisting adding Buying Facilitation® to your sales model, even though it would resolve so many of your sales issues (stops all objections, severely shortens the sales cycle, gets the Buying Decision Team collected in days), your buyers are resisting purchasing even though they need your solution.

Let’s figure out how to help your buyers buy. Let’s teach them how to manage their change so you can easily place your solution. What would you need to see from me, or know about Buying Facilitation® to know if it would be worth the change?

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Listen to Sharon Drew’s webinar with Frameworks: Buy-In: a radical approach to change management.

Hear Sharon Drew teach material from her Buying Facilitation® training and hear her make cold calls to qualify, prospect, and raise funds.

Read Buying Facilitation®: the new way to sell that expands and influences decisions.

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

Change management and sales: influencing the buying decision path is a post from: SharonDrewMorgen.com

Before a buyer buys, or a decision gets made, all of the elements that will be changed by the new solution must buy-in. This includes getting the right players on board, managing old vendors, insuring new solutions meld with current ones, managing internal politics, matching strategic needs with initiatives over time, etc. It’s very difficult for sales folks to understand that there is a gap between the need and solution, and the buying decision that must include all of the pieces that touch the solution and might experience change with a new solution.

The time it takes this buy-in to happen is the length of the sales cycle, regardless of the need or the efficacy of the solution. And when something new is forced into the system without systemic buy-in, as sellers do when attempting to place a solution before the buyer has gone down their full buying decision path, the system will resist. Hence, we get long delays and objections when it appears clear that the buyer has a need we can fulfill. And we think there is a buyer when there is none because they cannot get the necessary buy-in to purchase.

SELLING VS BUYING

The sales model is a solution-placement model that ignores the behind-the-scenes, non-need-related issues that must be managed internally before a purchase can occur. We end up sitting and waiting, and pushing, and waiting, and pushing, and hoping until all of these activities take place, and then close the low hanging fruit. And we have no idea where the other prospects go.

Buying Facilitation® has a different outcome and unique skill set: Its job is to lead buyers through their entire decision path to recognize and manage all of the elements that must be handled.  It’s a change management/buy-in model (that uses NO sales techniques or strategies) that actually teaches buyers how to be ready to buy, and folds in the purchase/solution as a part of the decision journey.

Used in front of sales it:

1. closes sales in 1/8 the time;
2. recognizes who is a buyer and who isn’t, on the first call;
3. helps buyers collect the appropriate Buying Decision Team on the first call and has them available for a meeting or conference call soon after the first call (even if it’s a cold call);
4. helps buyers recognize and influence all of the people, policy, vendor, budget, time, relationship, and political issues they must include in so that a purchase can enter the system without disrupting the status quo significantly;
5. gets everyone who will touch the solution on board within 2 calls, and work with their buy-in issues to move the sale forward, or end the sales relationship immediately.

In other words, by the time the ‘sales’ process begins, the full Buying Decision Team is in place, have offered their needs and concerns, know exactly their next steps (and yours), are eager to fit your solution into their status quo, have no objections (money or otherwise) and are ready and able to buy-in to a purchase. All in a collapsed schedule.

With a $50,000,000 solution, working with Buying Facilitation® KPMG turned a 3 year sales cycle into a 4 month sales cycle. IBM was selling a simple software solution: we turned a 6 month sales cycle into a 3 call close. Kaiser went from 110 visits and 18 closed sales to 27 visits and 25 closed sales. In each instance, we were able to not only collapse the sales cycle, but teach the buyer how to make the requisite changes congruently, in accordance with their internal rules. In other situations we got rid of inappropriate prospects on the first call, or enabled folks we didn’t think were prospects to recognize their need for a new solution.

HOW SALES DOESN’T WORK

Using sales or marketing automation, you are finding people with a possible need, but merely putting great data in their reach – and assuming that the data will  influence a buying decision. But:

1. your data doesn’t necessarily reach the right people;
2. your data might not address the full range of solution issues (and that you can not know about as an outsider);
3. your solution might run counter to how their current vendor is managing things;
4. your solution might not fit comfortably with their current solution and they haven’t yet decided to get rid of it;
5. the Buying Decision Team hasn’t been formed yet and until it is they can’t buy (Hint: buyers aren’t aware of who needs to be on this team until well into the purchasing discussion);
6. we are pushing our solution against a ‘system’ that has maintained homeostasis for some time and would be disrupted if something new entered (The system is sacrosanct: until buyers figure out how to make sure the system is not adversely affected if they were to buy something, they will take no action.);
7. the appropriate buyer but can’t get the requisite buy-in to make a purchase (hence the 80% of your prospects who will buy within 2 years, but not from you.).

Buying Facilitation® – which employs a very unique skill set – has been used to run meetings, help “C” level people set strategy, negotiate, manage, supervise, and coach. It can be used to design scripts for telemarketers, or upfront as part of a software tool for change management. It is a decision facilitation model based on systems thinking, servant leadership, change management, and the ability to serve others. I call it a GPS system to lead folks through their decision making criteria. I’ve also developed a new form of contact sheet for marketing automation, to truly follow the buying decision path and offer the right data at the right time.

Learn Buying Facilitation® through an in-house training or a self-guided study. You can start with my 2 latest books: Dirty Little Secrets: why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell and what you can do about it; and/or Buying Facilitation®: the new way to sell that influences and expands decisions. But stop selling. Add Buying Facilitation® to your great sales skills.

Would you rather sell? Or have someone buy?

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

3-Day Public Training in Austin  June 14-16 Syllabus | Registration

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

The results of using Buying Facilitation® is a post from: SharonDrewMorgen.com

It’s been fascinating to me that the major players in the field  insist they ‘know’ the buyer’s decision path. In a recent interview with Jesse Noyes, Steve Woods made this comment:

Once you understand the data in context, you’re going to guide them through the overall buying process, which means more then sending them an email. It’s getting a Twitter message in front of them, getting a Facebook message in front of them, getting a targeted ad in front of them, getting social context involving their peers in front of them. (Underlining mine)

Let’s take this one piece at a time.

CURRENT LEAD/DEMAND GEN TECHNOLOGY DOESN’T FOLLOW BUY PATH

First of all, the way lead gen and marketing automation are currently set up, they are not guiding buyers through their ‘overall buying process,‘ merely the possible solution choice considerations at the tail end of the ‘buy path’.

Think about choosing a car. Does your ‘overall buying process’ begin with which car to choose? Or does it include conversations with your spouse, your decision to buy a new car now, or your changing needs? Think about moving. Is your ‘overall buying process’ about which house to choose?

Of course not. There is so much going on behind-the-scenes that enters the buyer’s decision making – people, relationships, feelings, vendors, timing, policies – that current marketing and selling vehicles don’t address that there is no way to follow a ‘buyer’s path’ with current automation tools, other than the solution-choice segment.

Remember that buyers are merely seeking to resolve a problem – they aren’t necessarily seeking to buy a solution. Until buyers make some basic decisions, engage the people who will touch the solution, recognize they cannot resolve the problem internally, and get appropriate buy-in for a purchase, we can do nothing but address what we see when they show up. We have absolutely no idea what is going on, or why, or what else might be needed except what we’re guessing. Indeed, when we send data we are merely making our best guesses.

On a conversation with one of the  heads of the two leading marketing automation companies, I asked:

• Do you know how the ‘buyer’ (and it’s not a buyer, is it? It’s merely a name.) you’re following is weighted on the Buying Decision Team?
• Do you know how many members of the Buying Decision Team are engaged (If they are not all on board, there will be no purchase)?
• Do you know what they are doing with the data you are sending them?
• Do you know at which stage of the buying decision path the person is on?
• Do you know who/what you are in competition with?

His answer: ‘There is no way to know any of that.’ Of course not – not with the model they currently use. So how, said I, are you guiding them through their ‘overall buying process’? [NOTE: I have developed a contact sheet that actually does follow and enroll leads through each of their buy-in stages. I'm looking for additional trial sites. Contact me: Sharondrew@newsalesparadigm.com]

PUTTING ‘IN FRONT OF’ DOESN’T MEAN THEY NEED THAT DATA, OR WILL READ IT

Next. They are sending WHAT to WHOM? Without knowing which stage of the internal change management and buy-in process buyers are in, or what they are doing with the data, or what they need the data for, or what types of data they need,  or who else might need data on their Buying Decision Team, you’re going to follow them on Facebook? Really? If they were looking at your site for some comparative data you’re going to follow them on Facebook? That’s all you have time to do? If they were just using your data to write a paper for school, you’re going to Tweet them? Really?

And what makes you think that because they looked around your site or took a webinar that they need the data you’ve chosen to send? or that they might be prospects?

The current marketing automation capability knows nothing of this. It’s certainly possible to influence and facilitate the entire buyer’s journey, but not the way marketing automation is collecting or scoring data.

Until or unless you get to the point where you can actually know exactly where the buyer is in their entire decision path (90% of which is not solution-related or needs-driven), marketing automation activity is not measuring true performance. It’s actually only monitoring the last bit of activity and ignoring the places where there is certainly a way to influence a purchase.

Why not help from the beginning stages – from the initial idea through to the complete Buying Decision Team agreement. I can do this. Can you? Because until you do, your performance is merely a fraction of what it could be – and so is your revenue.

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I’m seeking partners to do an A/B test on my new lead gen material. Contact me to discuss possibilities for trial. sharondrew@newsalesparadigm.com

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

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. In addition, you will also receive a bonus illustrated booklet.

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

3-Day Public Training in Austin  June 14-16 Syllabus | Registration

Marketing automation follows a small segment of the buying decision path is a post from: SharonDrewMorgen.com

SELLERS ENTER TOO EARLY

We fail to realize that we are only being brought in when they have all of their internal ducks in a row and are ready to bring in a change.  When buyers are

• considering all options and face confusion and internal politics,
• recognizing a problem and the timing on fixing it,
• doing research into possible vendors or solutions,
• figuring out which problems to resolve in which order,
• understanding how a new solution will create shifts in their culture and technology,
• figuring out who needs to be on the Buying Decision Team, the prospect isn’t ready to buy.

As sellers, we don’t realize that buyers have an incomplete understanding who to invite on the Buying  Decision Team when they begin their process (I write about this in my latest book Dirty Little Secrets: why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell and what you can do about it). The entire buying path is largely unknown up until close to the end of their decision – and until it is, they cannot make a purchase.

In fact, there are so many human issues that rear their ugly heads that a buyer really has no idea at the start who to involve, what the buy-in problems will be, nor what personal, corporate, or market issues will have to be resolved prior to making a purchase. And until they figure this out, they cannot buy, regardless of the efficacy of our solution.

SALES IGNORES THE BACK-END, NON-SOLUTION-RELATED  DECISION PATH

Sales gives us no skills to help with those back end decisions as they are not needs/solution-related. And we sit and wait while buyers figure it out. But Buying Facilitation® does: it’s a change management/decision facilitation model that gives you an additional skill set to lead buyers through their private issues that we’ve always sat and waited for them to complete.

No, it’s not sales, and it’s not solution-placement or needs-assessment — sales does a wonderful job of doing that. But add Buying Facilitation® to your sales skills, and enter the buyer’s decision path early and become a very active partner. You will:

• close 8x more sales;
• halve the close time;
• understand who is not a prospect on the first call;
• only go to meetings when the entire Buying Decision Team is involved (and you’ll help get all of the members included);
• rarely need a proposal, or be in a competitive situation.

Would you rather sell? or have someone buy? They are two different activities. Sales will only help you place your solution. Buying Facilitation® can lead the buyer through their decisions. Call to discuss how to become a part of the buyer’s buying journey.

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• Guided Study program for individuals or teams
• Learning Accelerators
• Buy the MP3′s of Sharon Drew making live phone prospecting and qualifying calls.

3-Day Public Training in Austin  June 14-16 Syllabus | Registration

Make the vendor an active partner from early in the buyer’s decision path is a post from: SharonDrewMorgen.com

From what I gather, the thinking behind this is to ‘be nearer the buyers.’

And what, exactly, does this give you? Have you checked your numbers to notice there isn’t a difference in your close rates?

You can organize by verticals to ‘understand the buyer’ better. You can organize by territory to be nearer your buyers. You can call for an appointment first, or do telemarketing. You can do lead scoring or group sales.

You will close no more than 7%, plus or minus 2%, from first call.

WHY CAN’T YOU CLOSE MORE SALES?

I’ll briefly lay out my thinking here: buyers – like everyone in a system – fight to maintain the status quo. It’s a scientific law called homeostasis. Until or unless there is internal agreement as to how the system will remain stable if there is a new solution brought in, buyers won’t buy.

By reorganizing around geographic areas to be closer to prospects, you’re assuming that

1. ‘relationship’ will close the deal,
2. buyers will buy if they like the seller
3. you need to get in front of prospects for them to choose you
4. the solution choice and needs assessment are the primary points within a buying decision (and can be best done face-to-face often).

#1. Relationship is important only when the buying team has already determined how to manage change and is assured of buy-in and a minimum disruption if there is to be a purchase. Then, and only then, will they prefer one seller over another so long as all else is equal.

#2. Ditto.

#3. Ditto.

#4. Buyers seek only to resolve a business problem. They are not seeking to buy anything – and won’t buy a thing without requisite buy-in across teams, departments, relationship history, and vendor loyalties. It’s not about the need: they will forgo fixing a problem if too many disruptions will occur as a result.

HOW ARE YOUR NUMBERS?

If you count your closed sales from the first contact – not from the first appointment – you’ll find that you close the same amount, regardless of where your sellers are located.

Stop selling. Regardless of where your sellers sit. Selling does not cause buying. Buying is an internal thing that demands decisions amongst peers, and change management, and old vendors, and historic in-fighting. Sales doesn’t handle this – but Buying Facilitation® does.

Help your buyers manage their internal decision path that is change related, not solution focused. You only need a phone, a focus on decision facilitation, the ability to help buyers navigate through their internal changes, and a good solution.

If you want to learn how to do it, call me and I’ll teach you Buying Facilitation®. Or you can continue moving your folks around and getting the same results.

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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

Musical sales people: moving sellers to be near buyers is irrelevant is a post from: SharonDrewMorgen.com

• to get rid of unworkable leads before handing them over to the sales team;
• to help leads bring together the entire BDT even from a one-way communication;
• to know exactly where prospects are on their buying path. But not using the current thinking.

CURRENT LEAD SCORING IS INSUFFICIENT

Here are a few questions for those of you using marketing automation and lead scoring:

• Do you know how viewed data is being used by your site visitors?
• Do you know which stage of the buying decision path they are on?
• Do you know which member of the Buying Decision Team has viewed/signed up on your site – and what percentage of the solution-choice vote they represent?
• Do you know who else will learn about your data – from a 3rd or 4th source – and what exactly is being transferred? Is it the right message?
• Do you know if all of the folks who will touch the solution are on board to purchase your solution?
• Do you know if the person you’re scoring, or nurturing, or calling for an appointment is the right person, or has the capability to buy or transfer your data to the right people?

And, drum roll, here is the big one: How much money/time/resource are you wasting by focusing on inappropriate leads – and potentially missing the right ones?

You don’t know?? How many of these questions do you not have answers to? Why not?

I’m here to tell that it’s possible. But not using the current marketing automation -> data collection -> lead scoring -> nurturing -> selling model as it is currently being used.

THE WRONG POINT IN THE BUY CYCLE

We use marketing automation, and collect/score data at the wrong point (the last, solution choice, segment) on the buying decision path. As a result, we are collecting insufficient data to sell and qualify with, not scoring leads properly, have too many inappropriate leads in our pipeline, and are not differentiating ourselves from our buyers.

The sales and marketing models merely focus on the last 10% of the buying decision – and by that point, most of the internal decisions that actually bias the solution choice have already been made.

ENTER EARLIER

Think about this differently by considering the questions buyers must have answers to before they can choose a solution:

• Are all of the Buying Decision Team members on board?
• Is everyone who touches the solution in agreement?
• What criteria will be used to choose one solution over another?
• How will you choose a new solution/provider over a familiar resources?

Until or unless all of the above questions are managed, no buying decision will be made.

As you think about adding some new capability to your current processes (and, btw, I’ve developed a very simple  process to add to your current marketing automation processes to manage, follow, and influence, the back-end), here are some questions to ask yourselves:

What do you need to be doing differently to enter the buyer’s path in their private decision-making places? How can you help buyers manage their internal change issues to free them up for purchasing your solution? What can you do to help buyers get their full Buying Decision Team on board and ready to buy?  How can you qualify appropriately and only spend time on those who are going to close?

Until you manage all of the above, you will be wasting a lot of time and resource, and losing prospects who would buy if they knew how.

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Let’s talk about my simple marketing automation solution that tells you where the buyer is on their buy cycle, and offers and collects the right data so they can be both served and sold to. sharondrew@newsalesparadigm.com

Read more about how buyers buy. Here are two sample chapters from Dirty Little Secrets: why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell and what you can do about it. Or just buy the book on amazon. com

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

Deliver the Right Content at the Right Stage of the Buy-Path is a post from: SharonDrewMorgen.com

Do you know which of the opportunities are the top 10 – and are you certain they are the top 10? How are you and your team – VP of sales, sales execs and managers – connecting with the prospects to know what they need to ‘be ready to buy’ ? How do you know, from where you are sitting, at what stage of the buying decision path they are on?

And how do you define ‘opportunity?’

THE FRONT END VS. THE BACK END OF THE BUYING PATH

Sales merely manages the last 10% of the buyer’s journey. It has no capacity to address the private, off-line, and often unconscious (certainly not based on needs or solution choice) aspects of a decision path that are, by definition, idiosyncratic. Sales was designed merely to assess need and place a solution.

Here are a few things buyers must do before they can buy. As I introduce each one, see if you can determine where your buyer is on this path, because until they complete each of these they will not buy, regardless of their needs or how well your solution fits, or how much ‘pain’ they are in.

1. get all of the right people onto the Buying Decision Team (BDT). Each BDT member brings their own criteria for a solution, and the solution requirements will not be stabilized until everyone puts in their 2 cents. Presenting from, or gathering data from, anything less than the whole BDT will result in insufficient data to choose a solution – or pitch – on.
2. get buy-in from everyone who will touch the solution. If a solution is chosen without the requisite buy-in, the system will face massive chaos/disruption.
3. all of the people, policies, historic vendors, old technology, systems issues, must know how they will shift when something new is added. Will they need to outsource staff? Where? When? Who? Who will supervise? Project lead? What happens to their current work load?

Just because we see a problem and have a great solution, doesn’t mean the buyer is ready, willing, and able to buy – otherwise you’d close a lot more sales.

Why are prospects in your pipeline?

What criteria of yours have placed them there?

How accurate are you with your projections? And why aren’t they more accurate?

What’s the difference between someone who will buy and someone who might initially look like a buyer but isn’t? And how do you know the difference?

So long as you place prospects in your pipeline because you believe 1. the buyer is ready, 2. they have the money, 3. they know they need your solution, and/or 4. they like you and are in ‘pain’, you will have a wildly fluctuating success rate.

Here is what you should know before putting a prospect onto the pipeline:

1. that every single one of the Buying Decision Team members is on board, and bought in to making a change and a purchase;
2. that there is a change management/implementation plan – that the seller is a part of – for when the solution will be purchased;
3. that any of the buy-in or change problems are addressed with anyone who will touch the solution;
4. that all existing technology and jobs that will be effected by the solution will be somehow included into the solution purchase so there are no loose ends or mystery.

Just because a seller thinks a buyer is ready doesn’t mean the prospect belongs in the pipeline.

Manage your pipeline by managing the buying decision path. Otherwise, your forecasting is ineffective. Buying Facilitation® will teach you how to manage the buying journey and understand exactly when, who, why, and how the solution will be purchased. Then you can forecast with accuracy.

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Fire up your sales folks at your next sales conference, have Sharon Drew give your keynote.

Look at our Learning Accelerators to add some new skills to your sales so you can manage your pipeline effectively.

Learn how buyer’s decide: read two sample chapters of Sharon Drew’s latest book Dirty Little Secrets.

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

Pipeline management: is your forecasting accurate? is a post from: SharonDrewMorgen.com

But actually, that is exactly what happens: you are missing income on the sales you aren’t closing. But if you based your efforts on the buyer’s decision paths rather than your solution, you can be closing a helluva lot more sales.

THE COST OF NOT ADDRESSING THE BUYER’S JOURNEY

If you could keep the commission you’re now on, and close twice as many sales, would you?

If you could close your business in half the time, leaving you time to close more, would you?

If you could close all of the prospects who would buy and avoid spending time on all of  the prospects/leads who will never buy, would you?

If you could only spend time on those people who you accurately qualify as buyers on the first call, would you?

If you could only respond to those RFPs who will choose you, would you?

If you could get 4x more prospects to want an appointment with you – and speak with folks who are eager to connect with you -  would you?

If you only went on appointments when the entire Buying Decision Team was present, and only need to make one appointment before you close the deal, would you?

If you needed to learn a new skill to do all of the above, would you?

So why aren’t you?

Just asking.

FACILITATE THE BUYING DECISION FIRST, THEN PLACE SOLUTION

With Buying Facilitation® as a front end – and yes, a new skill to learn as it is a change management model that works with sales - you can do all of the above.

But you’d have to learn something new. What is it worth to you?

And yes, this is an unmitigated plug for Buying Facilitation®. I’ve heard too many people this week tell me that they don’t get paid for helping the buyer manage their buying decision journey. And that’s just not true: they do get paid for what they are closing – and not getting paid for what they are losing.

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Easy ways to learn Buying Facilitation®:

Buy Dirty Little Secrets Bundle and read the tactical and strategic sides  of the model.

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

Buy a Learning Accelerator for just those areas you’d like to brush up on (i.e. prospecting, managing objections, etc.).

Or get really bold, and learn the whole model with the Guided Study program.

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The Buyer’s Decision Path: why it’s important to sellers is a post from: SharonDrewMorgen.com

As we continue to seek better ways to do the same things that failed before ( look at the numbers below, all industry numbers or from averages of my global clients) I think our industry might be facing extinction.

We continue to ‘understand’ more and ‘push’ harder, follow footprints and nuture. But our close rates remain well below 10% because we are focusing on the wrong end of the buying decision journey.  Can you imagine any other industry where a lower-than-10% success rate is deemed ‘success’? Would you go on a plane with that success rate? Or visit a doc?

THE HARD REALITY

• We close .6758% of our leads if we begin the dialogue by seeking an appointment.
• We close 17% of the prospects we get appointments with – but we lose over 90% of the full spectrum of prospects by seeking appointments as our first outcome.
• When using conventional (i.e. non marketing automation) sales, we close 7% and have closed this number consistently for decades, regardless of the sales model.
• We spend 90% of our time scoring/nurturing leads/names – 93% of whom won’t buy using conventional sales approaches; 25% of  the total would buy if they were facilitated earlier in their buying journey.
• We close 10% of our proposals, wasting 90% of our time.
• We waste 85% of our time attempting to present to prospects who have claimed ‘interest’ but are nowhere near ready to buy.
• 80% of our prospects will buy a solution similar to ours within 2 years of speaking with us – but not from us because they haven’t figured out how to buy/change and get the appropriate buy-in.

The problems causing all of the above statistics are all based on where, how, and why, we enter the buyer’s world. We are

1. entering at the back end of the buying journey,
2. treating ’needs’ as if they were isolated events rather than part of a functioning system,
3. ignoring the behind-the-scenes, political and relationship issues buyers must address before they can buy,
4. acting as if they have already completed their change management piece and are merely choosing the best solution,
5. entering too early with a solution when it takes time for the entire Buying Decision Team to form is the length of the sales cycle; no purchase will happen until all of their input is included in a solution choice.

With a focus on needs assessment and solution placement, we sit helplessly while our buyers are facing confusion along the route of their ever-more-complex buying journeys. With marketing automation keeping us out of the loop until late in the buy cycle, we don’t have the personal ability to influence buying behavior as we once did.

And we have little capability to qualify – regardless of the selling model used. We’re kinda assuming that because it LOOKS like it might be a lead, that it IS a lead. But it’s merely a name. In fact, sales is becoming transactional.

FOCUS ON INFLUENCING THE BUYING JOURNEY, NOT MAKING THE SALE

Buying Facilitation™ can dramatically shift these numbers because we enter differently and at a far earlier place, use different skills, have different goals and outcomes, and get very very different responses and results.

Someone recently asked me why the sales community fights with me, when all that’s necessary is adding a front end to what is already being done. My answer: I have no idea.

Stop fighting me. Unless you love the results your getting and aren’t wasting more than, oh, 15% of your time on deals that won’t close, or don’t mind losing prospects that could become buyers if you managed the entire buying decision journey from the start.

If you were 100 pounds overweight, would you fight a doc that tells you you need to lose weight? You can see that problem and at least believe that losing weight would be a great idea. But when I give you the numbers in the selling industry, you fight and tell me that you want to continue failing. You tell me that those numbers don’t apply to you. Or YOU do it so much better, but your teammates don’t. Or you start counting from your presentation.

WHY CARE ABOUT THE BUYING DECISION JOURNEY?

Why does helping the buying decision journey give you different numbers?

• Because the time it takes the buyer to recognize and manage all of the internal people/policy issues that will shift as a result of a purchase is the length of the buy cycle.
• Because until all of the Buying Decision Team members are on board they don’t even know the full fact pattern of their need.
• Because they will say ‘no’ to an appointment until they have a handle on the internal change management issues and the folks who need to be involved.
• Because unless you are able to use your first call to help prospects set up their Buying Decision Team, you will continue to have 3 or 4 meetings over 6 months rather than get an appointment with the full Buying Decision Team on the first – and possibly only – meeting.
• Because you are pitching, presenting, and proposing the wrong information – or information they do not know they need yet, or information that has not-enough people to understand at an early place in the decision cycle.

So you’ll close much, much quicker if you enter as a decision facilitator. You will find buyers who didn’t think they were ready and help them get ready quickly (and no, it’s not solution-focused). You will find prospects who didn’t know they were prospects, and get rid of those who really aren’t ever going to be buyers… on the first call. You will make the right appointment with the right people and the right folks will show up.

No more time wasting. No more sequenced appointments as the whole team gets on board. No more following bad leads. No more waiting for sales to close, with an inability to forecast.

That’s why you should care about the buying decision journey. That’s why you should add Buying Facilitation™ to the front end of what you are doing now. Otherwise, marketing automation is going to take over your job. And maybe then you’ll end up on the buy side with  your new job, and understand what I’ve been talking about all these years.

Just saying.

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Want to learn Buying Facilitation™? check out these learning products.

• MP3 – audios in which I prospect, cold call, etc.
• Learning Accelerators – learn specific bits of Buying Facilitation™
• Guided Study – learn the entire Buying Facilitation Method®

Learn Buying Facilitation™ | Implement Buying Facilitation™ | License Buying Facilitation™

Fighting for Failure: why modern sales practices are illogical is a post from: SharonDrewMorgen.com

Does your buyer know the answers to these questions? Because until they do, they won’t buy. And, even if you think you know the answers – which would be impossible as they are personal and idiosyncratic to each buying environment – that doesn’t help the prospect manage their status quo, which is a hands-on, trial-and-error exercise.

I bet you thought that because they have a problem/pain/need and you have a solution, that your prospects are ready to buy. Or because you did a great presentation and they seemed to like you. But you would have closed a lot more sales if it were that simple.

WHAT DOES A BUYER NEED BEFORE THEY CAN BUY?

What, exactly, does a buyer need to do to get ready to make a purchase?

Here are a few things that are essential for buyers to handle to be ready to buy. But do not, not for a moment, think that the sales model you are using will help the buyer get ready. Because the internal, off-line, idiosyncratic stuff they must manage is not needs-related, and cannot be resolved by a purchase. It’s a systems problem that can only be managed by the system.

Here are the issues buyers must manage before they are ready to buy:

1. get all of the Buying Decision Team on board. That means, everyone who will touch the solution. This is not as simple as it seems. And buyers don’t know at the start who needs to be involved. But unless everyone lends their voices, no purchase will happen.

2. in regards to how the system (the people, functions, relationships, job descriptions, etc.)will function once something new enters, understand the difference between what needs to change, what cannot change, and what will change – and how to mitigate these.

3.  discover who needs to buy-in, when, to what extent, and what role do they play as the Buying Decision Team is formed, and then when a new solution would come aboard.

4. manage the change – and recognize and manage each potential problem before the solution is purchased. Otherwise there will be unknowable disruption. And the system the buyers live in is sacrosanct – or they would have known how to fix their problem earlier.

5. get appropriate buy-in, including people, policies, politics, old vendors, and make sure the new solution melds with their current solutions.

6. check out all possibilities for a fix – with a bias toward finding familiar vendors  used in the past.

7. organize the new roles, responsibilities, initiatives, and internal politics, and begin managing the potential fallout.

8. understand when all internal stuff is complete and know when to move forward – taking into account all of the criteria of all of the players (current and future).

On www.en.mimi.hu there is a definition that I find lacking: “Buyer readiness stages: categorize consumers  in terms of how close they are to making a purchase or a decision. Stages range from initial awareness, through to interest, desire and, finally, action.”

I believe that that definition ignores the entire back end of the buyer’s change management journey and is quite limited.

Let’s start a discussion on Buyer Readiness. I’ll start a new site. Let’s develop some models and training materials. I believe this is important for Qualifying and shortening the sales cycle.

The big question is: what do you need to be doing differently to help buyers enter into Buyer Readiness early in the buying journey? Given it’s not currently part of the sales model, how will you approach this? May I, ahem, suggest you read one of my books, or listen to some of my podcasts. And when you get convinced that you need skills in addition to your sales skills, you can contact me.

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Books:

• 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

Recent Posts

• Buying Facilitation™ is a Method not just a term
• Why do we get pushback – and can it be avoided?
• Provocation-based selling:proving pain does not close a sale

Learn Buying Facilitation™ | Implement Buying Facilitation™ | License Buying Facilitation™

Buyer Readiness: teach the buyer to qualify themselves is a post from: SharonDrewMorgen.com

Before new decisions get made, the status quo – the underlying system of rules, beliefs, relationships, etc. - must (by the very nature of homeostasis) buy-in to the proposed change or it will resist and push back. And the time it takes for buy-in to occur is the length of the change cycle. Or, in sales, the length of the sales cycle.

I was running my start-up at the time and noticed that staff didn’t have the flexibility they needed and prospects took far too long to make buying decisions. Before this I had been in sales for many years and had just assumed that buyers were making dumb decisions. But in my company I realized the problem: within people systems (as in all systems), the status quo prevailed regardless of the efficacy of the need to change. Any proposed change either didn’t happen, or it took too long. The system certainly pushed back when it felt attacked – rightly or wrongly.

HOW BUYING FACILITATION® GOT DEVELOPED

I then spent quite a bit of time developing a decision navigation method (much like a neutral GPS system) that would help people navigate through their unconscious and conscious criteria to get the internal buy-in necessary to comfortably change and consider adopting a new solution. I added this skill set to all communications with my team, clients, partners, and prospects.

With prospects, it helped them get their ducks in a row and helped them manage  relationship issues, internal politics, old vendor issues – whatever would have to happen to tolerate change (which is what a new solution is). I realized that as a sales person my prospects were doing this anyway – without me, and very inefficiently – as I waited for them to buy.

This method is based on brain function: how brains store information, and how criteria for choice can be discovered and re-weighted. I uncovered the systems behind the sequences of decisions, and developed a new form of question (Facilitative Question) as the main skill, along with Systems Listening.

By using this method, I made it possible for sellers (or managers, or lawyers) to act as a GPS device – and a servant leader – and help people navigate through all of those mysterious behind-the-scenes places they’d need to get buy-in from (many not related to a problem, need, or solution choice) before they’d change, or buy.

I had to name this methodology, and decided not to use a ‘sales’ term since the method was not a needs assessment or solution placement skill, but used as an adjunct to sales. I decided to call this  Buying Facilitation® as a way to

1. differentiate it from sales and sales vocabulary
2. keep it close enough to sales so that sellers would recognize an agreeable complement
3. use the term ‘buying’ as it was close to the ’buy-in’ necessary as part of change management.

I used this model to help buyers recognize and handle their buying decision issues, but also to manage staff, take care of problems with my husband, and run meetings. I realized at the time that it was an ubiquitous methodology useful for all people to make their own best decisions (I eventually coined the term a ‘decision facilitation’ model as a way to describe it), from criteria-out rather than from information-in. In my own business, it helped buyers buy somewhere around 800% more efficiently- I doubled my business every year.

Through the ensuing years, I refined the method. It now includes many unique skills that can be taught to enable parents and children, doctors and patients, sellers and buyers, colleagues at meetings, to work together and make choices based on agreed-upon criteria that is often unspoken, but necessary to include as a decision gets made.  It operates as a Change Management function with unique skill set that I have trained in dozens of organizations (about 20,000 people) as part of sales training.

BUYING FACILITATION® HAS VERY UNIQUE SKILL SETS

Here are some of the unique skills that comprise the Buying Facilitation® method  model:

• Listening for Systems;
• Decision Sequencing;
• Formulating Facilitative Questions [note: Sharon Drew coined the term Facilitative Questions but did not trademark that term. It involves a very unique capability to use different parts of the brain to gather and manage unconscious criteria so new choices match beliefs and get buy-in for change. This term has now been co-opted into the world, and has been redefined to be just another term for 'questioning.' Outside of my programs, the intended meaning/usage has been lost]
• Formulating Presumptive Summaries

These skills are quite complex, as they are skills not consciously used in conventional thinking or decision making, but mirror what is actually happening when decisions get made.

For most of the last 20 years, the word ‘facilitation’ was generally not used within the sales universe. In fact, when I used it as part of my company name (Morgen Facilitations, Inc), my training programs (learning facilitation), and my change management consulting (change facilitation), I was made fun of for using a term no one understood. “Too long a word” I was told.

Recently, the field of sales has developed a new focus on buying decisions, buying support, and the buyer’s journey – all things ‘buying decision’ oriented. Unfortunately, the term Buying Facilitation® appears to be similar to other terms now being used to define a solution-focused buyer’s journey.

For those hoping to use the term Buying Facilitation® to represent that part of the vendor and solution choice process buyers go through as part of their purchasing decision, I offer the following choices:

1. buying decision
2. buyer facilitation
3. buying decision journey
4. buyer’s decision process
5. buyer’s journey
6. buying process management

Or if you want to use Buying Facilitation®,  use the term properly defined, as I have defined it in 7 books, over 1000 articles,  450 blog posts and 100 newsletters over the past 20 years, on my websites and very very thoroughly in my latest book Dirty Little Secrets.

Like Facilitative Questions, if this term is not protected to define the method, it will get subsumed and become just another set of  words used in sales, rather than a change management methodology: a very unique, complex set of skills that sellers can use to help buyers navigate through their off-line, non-purchase decisions.

To set the record straight, here is  the legal definition:

Buying Facilitation® designates very specific set of  systems-based skills that help buyers (and anyone) navigate through the full range of their behind-the-scenes change management and decision issues – usually not need- or solution-related but based on internal relationships, politics, rules, etc. necessary for change: pre-purchase, pre-needs assessment, pre-solution choice…pre sales.

To get a complete understanding of the method, get my latest book Dirty Little Secrets: why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell and what you can do about it.

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Join Me Tomorrow Free Webinar, Focus Roundtable: March 22, 4:00 PM ET – Has Selling Become Very Complex?

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

Or listen to Sharon Drew’s audio learning that shows you how to facilitate prospecting, problem solving, change management, and fund raising conversations.

Buying Facilitation® is a Method not just a term is a post from: SharonDrewMorgen.com