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

I believe we are currently paying our sales folks to waste 90% of their time. They are spending time  pushing solution information to the wrong people at the wrong time, and have no idea who will actually close until, well, until they don’t.

With its focus on placing solutions, the current sales model (including marketing automation) has no way to manage the natural resistance of groups while they figure out their pre-purchase change management strategies. Sellers merely catch the low hanging fruit and the sales model does not faciliate the buyer’s complete – and confusing - decision path.

If we were paying sellers according to what  they SHOULD be closing they’d be earning a fraction of what they are earning. In reality, we can  close twice as much business with half the sales force.

EXTENDING EXPECTATION: SELLERS SHOULD BE CLOSING MORE

Unfortunately, we start off by assuming that if we find folks who COULD buy our solution, and have a recognized NEED, that they are prospects. If this were true, we’d be closing a helluva lot more sales.

Sellers spend 90% of their time attempting to close sales that will never close. The sales model doesn’t offer a skill set to help buyers with the part that keeps them from buying: they must manage their confusing, political change management issues along their decision path. And yet the field resists learning Buying Facilitation®:  As someone recently said to me: Why should I bother learning how to help buyers manage their change issues when I already make a good salary closing the paltry sum I’m closing?

According to Forrester, 80% of our prospects buy a solution similar to ours (or ours) within 2 years of having contact with a sales rep. What does this tell us? The time it takes buyers to get their ducks in a row to get internal agreement to buy is the length of the sales cycle. We must add a skill set to help facilitate the buy-in journey and actually teach buyers how to find their ducks and get them quacking.

EXPAND THE SALES JOB TO ENCOMPASS THE ENTIRE DECISION PATH

Our prospects aren’t buyers. Typical closing rates are  less than 10%  (7% in conventional sales; less than 1% from marketing automation; 2% in banking and insurance). When we close,  we are merely showing up around the time the buyer shows up with their checkbook and have already done their behind-the-scenes work.

The statistical average of closing a sale by following each prospect with an apparent need (15 calls over 9 months) is greater than what we’re actually closing. By containing our sales activities to the solution choice, we fail to close all those who will buy once they get their internal buy-in.

A seller’s performance and pay is currently dependent on whether or not a buyer is ready, willing, and able to buy AT THE TIME THE SELLER IS FOLLOWING THEM.  Using the sales model, we have no idea who is going to buy at the start of the  sales journey.

Apparently, companies assume

• there is no way to tell who will buy,
• it’s not possible to enter the private world buyers live in to  enable them to manage, their decision path more quickly,
• buyers are stupid or they’d buy more/better/faster,
• it’s not a sellers fault if prospects they have been following (and are most probably in the pipeline) don’t buy.

Why not assume that the performance of the sales folks is poor because of  the sales model itself. By merely addressing the last 10% of  the buyer’s decision, and with no skills that would  faciliate the entire buying journey, starting with the buy-in, change management, political issues buyers must manage before they can buy, we are not making it easy for buyers (who need a solution to manage merely a portion of their internal problems). Indeed, adding Buying Facilitation® to the front end of sales skills mitigates the buy-in issues by adding facilitation skills.

BUYING FACILITATION® FACILITATES THE BUYING DECISION JOURNEY

Imagine if the sales job was to first enter the behind-the-scenes buying decision path and help buyers navigate through all of the non-needs-related decisions they must make and buy-in they must get (focusing on internal relationships, politics, strategies, etc) en route to choosing a solution. Then they would collapse the time it takes for buy-in to happen by half, and triple the number of folks who buy.

Imagine if sellers were paid only on closed sales (rather than spending over 90% of their activity on chasing leads/prospects who will never close) with an assumption that it’s possible to close 5x what they are currently closing?

Imagine if sellers started a conversation by helping manage buy-in. They’d know, from first call, exactly who would close and only spend time on buyers.

Sellers can increase their performance by at least a factor of 5. Knowing this, would you still keep paying them the same base salary? or continue hiring more sales folks to get the sales you need?

Is it worth a test to trial Buying Facilitation® to a pilot group and see the difference? Call me and we’ll discuss options. Then you can pay your sellers what they are really worth — a lot.

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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; get an MP3 to hear Sharon Drew using the model; contact us to learn about training your sales folks.

Buying Facilitation® licensing program: July 1-7, Austin TX.

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

What are we paying our sales folks to do? is a post from: SharonDrewMorgen.com

REALLY? BUYERS BUY BECAUSE THEY ARE IN PAIN? REALLY?

I found the article ruefully humorous. Here are some of the smartest business minds in the country who have fallen victim to the conventional hype that buyers must discover their pain in order to be ready to buy. Indeed, in this article they suggest that you provoke them into buying: “Provocation-based selling helps customers see their competitive challenges in a new light that makes addressing specific painful problems unmistakenly urgent.”

How silly. This goes back to the age-old pain-principle.  According to the authors, if a vendor can identify a process critical for the buyer in the current environment (and this assumes the buyer hasn’t figured this out) and developed a ‘compelling point of view on how it was broken and what it meant in terms of cost, and then connected the problem to the solution’ then the buyer will be provoked into a purchase.

Haven’t we been doing this for decades? And our success rate has been…..  7%.

SALES TREATS A PROBLEM AS IF IT WERE AN ISOLATED EVENT

Think about this for a moment. Targeting pain as the reason to make a sale assumes that:

1. the buyer or company doesn’t recognize the severity of the problem they have;
2. the seller knows better than the prospect the ins-and-outs of the problem, causes, choices, and internal politics to choosing the timing on a fix;
3. they haven’t tried to fix this before, or aren’t in the process of choosing a fix, or have a work-around for it that’s good-enough for now;
4. there aren’t a whole lotta systems issues tied up in the status quo that would need to be resolved first – or that these can be resolved immediately;
5. an outsider (and a stranger at that) can manipulate [Oops. Sorry. Provoke.] their way in to a buyer’s environment, have the answer, and expect to be trusted, believed, or listened to, and that everyone on the Buying Decision Team is sitting and waiting for someone to show up so that everything currently in place can be dismantled because SuperSeller has appeared.

For those of you who have been reading my posts for years, you know what I’m going to say. Until or unless a buyer recognizes and manages all of the back-end, private, behind-the-scenes issues they need to address to get the buy-in to make a change, they will do nothing.

If I provoked you, could I get you to go to the gym more? I can certainly make a case for it. What about changing your hairstyle? Can I provoke you into changing your selling style?

CAN I PROVOKE YOU INTO LEARNING BUYING FACILITATION(TM)?

I can make an amazing case for you to be using Buying Facilitation™! Indeed – I can triple your sales, halve your sales cycle, and get rid of all objections. I really can (lots of testimonials). Soooo can I provoke you? Can I show you numbers that you’re not tracking? Oh. I’ve done that. Can I explain how managing the buying decision journey will turn leads into prospects on the first call, and teach them how to close a couple of calls later, with no meetings, proposals, or appointments? Oh. I”ve done that. Geesh. Haven’t I provoked you enough… and you’re not buying?

Please. Continuing to focus the sales effort on different ways to get a buyer to take action, rather than add the capability of assisting them in managing their entire pre-sales buying journey, makes no sense. A purchase is not an isolated situation, but demands a systemic approach to change management.

We all know that the sales model is horribly broken, and yields very poor results. Why keep finding ways to push harder and harder? The definition of insanity is…..   And we all know systems theory: every system will maintain its status quo (homeostasis) until or unless the system knows how to shift without disruption and will easily incorporate the change. Hence the failure of sales.

Stop trying to provoke, push, get an appointment, understand needs, be in relationship, get in the door or to the top, be an advisor, be a consultant – all of that is just a Trojan Horse to make a sale. Be a real consultant. Put on a GPS hat and be the lead dog in helping your prospect manage their change issues first so they get buy-in from the Buying Decision Team. Then there is no need to be provocative.

Just saying…

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Choose to learn one of the new skills of Buying Facilitation™: our Learning Accelerators are designed to help you upgrade any of your current sales skills.

Or, listen to an MP3 of Sharon Drew using Buying Facilitation™ on real calls.

Provocation-based selling:proving pain does not close a sale 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

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

You think you know what your problem is. But you don’t know what it is. And that is a problem!

Whenever I work with sales teams I will ask them what their sales process is. They’ll usually say something like ‘lead generation, meet with prospect, identify the problem, propose a solution, keep pushing (and offering more “value”) until they decide.’

Though there is something inherently wrong with that whole process, the problem I’d like to talk about today is “problems” themselves.

The Salesperson’s Problem

Today salespeople are being pushed hard by their companies. They have to deliver ever increasing sales quotas with less and less support. So they fear wasting any time with a prospect.

To that end, when they get into the “identify the problem” stage of the sales process they look for the first “problem” the client presents, at which point the salesperson kicks out a solution-proposal and is off to the next appointment.

Will they win most of the proposals they put out there? No. in fact they will get anywhere from 5% to 15% if they are lucky. Such low closing ratios only increase the belief that they need to see “more prospects”.  After all with such miserable ratios, how else are they supposed to make quota?

The Problem with Solving Problems

But let’s step back and look at this logically. The client obviously had the salesperson in because they believed that the salesperson could help them solve a problem. And the client will ultimately buy (or do) something to solve a problem. So, was the problem with the solution offered OR was the problem with the “problem” itself?

As I tell my clients, “people’s biggest problem is that they don’t know what their biggest problem is.” This means that the problem people tell you up front is not the deep problem they need or even want to solve.

A Story about Problems and Levels

A few years ago I was meeting with an HR manager. After we had built some rapport we began to discuss the problems of the company. She said their biggest issue was “turnover.”

“Turnover” is what I call a “Level One problem”. It is generic and meaningless. It describes a current result, not the real problem of the company and certainly not the real problem of the HR Manager. However, most salespeople would try to sell a “turnover” solution at this point…and they’d get shot down.

The Problems beneath the Surface

In this case “turnover” acted like one of those Russian nesting dolls (one inside the other) that held all of the deeper problems and kept them out of sight. In order to determine a useful solution for the HR Manager I had to open the “doll” and see the deeper problems.

I discovered that a deeper problem was the fact that they were suffering a large turnover in their mid-level managers. The average staying time of a newly hired mid-level manager was 18 months.

We were now at a Level Three or Four Problem.

As I continued, I found out that it cost $60,000 to hire each Manager, $25,000 to train them, and $150,000 to compensate them annually. This meant they were out $310,000 each time a manger left. And they had lost 12 managers a year for the last two years. A net loss of $7,440,000.

We were now at a Level Five or Six Problem.

Picking Apart the Problem Pile

The work teams in the company were built around these managers. Each time a manager left there was chaos in the team. There was also a lack of faith on the part of the team members every time a new manager was assigned to them.

This chaos and loss of faith had created a 10% drop in productivity in the teams, which meant a 10% drop in profitability. This equated to a $14,000,000 loss for them.

We were now at a Level Seven or Eight Problem.

The loss of productivity and profitability had lost them customers and, ultimately, led to them dropping from second place in their market to a distant fourth.

The Real Problem

We were at the Level Ten Problem for the company. However, I still had to get to her Level Ten Problem, so I kept asking questions.

Finally, I learned that they had already done two rounds of layoffs in the company.

The HR manager knew if things didn’t change soon there would be more layoffs. She realized her staff, all of whom were paid significantly less than she was, could cover her work if she was gone, so she knew she’d be gone in the next round of layoffs.

She was a single-mom of two boys, and she couldn’t afford to lose her job.

Now we were at her Level Ten Problem.

A New POV on the Problem

From this new vantage point, level ten versus level one, I was able to see a much bigger picture of what was going on, and the HR manager also had a new perspective. This allowed us to have a completely different conversation then she had with any other salesperson she’d spoken to and it allowed me to offer a different solution, which was accepted with little effort.

The moral here is that no one, not even you, knows what their “real problem” is. It takes an outsider with the curiosity, compassion and, most importantly, patience to help us see it.

So, forget about trying to meet with 10 prospects so you can propose 10 solutions to 10 problems. Instead focus on one prospect and take their “problem” 10 levels deep.

—–

Erik Luhrs is the author of BE DO SALE and the creator of The GURUS Selling System.

Guest Post: You know what your problem is? is a post from: SharonDrewMorgen.com

We give prospects our time, our respect, our knowledge. We call them on time, we follow  up with information. We dote on them. Truly we do. Hoping, hoping, hoping, that this one, THIS ONE, will close. Because they all begin with the same possibility, we believe that each one will close. We’re always surprised when they disappear. No rhyme or reason, it seems. So what, exactly, does a buyer owe us? Nothing.

Indeed, we’re not treated well. When sellers approach prospects to sell a solution they really need it’s all about us: we want something from them. Oh, sure, we’re nice – helpful, understanding, supportive. But we end up getting disrespected because we’ve attempted to enter their ‘closed system’ (see Dirty Little Secrets to understand a buyer’s environment and why they push back). Until a system knows how to seek and accept change – and a new solution is change – it will avoid anything from the outside trying to make change happen.

Interestingly, when I began developing and using Buying Facilitation™, and after years of being treated like a sales person (with impatient indifference), I was quite surprised to discover the respect I got. Because I  helped prospects peruse their status quo to

• find missing pieces (in the area my solution resolves but not necessarily directly related),
• recognize how their own internal systems could resolve them,

I was acting like a true business consultant – not just telling them about a new solution or proving how they could be more successful. It was fascinating to me the respect I got.

CASE STUDY IN RESPECT

Here is a simple example of the difference between me being totally disrespectful to a cold caller, and how I would have made the same call (yes, even on a cold call) that would have gotten me respect. Years ago, in the days when we paid per minute for phone calls, I got a cold call from a man selling cheap minutes.

“Hey. What provider are you using for your phone,” he began. Really. That was his opening.

SDM: Why? “Because I’ve got a cheaper solution for you.”

SDM: Cheap is not my criteria.

“Why not? It should be. It’s mine.”

SDM: Great. YOU buy your solution.

And I hung up on him. He could complain at how rude I was, but I was just responding to the rules of the conversation he initiated: he interrupted my day to push his solution on me – something I saw no need for – and then made me wrong!

Here is how he could have done it and gotten my interest, and respect.

SELLER: Hi. My name is John from ‘Cheaper Minutes’ and this is a sales call. I sell telephone services. Can you tell me if your current phone provider gives you all the services and prices you’re comfortable with?

SDM: Sure. I like my provider a lot. While not the cheapest, they give me great service, the system never goes down, my bills are always accurate, they take my calls without keeping me on hold forever, and they effortlessly make whatever changes I need them to make. So net net, I’m a happy camper.

SELLER: Good for you! Wow. It’s not often that I hear someone say they are happy with their provider. Impressive.

SDM: It is impressive. I have a long history of hating phone companies. This has been refreshing.

SELLER: We are a new company that operates a new way, with very high end customer service, and better pricing than the larger providers are able to offer. Given our focus on customer service and much lower pricing, how would you know that we might offer you a service worth considering?

SDM: I guess I’m afraid to rock the boat. I wouldn’t mind having the service be cheaper – I make a lot of out-of-state calls and my bills are pretty high. But I don’t know how I’d know before switching that you could match the service I’m getting.

SELLER: What would you need to see from me, or know about us, to know if we could meet your criteria? Obviously, it wouldn’t make sense for you to switch if you wouldn’t get the service you require.

SDM: Do you have any happy customers who would be willing to speak with me?

Do you see the difference? In one, I’m being pushed into a purchase. And sure, it’s a telemarketing call. But it’s possible to help buyers make buying decisions even on a telemarketing call. Working from the buying decision end rather than starting from a solution focus makes it likely that the buyer will treat the seller respectfully. Even in a large, complex sale, sellers unfortunately start from the ‘needs assessment’ end of the spectrum because they seek to place a solution rather than help buyers decide how to make a change. But starting with facilitating a decision changes the entire conversation.

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What’s the buyer’s responsibility? is a post from: SharonDrewMorgen.com

Most of you would laugh, tell me I’m wrong, that the sales model has been shifting and that the Internet has ‘changed everything.’  But what, exactly, has it changed?

I believe that basically, sales has not changed since the beginning. Sure, the bells and whistles have changed: it’s far, far easier to get leads and interest; it’s much simpler to get your message out; it’s much quicker to find out whatever you need to find out about prospects. It seems to appear as if buyer’s buying decisions are different (they aren’t, we just know more).  But all of this leads to… leads to what?

At the end of the day, the buyer still has to buy. At the end of the day, until the buyer says ‘Yes’ and gives you a check, you haven’t made a sale. And all of your permission marketing, spin, digital body language, lead generation, and understanding of who and why and when and if a buyer buys,  does little more than find the prospect, follow the external activities of the prospect, and then hopes – yes hopes – that the buyer will come back and choose you.

What the sales model still does not handle at all is the How.

• How does the buyer recognize and manage all of the internal elements that must be addressed so s/he can get the necessary buy-in to make a purchase or resolve a problem?
• How does the buyer align the department heads with the budget issues and the partners?
• How do the old vendors get re-chosen or deleted?
• How does the prospect meld the old technology with the new, and ensure that there is still enough work for the tech guys, 0r make sure that the users still are on board when they don’t like the new software?

Because until or unless all of this takes place, until or unless there is buy-in, until or unless the buying environment is able to agree to bring in something new (a solution) and ensure that the ‘new thing’ won’t permanently damage their current working environment, they will not buy.

And there is no sales model that helps the buyer manage the off-line, behind-the-scenes decision issues. Because the sales model is perfect for understanding and assessing needs, digitally following the observable buying behaviors, and placing a solution. But it still, with all of our technology, cannot influence the prospect’s private discussions and meetings that greatly bias the buying decision.

As my friend Roger Cauvin says, “The pain is in the buying decision process.”

ENTER BUYING FACILITATION®

Until Buying Facilitation® there has never been a way to attend or have influence over the private ‘stuff’ that goes on that we are never privy to. But make no mistake: the buyer has to manage these internal issues, these relationships and political mine fields.

Just like you couldn’t walk by a great house and walk in and buy it, and then go home and tell your spouse that you just bought a house and now you’ll be moving, buyers can’t just recognize a great solution and bring it in. People must buy-in. Technology must work around it. The work-arounds that hold the current problem in place must be re-directed. Sales doesn’t do that. You can’t do that. But the time it takes buyers to come up with their own answers is the length of the sales cycle. And you asking them how it’s done, or who decides it is still acting from a needs analysis/solution placement head set: even if you know how it’s done (which even the buyer doesn’t – read my newest book Dirty Little Secrets), or who the decision makers are (which the buyer doesn’t know at first, and an outsider could never influence), it won’t affect the route the buyer takes off-line.

Take a look at adding a new set of skills to what you’re already doing. It’s an addition to sales, but not based on needs analysis or solution placement. We wait while buyers do this anyway. Why not help them and be part of the solution?

Using Buying Facilitation™ you will be able to get onto the buyer’s buying decision team on the first call. Yep. Once you stop attempting to understand their ‘pain’ and place your solution, there is a whole different set of possibilities.

How is the prospect managing their issues? How will they know if it’s worth it to seek a solution that might work better? How will they know that one solution over another will fit within their environment? What has stopped them from seeking a solution until now? How will they ensure that the new management will have their interests at heart? These are just a tiny fraction of the questions buyers must answer before they make a purchase. And sales does not help them address these issues, nor does your charming personality and fabulous solution.

Those are a few of the questions buyers must manage. Do they sell your product? Well, yes and no. Not specifically, but until buyers manage some of these issues, they can’t buy anyway. Your choices are to act as a neutral navigator and help them walk through their decision issues (with no bias or solution push) or sit and wait til they’ve done it themselves.

So – would you rather sell? Or help buyer buy?

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The Basis of Sales Has Remained Stagnant is a post from: SharonDrewMorgen.com

Unfortunately, we do it the long, hard way: we assume – and this is a baseline assumption in the sales industry – that when we notice a ‘need’ that our solution can fulfill, we have a prospect. Yet we consistently close 7% of our ‘prospects.’ Obviously our assumption that a prospect with a need which our solution can resolve is a specious assumption.

A NEED DOESN’T MEAN A PURCHASE

What we forget is that the ‘need’ has been sitting in a buyer’s environment (I call it their system) for some time. Sitting somewhat comfortably, or it would have been fixed already. Not only that, but the environment has created work-arounds – jobs, rules, relationships – that keep the ‘need’ in place daily. It’s most likely not sitting there waiting for you to come along and fix it. And unfortunately, sales treats the identified problem as if it were an isolated event.

But we show up, assuming because there is some sort of lack that our solution can resolve, that we have a prospect. We do everything we can to get in, find ‘the decision makers,’ understand, promote, pitch, and promise. But it doesn’t work, because the prospect may not be a prospect.

1. This need may be sitting comfortably-enough and not causing any conscious problem. Do you have any extra weight on you? Why haven’t you gotten a gym membership? What about your anger management issues, or your fights with your spouse or kids? Done anything about those?

2. The need may have been there so long that it’s determined just one part of the givens. Oh – we’ve always used our own tech team to design our sites. Yes, our in-house trainers do a good job.

3. The need may be in one area but needs buy-in from adjacent groups who don’t care about changing. So what if the L&D team wants new software if the HR person thinks everything is fine.

In order for a prospect to make a purchase, they would have to change something – most probably a string of somethings. They would need to get buy-in to do something different. They would need to be willing to change a few things around, and have the ‘things’ be ready,willing, and able to change (For example before you got a gym membership you’d have to be willing to get up earlier, eat healthier, get your wife to walk the dog, take lunch to work, etc. It’s a system that behaves like a house of cards.).

How can you determine if a seeming prospect – a person or group with a lack that your solution fulfills – is really a prospect? S/he may not know either, and may tell you there is no need when with just some decision facilitation they can recognize the need. But to do that, they’d have to consider the internal change issues first. After all, this is the very first thing a prospect considers well before they actually consider buying anything. And sales doesn’t manage it.

Use Buying Facilitation™ to help your prospects determine how they’d move forward toward change. Show them how to determine how to get buy-in

Prospects Aren’t Really Prospects is a post from: SharonDrewMorgen.com

I recently experienced a very clear example of Buying Facilitation™, when i used it to turn a failed buying situation into a purchase.

I tell a shortened version of this story in my new book, Dirty Little Secrets; it bears repeating during this economic confusion when buyers are having difficulty getting to ‘yes’.

I was at a client site running a Buying Facilitation™ training. A part of the training includes real-time calls to clients prospects. In this situation, my client had requested that the team listen to me on a call first, so they could hear what BF actually sounded like real-time. They set up a phone meeting between me and a prospect who had called recently to say “Sorry. We won’t be purchasing your product,” after one year of 3 sales visits and 3 product trials.

These women that I called were the heads of L&D at a well-known university and were expecting my call. They had been told that I was a trainee who wanted to ask some questions to help me learn about the product and the buyer’s environment. They were happy to help.

I called (with everyone listening in), and after some intros and pleasantries, the conversation went like this:

SDM: It must have been so sad for you to have to decline purchasing the Solution when you loved it so much.

L&D: It was! We love your product! We really would have liked to have bought it.

SDM: What stopped you?

L&D: We have this new HR Director who is nearly impossible to work with. We ended up deciding that we’d make our lives easier and not fight with him. As a result, we’ve not fought him when he’s made decisions we’re not happy with, even though we should have an equal say and vote. It’s just not worth the hassle.

SDM: I hear you saying that the relationship issues you are having with a colleague are keeping you from making available possible tools to help your folks achieve a greater level of excellence.

L&D: Oh my. You’re right! Doesn’t sound very mature, does it?

SDM: What would need to happen differently to ensure the two of you could figure out a way forward to make sure your personal issues wouldn’t get in the way of necessary work decisions?

L&D: We’d have to figure out how to a start a dialogue and come to some professional resolution.

About three hours after this conversation, my client got a note from these women and asked to get some of ‘those questions’ (Facilitative Questions) so they could use them on the HR Director. I sent them, and within 3 weeks, the prospects purchased our product.

WHAT HAPPENS WHEN BUYERS SAY ‘NO?’

If these prospects didn’t like the product, they would have said ‘no’ days/weeks after first being introduced to it – not waited for 3 vendor visits and wasted time and manpower on 3 trials over 11 months. Obviously they liked the product, like the vendor, and needed the product. But they didn’t buy because of an internal relationship issue that was out of the realm of the sales model.

Does this happen to you? Do you have great relationships with your prospects who seem to recognize that your product will solve their need? Do you sit and wait for months and months for them to call back, believing you have a sale, and then they never call back, or call back to say ‘No?’

It’s not you. It’s not your solution, or your personality, or your skills, or your client relationship. It’s the sales model. Sales merely deals with the solution-placement end of the buyer’s final decision and has no skills to help the buyer make sense of the internal, idiosyncratic stuff that seems so difficult for them to handle…..those relationship and policy and personality issues that have created the status quo and keep it in place daily, the ones you know nothing about and are not part of their problem or your solution.

As you saw in the story above, until buyers manage their internal decision and relationship issues, they will take no action: the ramifications of change are worse than maintaining the status quo (I write extensively about this in my new book). We’ve always sat and waited impatiently for them to achieve an internal decision, frequently attempting to ‘get in’ during this quiet time, and try to make something happen, when unfortunately it’s out of our control.

But you can maintain some influence and control right from the first conversation (see purchasing a solution is the last thing a buyer does). Doing this does the following:

1. it puts you on the Buying Decision Team immediately;
2. it differentiates you from the competition;
3. it discovers those who cannot buy immediately;
4. it makes it possible to have a bit of control around what’s happening when  you’re not around;
5. it gets rid of all objections (price and otherwise).

How would you know when you’d be willing to add a new skill set to what you’re already doing successfully? And what would you need to understand about Buying Facilitation™ to know if the model would work in your client environment?

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Turning a ‘No’ into a ‘Yes’ 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

But if it were that easy, buying decisions would get made more often in our favor. We certainly would not lose as many sales as we do. The problem is that the buying decision is so, so much more complex than we can imagine as we stand on the outside looking in.

Sales mysteriously treats an Identified Problem (my word for ‘need’) as if it were an isolated event. But it’s not. There are ramifications to any change, and the ramifications are ones only buyers can see from the inside and we will never be privy to.

WHEN DO BUYERS START FIGURING OUT STUFF?

Buyers don’t start figuring out their behind-the-scenes issues until after we’ve met them, except in cases when buyers call us and buy… in which case they’ve made all of the behind-the-scenes buying decisions before they contacted us and we are just lucky.

We come in at the wrong time, pitching a solution to a small portion of the ultimate Buying Decision Team, and have no tools to help buyers do what they must do first: manage all of the off-line buying decisions that need to happen for them to get buy-in for change.

I have said this over and over: the time it takes buyers to come up with their own answers is the length of the sales cycle. Before they can buy anything they first look into their current teams, partners groups, rules, historic decisions for a simple resolution to a business problem. They come to us by default, and even then end up going back inside (to their old vendors, or the other department heads, or the tech team) to do an internal check on resources before placing an order.

WHAT IS BEHIND THE SCENES?

I’ve fully described the actual steps that happen behind-the-scenes in my new book coming out soon (Dirty Little Secrets: why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell and what to do about it). To think about this, let’s start with this question: How did a buyer’s ‘need’ get there? It didn’t arise overnight, and people and policies inside agreed to allow it to happen. So the ‘need’ got created behind-the-scenes.

Not only that, the system and rules and people and policies have allowed it to remain as it is – or they would have changed it already.

Before a buyer will buy or choose any solution at all, they must first figure out and manage the very idiosyncratic and mysterious ramifications of change. What will a solution change internally? How will the people and policies interact differently if/when they decide to resolve an Identified Problem and bring in something… something different that isn’t already there? Obviously, the sales model doesn’t equip us with the tools to help buyers manage these issues, and we cannot do it for them.

And no solution will be purchased if there is any possibility that the client can resolve their problem on their own.

As we think about sales, and wonder how to close more sales, quicker, we must realize that by merely focusing on the solution-placement area, and we do our ’understanding’ – understanding need, understanding the decision making, understanding the requirements, helping buyers understand our the judiciousness of our offering - we are not helping the buyer do the behind-the-scenes work they must accomplish before making a buying decision. That work is private, idiosyncratic, personal, unique, and not open to outsiders. And, unfortunately, buyers don’t know how to do this work easily because it’s new to them. But we can help – with a different set of skills.

We can help them by being true servant leaders, true trusted advisors and relationship managers, and guide them through their systemic, off-line, buying decision issues. But it’s not sales. In this time of economic uncertainty, add Buying Facilitation™ and differentiate from your competition – and truly help your buyer buy. And, stop selling.

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

Buying Decisions: What Happens Behind-The-Scenes is a post from: SharonDrewMorgen.com

First, let me say that Mike’s publication – Rain Today – is chock full of ideas that are solid, interesting, innovative, and important.  He’s also got some cool people who write for it, such as John Doerr, Charlie Green, and my friend Jill Konrath.

For starters, take a look at his blog: Services Marketing Blog

There is everything you need to be a professional. RainToday.com delivers “innovative, intense, and high-end learning programs to help service business leaders increase their growth and profitability.”

They have cool stuff on buyers buying, sellers selling – you need it, they got it.

Next: Mike’s new book. Since I didn’t have time to get an advance copy from Mike, I read some reviews and marketing data. Here is the summary of what Mike’s book (co-authored with John Doerr) is about:

“How do you build a market leading brand, a thriving lead generation engine, and a culture of business development success? The answer is simple: you’ve got to be as passionate, energetic, and skilled with marketing as you are with your clients.”

Given Mike’s reputation for being both smart and gentle, helpful and innovative, and given what I’ve read by him (His How Buyers Buy is an important document that you’ll find on his blog – especially important for me, since all of my work for the past 20 years has been about the off-line decisions buyers make and Mike’s stuff melds with mine.) I’d bet his book will be thoughtful and packed with usable ideas.

Have a look. Look around his great site, his blog, and the Wellesley Hills Group papers. You’ll learn a lot. I did. I spent about a half hour looking around and reading.  And I’m really impressed. Thanks for making all of that good thinking available, Mike.

Now: go buy Mike’s book.

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Mike Schultz Has A New Book – And He’s Smart is a post from: SharonDrewMorgen.com

Since I’m the Queen Contrarian, I’d like to say that the ‘need’ we think that buyers have is not a real need.

First of all, we often meet them at the wrong end of their buying decision – when they are just starting their search for a possible solution. Not only have they not committed to making a purchase, they are too early in their decision process to fully understand all that their ‘need’ entails.

Next, if they REALLY had a need, they would have fixed it already. Any ‘system’ uses work-arounds when something in the system isn’t functioning optimally, so our buyer’s ‘need’ is already being taken care of in some fashion. That means their need isn’t urgent.

And, finally, the buyer doesn’t know at the beginning of their discovery, who needs to buy-in to a new vendor or a new solution. So we are walking down the path of understanding need (which they can’t really know in the beginning) and sharing data, and the prospect has no idea what the final parameters of the need will look like once all of the right people get onto the Buying Decision Team.

Because this is such a big topic, I’ll devote more time to this later on. For now, have a look at my video, and start a discussion around this. I’ll be sending in blog posts from Scotland, so I may not be as involved as I will be when I”m back, but I think it’s a good conversation to share.

Enjoy.

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What Is A Need? is a post from: SharonDrewMorgen.com