To help you understand how foreign systems are to outsiders, here’s a personal story from a trip to India that made me realize I’d never understand another system as an outsider…. and what I needed to focus on instead of trying to manipulate or make sense of a situation that I wanted to effect change over, but was foreign to me.

In this funny story I was so confounded by my inability to understand another culture that I ended up having a spiritual experience.

INDIA HAS NO SYSTEMS

I was on a speaking tour through India titled Spirituality in Business. India is a wonderous place that teaches you how to be authentic: there is no other way to be, since the only system they live with (outside of the strict rules of relationships) is chaos. And with my systems-thinking Asperger brain, that makes me horribly uncomfortable.

So I was going nuts. Absolutely bonkers. Nothing worked as I thought it should. Nothing was where it was supposed to be. No one did the job they were supposed to be doing. There were no rules, far as I could tell. I had no idea what to do, how to fit in or act. I was living in a state of confusion that hurt – every moment of every day.

I decided that the best route would be either murder or suicide. I didn’t much care which, so long as there was death involved.

I made such a fuss that the organizer of the speaking tour got me the name/number of a travel agent who would get me to HHDL (the Dalai Lama) in Dharamsala in North West India. One of the things to note about India is that your plane/train/bus will be late – or early, who knows – but whenever it does show up it will be yesterday’s transport, or tomorrow’s, and you’ll have to wait til, til who knows when. People wait for days. Calmly.

Anyway, I took the number and went to a nearby village to stand on line (with the goats and chickens, babies and arguing adults) to use the phone – a make-shift deal tied around a tree. It was probably the only phone for miles.

When it was my turn, I contacted Mr. Singh. “Ah, Miss Morgen. Yes. I have your plans to Dharamsala. Please hold while I get your file.” As I waited, watching some children play with a dog, I began smelling smoke. I looked around and saw nothing burning, until I looked down: the phone cord was dangling off of the tree, and on fire. That’s right. And that’s not even possible.

Obviously, I wasn’t going anywhere. No phone, no transport, no way out, no understanding, no choices. Typical of every moment in India: total confusion, all the time.

I sat down on a nearby rock, rolled my eyes upward, defeated: “OK. I’ll stay.”

ONE STEP . AND THEN ANOTHER.

What had to be true for me to remain in India and not commit Death of some kind? I had to learn how to take one step at a time, put one foot in front of the other, have no expectations, and live totally in the present without needing anyone else to behave in any particular way and without needing to understand anything. One step. I’m OK. One step. I’m OK.  One step. I’m OK. The anger, fear, rage, confusion slipped away; each moment was just fine.

After a day of taking very small, slow steps, I realized that not only was I (and folks around me) still alive, but that I felt free: I realized that much of my life had been based on assumptions of what I wanted to happen – what I expected, and what I thought I could influence, and the frustrations and annoyance when I didn’t get what I expected.

I took this lesson back to my life and job as a seller. I realized it’s not possible to understand a buyer’s systems. Sure, I understand the facts about a need and how it fits with my solution, but my ability to understand ends there.

What are the systems in your client’s environment? They must navigate their daily routines, decisions, jobs, relationships so that work gets done and excellence accomplished. But you don’t understand their system. So, what has to be true for you to help prospects traverse their systems and consider purchasing something?

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

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

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

We can never understand a buyer’s buying environment is a post from: SharonDrewMorgen.com

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

QUESTIONS TO PONDER

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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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

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

And you still expect different results?

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

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

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

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

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

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

WHY SHOULD WE CARE ABOUT THE BUYER’S JOURNEY?

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

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

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

If you are ready to learn,  let us help:

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

But stop complaining, and begin actually helping buyers buy.

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

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

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

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

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

Selling doesn’t cause buying is a post from: SharonDrewMorgen.com

Yes. It is easy. But not with the sales model alone.

THE JOB OF THE SALES MODEL: LIMITING THE PURCHASE CHOICE AND BUYING DECISIONS

The sales model is meant to place a solution. It was designed for a simpler time in history, when there were fewer solutions, precious few ways of marketing them, no internet or FEDEx to get solutions from China delivered to your front door in two days. It was not designed:

• to bring together disparate players on a Buying Decision Team,
• to circumvent many creative solutions that can address a problem besides yours,
• for a bad global economy.

Sales places solutions. But if it were that easy you would have closed more.

You know those sales where the buyer shows up and buys almost immediately? What’s the difference between them and others who take forever? The difference is they are one of the 80% who will buy a solution within 2 years of working with a solution provider (and left behind a trail of dead sales people) and NOW is their 2 year mark: they have finally discovered and gotten agreement on a route to move forward and all of their ducks are in a row. Their need is defined; the new job descriptions are described, the users are ready, the new material will fit comfortably with the old so as to avoid disruption.

The last thing the buyer does is find a solution. Sales enters at the wrong time, offering the wrong data, to the wrong people. If you do the exact same thing you’re doing now, but after you use Buying Facilitation® to help them navigate through their behind-the-scenes decision path, then you’ll close quickly.

MUCH SHORTER SALES CYCLES USING BUYING FACILITATION® AND SALES

Here are some numbers that my clients (using Buying Facilitation® AND sales) tracked against their control groups:

• A large insurance company went from 110 visits and 18 closed sales to 27 visits and 25 closed sales.
• A large tech company selling a small piece of software ($10,000) went from a 6 month sales cycle to a 3 call close.
• One of the Big 3, with a $50,000,000 solution went from a 3 year sales cycle to a 4 month sales cycle.
• One of the world’s largest banks went from closing 2% with an 11 month sales cycle , to closing 37.5% in 2 months.
• One of the well known boutique brokerage houses when from $400 Million to $1.2 Billion in revenue in 4 years.

They did this by become true Trusted Advisors; they used Buying Facilitation® to facilitate the buying decision, and then they sold.

Your sales cycle is long because buyers have to figure out how to get the right people and policies aboard before they can buy. It’s not about your solution. Do you want to sell? Or have someone  buy? They are two different activities. Which do you want to focus on? And how will you know if it’s worth adding something new to what you are doing?

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Get a hold of Dirty Little Secrets: why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell and what you can do about it and read it. Then contact us so we can train you.

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

Why Your Sales Cycle is So Long (Hint: It’s Not About Your Solution) is a post from: SharonDrewMorgen.com

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

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

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

9 STEPS

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Once they determine that

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

SALES TACTICS THAT ARE NO LONGER NECESSARY

Make an appointment to get in front of the prospect

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

Manage objections and differentiate yourself from the competition.

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

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

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Wanting to learn more? Dirty Little Secrets: why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell and what to do about it. Check out the site for more details.

Or consider purchasing the bundle: Dirty Little Secrets plus my last book Buying Facilitation®: the new way to sell that influences and expands decisions. In addition, you will also receive a bonus illustrated booklet.

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

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

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

THE TWO JOBS OF SALES

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

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

BOTH SELLING AND BUYING FACILITATION® TRIGGER THE BUY-PATH

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

There must be a better way to do this, no?

1. if we knew who would be a prospect on the first call, and get rid of those who will never buy, how much time would we save?
2. if most gatekeepers would get us to the right person, how much time would we save?
3. if we can connect with all of the folks who will ultimately be (or are already) on the Buying Decision Team, how many more sales would we close?
4. if there are no more objections of any kind, how much time would we save and how much more money would we make?
5. if buyers could make a buying decision in the time frame that we believe is possible (i.e. those buyers who call up and purchase quickly are good examples of what’s possible for every sale),

how much more business would we close? And why can’t we make these things happen?

THE REASONS YOU ARE NOT GETTING THE RESULTS YOU DESERVE

To begin with, you are beginning at the end of the buyer’s journey – the purchasing decision – and must wait while they catch up. As sellers, you have been trained to find appropriate prospects: you have not been trained to help them begin or traverse their journey through the behind-the-scenes decision path that is change-management/systems based, and has more to do with internal politics and time lines than it does with purchasing a solution or choosing a vendor.

As a result, you have learned ways to manage the fallout you’ve received from attempting to offer a solution at the wrong time. Or from attempting to offer a solution that folks might not know they need, or aren’t ready to concede that they might need. Or know they need but haven’t figured out how to get buy-in.

Pushback, objections, time delays, buyers who seemingly don’t know how or if to buy. Prospects that stop returning calls. Prospects who make promises they don’t keep.

The only reason you aren’t closing more sales, and the reason you end up wasting time with non-buyers and delayed sales cycles,  is not because of your solution. Your solution is fine. So is your care and respect and personality.

You’re wasting your time trying to place a solution before the buyer has lined up the change management issues they must contend with. But sales doesn’t offer you any other tools.

THE BUYING FACILITATION® MODEL WORKS WITH SALES TO MANAGE THE BUYING DECISION.

OK. I’m a hammer looking around for a nail. But it’s the truth. Buying Facilitation® is another model – like sales only different – that you must learn in addition to sales to manage the back end issues buyers must address privately before they can buy.

• Gatekeepers will help you find the right people to talk to rather than put you off.
• You can help buyers put together their entire Buying Decision Team on the first call.
• You will no longer get objections (fallout from the sales model) – price or otherwise.
• You will be differentiated from your competition immediately.
• Your buyers will buy in approximately 1/8 the time (sometimes with very large sales the number drops to 1/4).
• You will know who is a buyer and who is not, on the first call.

It’s not sales. But really – do you want to keep having those super long sales cycles and getting objections? Do you really want pipelines that aren’t converting? Take a look at my site www.newsalesparadigm.com and see what options you have to learn. There is no reason you shouldn’t be doing Buying Facilitation® AND sales, and stop wasting time. The sale model is great to understand need and place solution – but by using it too early in the buyer’s change management process, you’re not helping buyers buy. You deserve better.

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Read about Buying Facilitation® in these books: Buying Facilitation®: the new way to sell that expands and influences decisions and Dirty Little Secrets: why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell and what you can do about it. Or buy the bundle with them both.

Sharon Drew is a contributor to the new Entrepreneurial Selling program by RAIN Group. Registration is now open! Check it out Check it out here!

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

How much time do sales people waste? is a post from: SharonDrewMorgen.com

• dialogue with me,
• discover ways to partner,
• just chat about places to stay.

And the use and quality of Skype has made it all as simple and cheap as calling a friend in a different city.

IF WE TRUST EACH OTHER, WHY AREN’T WE CLOSING MORE?

With automatic ‘trust’ built in – we’re sort of family once we are connected – our conversations seem to flow smoothly: we’ve used Facebook, the net, and Twitter to discover who the other is, have determined whether and how we want to connect, what we can offer each other, and how to prepare. An off-handed comment about the person’s upcoming wedding, or a congratulatory mention of their new business venture compounds the trust.

Gone are the days of cold calling, running around the country to network, speaking at events for free just to collect business cards. I bet some folks out there don’t even remember when those were the only ways to get leads, other than the phone book.

So why aren’t we closing more?

Not only are we not closing more, we’re closing less.

What is going on?

What’s going on is that our relationships, communication, trust, and friendliness are not helping others reach the sorts of decisions necessary to close a deal.

CHANGE, SYSTEMS, AND BUY-IN

Before we look at what’s happening, let’s change the discussion for a moment to look at what needs to happen for any purchase to occur.

In order for someone to buy something other than a small personal item, there are several steps that must take place to get the necessary buy-in to move forward. The appropriate buy-in must be acquired from the right people and groups; the rules must be changed to allow for a new set of ‘givens’; vendors and business partners must agree; job descriptions must match up with the new jobs.

We tend to forget that all purchases are change management problems. And, because a problem is not an isolated event and has been maintained by the people and policies, rules and politics of the existent environment, there are systemic things that touch the solution that would be affected if a new solution were to enter.

So a new piece of software would seriously affect users, techies, internal consultants, and trainers; training for one group would affect all of the people who touch that group.

And systems prefer to maintain the status quo, even if it means maintaining failure. After all, it has been ‘good enough’ until now, and everything has bought-in to maintaining it as it is. In fact, our buyers would rather maintain their status quo regardless of what it is costing them, and regardless of the efficacy of our solution: no matter how much they will save with a new solution, it costs more overall to bring in something new.

Remember: If the buyer felt pain, or was ready to change, they would have done so already.

So until or unless the status quo will accept the addition of something new, and has the capability to manage in such a way that an addition will not create too much unregulated disruption, it will do nothing.

WHAT IT TAKES TO CLOSE A DEAL

Currently, our relationships through social networking haven’t included the agenda to help the Other recognize and manage the different sorts of buy-in necessary to change. But that doesn’t mean we can’t include that.

I was at a client site recently listening in on a sales call with a prospect who my client had been chatting with for months. It was a lovely call. Laughter, in-jokes, obvious rapport. They were introduced on LinkedIn; they tweeted each other daily. Yet nothing was going anywhere. I wrote a note in front of him, which he repeated:

We’ve been chatting for a while now. And the more I get to know you, the more I see the possibility of our working together somehow. What would you need to know about my solution to know if it would fit, and if your colleagues would be willing to consider adding something new to what they are already doing so well?

The conversation shifted. The man was happy to answer: We’re starting to go through the process of an M&A, and won’t be able to take on anything new for about a year. Can we revisit this in 6 months? At that time there will be new people on board (I might even be gone!), and I don’t know what the hierarchy will be, but we can discuss it.

There could be no buy in, no decision team, and most likely no purchase. Does that make you want to continue being ‘friends’ or end the ‘friendship’? Do you want to ask for a referral? How much time do you want to spend being ‘friendly’ vs closing a sale? And how will you know when/if it’s time to pull the plug, or ask the hard questions?

We’re in a new era. There are no rules – we’re making them up as we go along. So ask yourself:

• What do you want to get out of social media?
• How will you know that one person over another is a prospect?
• At what point is connecting enough, or do you want to connect only with potential prospects or partners?

The capability is in front of us. The choice is our as to what we want to do with it. We just have to remember that being friendly, evoking trusting ‘relationships’, having hundreds or thousands of friends, doesn’t make you a better seller.

What would you need to learn differently to add a new skill set to what you’re doing online, to help you help your ‘friends’ make their best decisions?

sd

Learn about Buying Facilitation®: Peruse this blog for articles on change management, the buying decision path, how buyers buy, and how to add Buying Facilitation® to your sales process.

Sharon Drew is a contributor to the new Entrepreneurial Selling program by RAIN Group. Registration is now open! Check it out Check it out here!

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

How does social networking help make the sale? is a post from: SharonDrewMorgen.com

Confused? You’re accustomed to just using the sales model to place your solution. But the buying decision process is more complex than just choosing a solution.

Here is a graph that shows you the issues buyers must manage as they go from idea to purchase:

Unfortunately, we’ve tried for years to use just the selling model to help buyers choose our solution. But until or unless

• the buyer’s entire Buying Decision Team is on board,
• everyone who touches the solution is bought in to bringing in something new,
• everyone who will touch the solution is comfortable with their new roles and tasks,
• all systems issues (rules, roles, relationships, old vendors, etc) are in alignment with the change a solution will bring,

they will not, cannot, buy. And the sales model doesn’t manage that part of the buying decision path – hence your long sales cycles and paucity of closed sales relative to the number of prospects.

That’s where Buying Facilitation® fits in: it’s a wholly different model than sales; it’s a change management model that uses systems thinking (Ater all, buyers live in systems, and sales treats a ‘need’ as if it were an isolated event.) and operates as a neutral (i.e. not solution-directed) GPS tool to be the lighthouse, or neutral navigator, to steer our buyers through the confusing, non-solution/non-need related systems issues they must address behind-the-scenes.

ENTREPRENURIAL SELLING GETS YOU FROM BUYER’S IDEA THROUGH TO CLOSE

But on it’s own, Buying Facilitation® is incomplete. Buying Facilitation® works with the sales model, as sales does the needs assessment and solution placement. Obviously, we’ve got nothing to sell if we can’t understand our buyer’s needs and have the right solution – even if they’ve got the Buying Decision Team sitting and waiting to make a change.

It’s with this thought in mind – both/and rather than either/or – that I introduce you to a wonderful new product:  RAIN Group has developed  Entreprenurial Selling and includes the finest thinkers in sales today (including yours truly). It’s the definitive program for those  wanting the best.

I am lucky enough to be a part of this phenomenal group of sales leaders who put together a program that will bring you from the buyer’s idea, formation of the Buying Decision Team, and will get you in the door, with the right thing to say to the right people, to close the deal.

The folks at RAIN have done a lovely job of capturing the environment of today’s selling/buying experience. And not only do they have the top in the field represented, but they’ve put together a learning experience that fits nicely with a collaborative community experience for all who purchase. They use videos, exercises, and experiential learning to lead you through both ends of the buying decision path – from idea through to purchase.

Here is a link to purchase this training/learning package. It’s not inexpensive, due to the quality and depth of the material. But for 8 days, there is an introductory price.

Is it worth it? Well, here is a Facilitative Question:

What would you need to know about a learning package to understand if your sales might increase as a result of your investment?

Enjoy.

sd

Sharon Drew is a contributor to the new Entrepreneurial Selling program by RAIN Group. Registration is now open! Check it out Check it out here!

Read Dirty Little Secrets: why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell and what you can do about it to learn all of the issues buyers face when they are considering a purchase.

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

Selling AND Buying Facilitation®: facilitating the buying journey from idea to close with RAIN Group is a post from: SharonDrewMorgen.com

This article has been selected for DeFinis Communications’ “Sales Coaching: Top Tips for Increased Productivity” Blog Carnival.

Sales has been around since the Serpent convinced Eve to eat the apple. And, unfortunately, the goals have remained pretty much the same ever since.

The sales model was designed for a different time in history, when there were fewer decision makers and products could be easily described in a magazine ad. With the advent of the web, global business practices, and the ability to communicate ideas across distances, there has been a sea change in not only what we can create and deliver, but also in the process buyers must go through prior to being able to make a purchase. The sales model itself hasn’t kept up in important ways.

Let’s take a hard look at what sales is, and how it must shift to keep up with our global economy.

WHAT IS SALES NOW?

1. The sales model merely manages the needs assessment and solution placement end of the buyer’s decision path.

PROBLEM: The majority of the buying decision path occurs off line (buyers must know how to manage the change, get the right people to buy in, address the implementation issues, etc.) so we are merely catching the low hanging fruit – there when they are ready to buy.

IMPLICATIONS: We aren’t entering the buyer’s decision journey early enough to become part of the Buying Decision Team (i.e. helping navigate through decision issues and collapsing the sales cycle); we sit and wait while they do their internal change management, with no direct skills to enter that area of the buyer’s decision journey.

SOLUTION: Start your conversation by helping facilitate change right from the beginning and save the needs assessment/solution discussion until the prospect sees a path through to change (all can be done on the first call); take the role of a buying facilitator and decision facilitator; help the prospect become a buyer (or not) immediately.

2. Sales treats a ‘need’ or ‘problem” as if it were an isolated event rather than recognizing that a ‘need’ sits within a system: a set of rules and relationships that maintain the status quo (including their ‘pain’) daily. Until this entire system agrees to, and is made ready for, something new, no solution can be purchased.

PROBLEM: We end up focusing on one small aspect within a sea of issues, and then pushing/waiting/pushing/waiting until they get to the point they’re ready to buy, or missing ways to support the necessary change management issues.

IMPLICATIONS: We end up presenting possibly the wrong data, too early, to the wrong people, and waste our time following around folks who don’t buy.

SOLUTION: Buying is a change management problem. We can facilitate this with an additional skill set to help them facilitate change – right from the first call.

3. Sales focuses on understanding needs and placing solutions, but until or unless all of the people who need to be on the Buying Decision Team are on board, and until all of the change management issues are managed, buyers can’t make a purchase.

PROBLEM: We are entering too early, offering data they don’t know what to do with yet.

IMPLICATIONS: The time it takes buyers to come up with their own answers is the length of the sales cycle. We end up following prospects who cannot close (and don’t know that until they don’t close) and don’t have a different skill set to open up prospects who didn’t know they need to buy, but are buyers. Plus we can shorten our sales cycles by at least half.

SOLUTION: With Buying Facilitation®  (a change management model that works alongside of sales) we can lead buyers through the decision steps, help them discern who must be on the Buying Decision Team, and become a member: we become neutral navigators rather than solution-placers.

4. We have assumed that if we can find a need, and our solution fits, that we have a sale. But if it were true, we’d be closing more, and sooner.

PROBLEM: Sales methods such as ‘objection handling’ ‘closing’ ‘getting past gatekeepers’, manage the fallout when buyers don’t buy according to the seller’s time frame. The problem is not a solution choice problem, but a buying decision/change management issue, and needs a different (i.e. non-sales) skill to manage that end of the path.

IMPLICATIONS: Because we don’t know who is a buyer until, well, until they buy, we waste over 90% of our time (and our company’s time) chasing prospects who don’t buy. And we can’t tell the difference until it’s too late.

SOLUTION: Using Buying Facilitation® you enter at the beginning of the path, and help buyers develop a pathway to handle the people, policies, relationship, and change issues necessary before they can buy. Once everyone is on board, and there is a path to a successful implementation, and everyone who will touch the solution is on board, THEN use sales – with no objections or delays.

Sales is vital. It manages the solution choice end of the buying path. It uncovers and supports needs. But it has no direct tools to do change management. We need to do more than sell. I believe the time has come to add a new skill to sales, and use Buying Facilitation® as part of your sales skills to truly help buyers buy. It is possible to eliminate objections, price issues, and closing issues, while greatly speeding up the sales cycle. Would you rather sell? or have someone buy?

sd

See more posts from other exceptional bloggers at their website.

Read samples of “Buying Facilitation: the new way to sell that influences and expands decisions”(PDF) and “Dirty Little Secrets: why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell and what you can do about it.” (PDF)

Listen to Sharon Drew discuss Buying Facilitation®.

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

Does the sales model do what we need it to do? is a post from: SharonDrewMorgen.com

Where do they go?

Industry lore believes that 80% of your prospects will purchase a solution similar to yours within two years of your relationship with them – but not from you (and they leave behind a trail of dead sales people in the meantime). Why aren’t those 80% buying from you now?

WHEN DO BUYERS BUY – AND WHAT TAKES THEM SO LONG?

Buyers don’t buy because they can’t buy. The ramifications of a purchase

• made at the wrong time,
• involving an insufficient number of stakeholders,
• with only a fraction of the ultimate Buying Decision Team on board,
• with no clear idea of how the status quo will be effected,
• without all of those who touch the solution in agreement,

are too big to risk disruption if not managed prior to the purchase.

The status quo has worked well-enough until now, and your solution would be disruptive if the above issues weren’t in agreement with change.

• Buyers buy when their entire Buying Decision Team is on board and has offered their voice and buying criteria, and has bought-in to managing whatever change a new solution will demand.
• Buyers buy when the folks who touch the solution know how the changes will effect their people and policies, relationships and internal politics.
• Buyers buy when they know their current, beloved vendors cannot meet their needs and the new solution will fit somehow with the existing technology or systems.
• Buyers buy when everyone involved decides it’s time to resolve a business problem.

They don’t buy because they are in love with your solution.

Until or unless buyers are able to recognize and manage all of the change management issues they will face when bringing in a new solution, they will do nothing.

And the sales model – regardless of the way you sell – does nothing to help buyers navigate their internal, private, and very confusing journey towards buy-in.

The problem with sales is that it treats an Identified Problem (or need) as if it were an isolated event. It’s not. The ‘need’ sits within a system that has not only created it, but holds it in place daily. Attempting to resolve this ‘need’ without managing the change issues involved in a solution would cause disruption that the status quo will not tolerate. And here is where you lose your prospects.

A PURCHASE IS A CHANGE MANAGEMENT PROBLEM

We recognize needs, do needs assessment, and place solutions. But sales does not help buyers manage the non-solution, back-end issues they must address at the back-end.

It’s here we lose our sales. A purchase is a change management problem, after all. And until or unless buyers manage their change issues and ensure that the people and policies, relationships and internal politics, are ready, willing and able to change, they will do nothing. And that’s when they show up two years later as buyers – it has taken them that long to manage the internal buy-in.

The sales model only manages the last 10% that buyers do: choose a vendor and a solution. And the push back we get is because we are pushing a solution into a currently balanced system that will fight to maintain homeostasis.

Add Buying Facilitation® to the front end of your sales process, and you will start at the beginning of the buyer’s journey. It’s a different skill set – more like being a GPS system or navigation model that is systems based. But you’re either going to sit and wait for buyers to do this, or use new skills to enter the buying journey earlier.

Until now, you’ve been losing prospects to their buy-in issues. But you no longer need to. Avoid time delays in the buying decision. Help buyers choose you in 1/8 the time – really – and be automatically differentiated. Help your buyers understand how to manage their change – on the first call - and turn ‘names’ into real prospects, and avoid wasting time following folks who will never buy.

Would you rather sell? Or have someone buy.

sd

Learn more about Buying Facilitation® either via http://buyingfaciliation.com or by reading samples of my two latest books: Buying Facilitation®: the new way to sell that expands and influences thinking and 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®

Why Aren’t Our Prospects Buying: the problem sales can’t solve 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

But what, exactly, can you be in control of? You are in control of the details about your solution, and how it’s used in a particular setting, and the data you seek from prospects. You certainly have control over how you enter, and maintain, the relationship. But that is the sum total of what you’re in control of.

Obviously it’s easy to spot a need that matches your solution. But the number of buyers who buy is much, much lower than those you’re following, or those who really have a need that your solution will support.

In fact, most of your time is spent selling to folks who won’t buy. And then when the phone rings with a closed sale, it’s a surprise: you have no idea which of those to whom you are selling will be buyers. In fact, all your prospects seem like buyers. But they’re not. And you don’t know the difference until – well, until they don’t buy.

So it’s obviously not a direct match: need does not equal purchase; time selling doesn’t equal a closed sale. And therefore, ultimately, you are out of control of the actual buy.

SELLING DOESN’T CAUSE BUYING

Buyers don’t know what issues they must confront in order to get the appropriate buy-in to make a purchase. There is so much more going on behind the scenes than you can ever be aware of or have control over, and almost none of it is needs-related, thereby leaving you out of control when it comes to when, or how, or why, or if, a prospect will buy.

Until or unless the prospect (or lead) gets the appropriate buy-in to bring in a new solution, they will do nothing. And this buy-in is based on the change management issues the buyer must handle behind-the-scenes:

• if there is not buy-in from everyone who touches the solution, there will be no purchase;
• if there is not a way to meld the new solution with whatever is there now, there will be no purchase;
• if the regular vendor is not in some way ‘managed’, they will not buy;
• if there are turf battles, personality battles, or internal politics involved with trying to resolve a problem, no solution will be purchased.

Because the sales model is solution-placement focused, sellers mistakenly believe that with a need/solution match, there will be a sale. But that’s of course not true 90% of the time. In fact, that belief puts sellers out of control: a buying decision is not made via the sales process. And you should care because you are wasting so much time, and losing so much commission by focusing on the ‘pain’ and the ‘need’ and not focusing first on influencing the complete buying decision path from the beginning. Of course you must sell when it’s the right time; but by that time the buyer has already made the majority of the necessary decisions.

WE CLOSE THE LOW HANGING FRUIT

As long as sellers focus on placing a solution rather than facilitating the decision path that buyers go through as they attempt to bring all of the right people on board and manage change in a way that doesn’t leave behind chaos, you will merely close the low hanging fruit.

If you want real control, facilitate the buying decision path from the beginning: from where they are and an idea for something better, to figuring out what to do with the current situation and workarounds, to what needs to change; from how to use what they are using now to adding something new and fitting the old and new together; from needing a solution to getting the relevant buy-in.

Buying Facilitation® is the model I’ve created to accomplish this: it’s a change management/decision facilitation model (not a selling model) that leads buyers through their entire buying decision journey from the first idea, through to the inclusion of the full Buying Decision Team and getting their buy-in. In conjunction with sales, it truly facilitates the buyer’s decision journey.

If you want real control, lead buyers through their back-end change management issues before you start selling. They have to do this anyway – with you or without you. By helping them navigate, and using the very proscribed model I’ve developed specifically for this purpose, you are fully in control.  I’m not suggesting you stop selling; I’m suggesting you help buyers manage their decision path first.

sd

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

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

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

Sellers can’t control the buyer’s decision journey 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?

sd

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

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