Would you bring in a leadership training without getting the buy-in from the people who would be trained? Or know their criteria without their voices?

Would you choose a web designer without getting the buy-in from the current design team and the techies? Would you know what they would want included until they offered their opinions or knew what parts they wanted to do themselves?

Why not?

I recently had a coaching call with a SVP at a well-known CRM Management company. The man had a Harvard MBA, had been a partner at Accenture, and now was running the Texas sales operation for this CRM company. This is not a stupid man, obviously, but a man steeped in the ‘sales’ thinking modality.

During his session he wanted to put together a set of Facilitative Questions that would help his prospect (a hardware company with a sales force of 1500) buy his solution during his ‘big meeting’ that he finally got. Who was going to be in the meeting? I asked.

SS: There will be 10 people there: the head of sales and her team, and the head of marketing and her team.

SDM: So you’ve got 2 people.

SS: No! Ten! And it took me 2 months and 3 meetings with the head of sales to have her set up this meeting.

SDM: But there are only 2 members of the Buying Decision Team who will be present. Who else would need to be on the Buying Decision Team?

SS: Well, the head of technology, obviously, but he’s on board. He loves our solution. Besides, he’s only an influencer.

SDM:  So if he doesn’t want a CRM system, the company will ignore him?

SS: No. They wouldn’t buy. I guess that makes him a decision maker.

SDM:  And  there won’t be a problem with him working together with the heads of sales and marketing? They have no relationship issues?

SS: Oh. I guess I wouldn’t want to be there while they decided on stuff together. Hm. Who else do they have to get on their Buying Decision Team?

SDM: Not only do you not know, but they don’t know yet either. Let’s start with users. There must be user groups with 15oo sales people.

SS: There are 6 user groups. I guess we’d need their buy in.

SDM: I’m curious about the tech group. Your solution has a complicated implementation process and takes quite a bit of collaboration with the in-house folks. Does the tech team know they will need to free up folks for the implementation? Or are they going to outsource all of this? Or some combination?

SS: I have no way of knowing that.

SDM: That’s correct. And neither do they. And until they figure that out, they cannot buy your solution. In fact, until they have the entire Buying Decision Team on board, they can’t buy. There are too many people who need to have a voice, too many unknown decisions to make, too many buying and implementation criteria to take into account. And you can’t understand any of this – or be directly involved in doing it for the prospect. But you can lead them through their decisions so they have a path to follow. Otherwise you can wait until they figure it out themselves.

SS: So this meeting tomorrow is too early, with too few of the Buying Decision Team members, and giving them a big presentation right now is wasting my time and theirs because we don’t have all of the right people and they don’t have all of their buying criteria. This is why my sales take years to close. What do I do tomorrow? I bet you’re going to tell me not to make a presentation.

SDM: Let’s put together a list of Facilitative Questions that will help them figure out how to manage all of the issues we just discussed. And, at the end, if they still want a bit of your presentation, it’s fine. So long as you understand that their needs might change once all of the Buying Decision Team members have a say in the outcome. Obviously the tech folks will have different purchasing criteria than the sales folks, and the users won’t want anything new. And now, no one knows any of this.

Until or unless all of the members of the Buying Decision Team are on board, the buyer can not know their full set of buying criteria – or even the full definition of their need. When sellers go in and first attempt to ‘understand need’ or even ‘know who is on the Buying Decision Team [useless data as an outsider is not an influencer on the Team]‘ or offer solution data, they are wasting a lot of time and delaying the buying decision.

Facilitate buy-in, manage change, and help gather the correct Buying Decision Team members first. Then help them all figure out their buying, buy-in, and change criteria. And THEN you can focus on the need and your solution. And close a lot more sales a whole lot faster.

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Read sample chapters of Buying Facilitation®: the new way to sell that influences and expands decisions. This book is a very clear discussion of what Buying Facilitation® is and does. It’s tactical; my book Dirty Little Secrets: why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell and what you can do about it is strategic. You can get them both in a bundle with an additional illustrated booklet in a bundle at www.buyingfacilitation.com

Help Buyers Choose the Buying Decision Team: a case study is a post from: SharonDrewMorgen.com

Without buy-in, nothing changes. If the group or person deemed change necessary, it would have happened already. So whatever state the status quo is in is the preferred state: no matter what you think is wrong, or how your wonderful solution would make it better, it ain’t going to happen unless the status quo is willing to change. And change means change management is necessary.

As sellers, we forget that buyers must do some sort of change management before they’ll make a purchase. Their ‘problem’ is being resolved somehow and rules and relationships are holding the work-around in place. And these rules and relationships have to buy-in to shifting or they will resist change.

It’s frustrating when you just know your solution will help your prospect enormously. I hear from sales managers daily who bemoan the length of the sales cycle, and the inferior solutions prospects sometimes choose. But the solution is never the issue. Never, never, never.

INSURANCE USES AN OLD SALES MODEL THAT LOVES IT’S INEFFECTIVE STATUS QUO

Years ago – maybe 18 years – I taught Buying Facilitation™ to the CEO of a mid-sized, public insurance company specializing in corporate insurance – large policies for lots of people. He became very very successful using the model to help him open some very large accounts. He kept in touch with me occasionally over the years to fill me in on his success. Last year he called with a problem.

JOE: My folks are having even more trouble than usual. The economy sucks, and companies are canceling insurance. It’s getting harder and harder for us to get our appointments, and almost impossible to close. I’m losing good people to other job opportunities. Can you help?

SDM: Sure. You know my stuff. What has stopped you from training your folks before now?

JOE: We were doing well-enough – just above industry standard (Note: with Buying Facilitation™ the numbers are much, much higher, so obviously Joe wasn’t interested in closing a lot more business, OR his revenue concerns took a lower priority than something else in his system as we’ll see.). I guess I didn’t want to rock the boat. But now things are so bad that I must do something different.

SDM: If you were going to learn the model, there would be disruption and a few weeks of learning and integration. How would you and your decision team know that bringing in Buying Facilitation™ would be worth the risks?

JOE: I know your stuff is great and it works. I’d just have to convince them. But you’re right: we can’t tolerate too much change.

SDM: That’s a hard one. You say that what you’re doing isn’t working, but you don’t want change. How can we change without changing?

JOE: You like to use the phone to start prospecting. I know it works the way you teach it – get buy-in for my solution on my first call, and when I get there all of the decision makers are there and they are ready to sign. I did it myself. I saw the numbers. I saw the difference in the success rate, and how quickly buyers were buying.  But I don’t know if I can sell it to my guys. They still call to get an appointment, and hate the phone. But now they are not getting the appointments, so I can see how using Buying Facilitation™ from the start of the call would work. Nothing else is working. And I’m dyin’ here. Not to mention losing some really good folks.

SDM: So I’m hearing that there may be resistance, but you think it would be necessary. What would you need to know about me working with your folks to know that it would be possible to get buy-in before we began, and pick up resistance along the way, to ensure you’d get the results you’d want?

JOE: I know you’d get us where we’d need to be. But I’d have to speak with a couple of my managers to find out what buy-in would have to look like. Let me call you back.

Joe never called me back. A month later I called him.

SDM: What happened? I never heard back.

JOE: The more I thought about it, the more I realized how much resistance I’d get, so I took no action. And I’m letting people go because of our situation. I’m going to have to keep the lights on until the economy turns around.

MAKES NO SENSE

This makes absolutely no sense. None. People were being let go or quitting, the revenue was horrid, no new sales were coming in (and in insurance, this has a long term consequence). But Joe was not willing to risk change. Willing to risk his business, but not change. And what was even more perplexing was that Joe knew my material and enjoyed working with me. He loved me, my solution, and knew it worked. But it went against the status quo. As I say repeatedly in my new book Dirty Little Secrets, the system is sacrosanct, and all else will be sacrificed if the system doesn’t know how to change without major disruption.

Think about this next time you think your solution is perfect for a prospect. And remember: the need would have been resolved already if they knew how to fix it. The problem is change. Help buyers manage change before you try to sell anything.

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Note: we still have a contest going on. I’d love more participation. Click here and win a copy of Dirty Little Secrets.

All Decisions Involve Change Management: an insurance case study is a post from: SharonDrewMorgen.com

I am in the throws of doing final edits on my new book The Dirty Little Secret: why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell and what to do about it and would love you to read a chapter. Many of you have been reading my books since the first book (“Sales on the Line” – still in print)  came out 17 years ago; I’d now like to add your stories about facilitating buying decisions to the book.

This book takes my previous books to the next level, into the realm of systems management, decision facilitation, and servant-leadership. It shows what internal decisions need to get made and why, who needs to buy in and why, how a ‘need’ got to be a ‘need’ to begin with and why it’s kept in place rather than be resolved, and why buyer’s systems fight to maintain their status quo. And, importantly, it explains why sales is so inefficient.  It actually offers the tools to

1. help buyers understand, manage, and resolve the complexities of their buying decision process;
2. lead buyers through their unique process of generating systems buy-in to ensure that the internal people, policies, rules, and initiatives are ready, willing, and able to adopt a new solution;
3. adds a new dimension to sales that has been lacking.

The book goes well beyond sales: our sales model doesn’t help buyers figure out how to attain the internal buy-in (based on the rules and roles of the culture – not on ‘need’) necessary for a buying decision. They have to do this anyway, and because sales doesn’t manage this, they do it on their own while we sit and keep our fingers crossed until they return with a purchase order.

It’s where buyers go when they say ‘I’ll call you back.” Or when they can’t see a need which seems obvious to us. Or when they can’t differentiate us from our competitors. Or when they take forever to close when it seems it should be simple. And the time it takes them to do it is the length of the sales cycle.

One of my favorite things about the book is that it offers a cool Case Study that shows every angle of a sale – from both buyer’s side and sellers, including all of the delays, the internal decisions, the personal/relationship problems. And then I take the same Case Study using Buying Facilitation and show the differences. The time to close is reduced to 1/3 for starters. Not to mention another 1/3 more prospects are discovered.

If I’ve gotten you curious, you can read one chapter of the book here. Also, please send me stories about how  you actually facilitated a buying decision (separate from closing a sale) and I’ll include them in the new book. Send to my private email address: sharondrew@newsalesparadigm.com or just comment on this blog.

I look forward to our journey – and thanks for your encouragement. Because of your love and support, my thinking has grown richer and I’ve learned how to serve you better. Thanks for joining me in making the field of sales a values-filled profession.

Why Buyers Can’t Buy And Sellers Can’t Sell is a post from: SharonDrewMorgen.com