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

In other words, when choices are made that go against what the world deems rational,  they are, by definition, irrational. So if we get accepted to Harvard, for example, and choose to go to Podunk, we are being irrational.

HOW WE DECIDE

As a person who thinks in systems (I have Asperger’s), I’m here to tell you that decisions do not get made based on information but on beliefs – personal, idiosyncratic values that we each uniquely hold dear: what may seem rational to one person is not rational to another. And  it’s all subjective regardless of what end you sit on.

If you have good data that the new software you’re being asked to use will be superior to what you’ve been using, the rational decision would be to accept/adopt the material. Yet you have a fear that when using the new technology your job will change, you won’t be competent at your job, you’ll suffer some diminished deference from your colleagues, and you won’t be able to ever get as competent as you are now with the existing software. Those internal voices – the fears and the resistances, the avoidance and the confusion – are what determine your decision, not the ‘rationality’ of the potential solution.

Your ability and willingness to change – to buy, to learn, to choose – is directly proportional to your skills at examining and shifting our criteria. You weight/re-weight your beliefs regularly. So if I asked you if you wanted to learn to kill someone, you’d probably say ‘no.’ But if you knew that someone were going to come into your home to harm your family members, you might re-weight your beliefs about knowing how to kill.

When you assume you understand what a ‘rational’ decision should be, and notice someone making what you deem an irrational decision, you have no ability (as an outsider) to understand what might be appropriate for that person, at that moment, living as they are living, with the people, policies, relationships, emotions, and history of their lives.

SALES TREATS NEEDS AS IF ISOLATED EVENTS

When there are others including in decision making – a team, for example - the range of decision criteria gets complex. And buyer’s decision paths are no different from any other decision path: the time it takes the person or team to recognize and manage the full extent of their decision criteria, and come up with a way to enable the appropriate buy-in from the appropriate people at the right time, is the length of the buy/decision cycle.

The first phase that buyers address as they start their buying decision journey involves lining up their internal criteria, the players, the old vendors, and understand relevant systems issues that have maintained their status quo.

The need we can resolve with our solution  actually sits in a tangled web of gooey systems issues that not only created their problem, but maintain it every day, and until or unless there is appropriate buy-in for systemic change, the problem will remain as it is: the need is thrown under the bus if a solution will severely disrupt the system.

In fact, buyers buy solutions with personal criteria that usually has nothing to do with a need or a solution. People buy homes with personal criteria that usually has nothing to do with the details of any specific house; software often gets purchased only when the tech team is willing to work with the marketing team – none of which is directly related to a specific solution.

So what’s rational?

There is an assumption that with the right data, at the right time, offered in the right way, to address the right solution, the person receiving the data will accept it. But that doesn’t happen as often as we would like. As a result, we often judge the person ”stupid” or irrational. But what is happening is not information-based.

As you move toward making new decisions, or helping buyers manage their buy-in cycle, start off with helping them manage their decision criteria, rather than beginning with the last thing they do (choose the solution). Buying Facilitation® is a decision facilitation model that actually teaches buyers how to walk through and reweight their decision criteria. Help them discover their own ‘rationality’ so they can buy. They must do this anyway – with you or without you: it might as well be with you.

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My newest book: Dirty Little Secrets: why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell and what you can do about it is about how decisions get made. While seemingly about the buying decision path the book is usable for any people involved in decision making  and it breaks down the root all decisions take. Read two sample chapters free.

Listen to  Sharon Drew’s podcast series called Making Change Work.

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

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

Behaviors aren’t rational is a post from: SharonDrewMorgen.com

By any objective standard, I’ve been successful: It’s been a blessing that an out-of-the-box idea has had the opportunity to have a world forum – imagine: one woman with a revolutionary idea making a difference in an age-old field. But my active outreach to gain a broader market is now complete.

I not only have said all there is to say (my latest book Dirty Little Secrets presents the complete strategic thinking), but my Asperger’s makes it difficult for me to do what’s necessary to take the idea further. Indeed, the more I procrastinate leaving, the more harm I’m doing to Buying Facilitation® - fine, important material that is being underutilized, possibly because of my lack of appropriate communication skills.

THE LIMITS OF MY CAPABILITY: THE ROLE OF ASPERGER’S

I suspect I”ve done a bad job helping mainstream sales understand how Buying Facilitation® offers sellers tools to help buyers navigate through their behind-the-scenes decisions and why it’s a necessary part of the sales process. I’m guessing that it might have taken a non-Asperger’s person less time (with more success) to get the thinking into the field. Maybe someone less pushy, or less obnoxious, less direct, or less annoying - all traits of my Asperger’s that I’ve spent decades learning to contain (sometimes successfully, when I’m aware), but are impossible to  eliminate.

But maybe it took my focused personality, determination and vision to develop the full set of skills and design learning programs that have achieved the global success we’ve had. Maybe this time line has been appropriate and necessary. I’ll never know the answer to that, of course. It is, as they say, what it is.

Frankly, I have to work hard to not blame myself for Buying Facilitation® not being in the hands of every single sales person by now. My rationale is that it’s not unusual for a new concept to take this path. It took the telephone over 60 years to be adopted. That’s right. People preferred Morse Code over the telephone. For 60 years. I guess my 23 years wasn’t enough :) But maybe the field of sales truly doesn’t want to add the capability of facilitating the buyer’s change management issues. Or maybe a combination of it all.

I’ll never know the answer. What I do know is that it’s time for me to move on. I’ll continue working with coaching clients, do occasional keynotes, and do Buying Facilitation® training for a few select companies if they are ready and the opportunity is fun. I’ll continue supporting my licensees to make sure the work stays alive. And although I won’t be writing much fresh material, I’ll keep my blog up, and regularly change out articles: with over 550, there is plenty of reading matter for those interested in learning.

But I will end my daily activities around placing Buying Facilitation®. If anyone else wants to carry the ball forward and make the material ready for mainstream, that would be great. It’s a model that can be trained for decades, with conventional sales models, and it’s now at its Breakpoint. Fingers crossed it crosses the chasm and eventually gets trained along with sales training in both companies and in universities. I understand it might not happen.

I am clear that I’ve done the best I could and feel quite proud that I’ve made a contribution to the field.

Hopefully, I’ll be remembered as the woman who first discussed ‘helping buyers buy’ or ‘the buying decision path’ or ‘the buying decision journey’ or the Buying Decision Team. Or the concept that a purchase is a change management problem. Or that by using Buying Facilitation®, sales becomes a servant-leader practice. Or that a buying decision is 90% based on what goes on behind-the-scenes and is not solution-related.

MOVING FORWARD

I’ve recently become excited about putting my model into Marketing Automation, and I’ve developed the EXpediter©, an intelligent contact sheet that actually leads buyers through their buying decisions using technology. I’m still getting pushback on this idea, but far less than from the sales field.

I’m also putting together the skeleton for my life-long dream: The Institute of Practical Decision Making in Abu Dhabi, so I can offer my collaborative decision making system to teachers, doctors, entrepreneurs, negotiators, coaches, parents, couples, or teachers. (My material was never meant to remain in sales.)  Maybe I’ll sit on a mountaintop in Peru and let my brain create something wild. Or catch up on my reading, and write a book on practical decision making.  Or just languish in Paris eating crepes and getting fat.

Whatever it is, I’ll hopefully still be making a difference in the field of practical, collaborative decision making, as that is my life’s work. But I must rediscover my creative spirit that has been lost over the past few years.

So if you’re looking to learn Buying Facilitation® read my books and articles. Or get the Guided Study program. Or one of my licensees can teach Facilitating  Buying Decisions. Or listen to me use the Facilitative Questions on an MP3.

Thank you for the opportunity you’ve offered me to make a difference and help make sales a spiritual practice. And what a fine opportunity it has been.

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For those of you wishing to learn Buying Facilitation®, the best course of action is to get the Guided Study program. It’s quite a serious program, for serious learners. It takes a bit of time do complete, but by the end you’ll be almost as good as me ;)

For those of you just wishing to dabble, and learn just a few new skills, get the Automated Learning modules, or the MP3s, or the flash drive with both the Ebook Buying Facilitation: the new way to sell that expands and influences decisions and the MP3s.

There is plenty of material to read, especially articles on how Buying Facilitation® differs from sales, and the skills necessary to learn it. It is not just an idea – it is an actual skill set that involves wholly different thinking and behaviors (and outcomes) from sales: Buying Facilitation® and Sales: The Dynamic Duo; A Buying Decision is a Change Management Problem;  Selling Doesn’t Cause Buying; The Buyer’s Buying Process vs. The Sales Model: Two Divergent Roads; The Heart of Sales; Buying Facilitation® is a Method, Not Just a Term

Good luck, folks. And for those of you who are serious students, I’m here for you.

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—————–

Sharon Drew,

What a beautiful, happy, sad, thoughtful email you sent Friday. You’ve carried the Buying Facilitation torch for so long, courageously and intensely.…  You’ve given and written and spoken far beyond generously….So many articles and books and tools… So many “almosts” and dead ends… You’ve been a model for others of us who are trying to bring ideas to market.  And you have moved the sales field forward.   I can’t imagine your sadness and disappointment. I admire your courage and resolve to let it go and move on with your health intact (I hope), focusing on clients that are fun, developing the Institute for Practical Decision Making, and restoring your creativity. We’ll strap ourselves in when we feel the earth rumbling again.

Nick Miller, President, Clarity Advantage

Sharon Drew’s ‘retirement’ & the Future of Buying Facilitation® is a post from: SharonDrewMorgen.com

The problem is they are working from a sales model; but buyers buy using a change management model as they must address their internal, human, unique decision issues prior to a solution choice. Here is where the real influence happens.

But by using the underlying assumptions of the sales model – with the right need and the right solution, there will be a sale, or if someone signs up for a webinar or white paper, they have a certain amount of interest in a purchase – the automation process is limited to push technology.

And the lead scoring assumptions fail also: by assuming a prospect has a higher value if they do several activities, we are not supporting or influencing the entire decision journey, but waiting to close the low hanging fruit. There should be a higher close rate:  of 10,000 names, approximately 400 are scored as viable, and of these, 2 close. How many of the 10,000 might be buyers? How many of the 400 might be buyers if approached or supported differently?

WHERE MARKETING AUTOMATION IS GOING WRONG

There is something obviously wrong with this picture.

• Just because someone visits a site or signs up for something, doesn’t mean they are a buyer or a prospect;
• Just because someone only visits a site once doesn’t mean they aren’t a buyer;
• Just because someone has a low or high lead score doesn’t mean they are/aren’t a buyer;
• 98% of prospects who are approached for an appointment after they score high enough to be considered a real prospect decline the appointment: this does not mean they aren’t buyers…just that they don’t want an appointment;
• Prospects need different types of data at different points along the buying decision path, and using current technology there is no way to know, or influence, where the buyer is on his/her decision journey – so companies inundate site visitors with junk – um, I mean nurture material – hoping to hit the sweet spot.

SHIFT THE FOCUS TO CHANGE MANAGEMENT

Imagine if marketing automation used change management thinking: until or unless buyers manage the behind-the-scenes change issues that will be effected when/if they make a purchase, and until or unless all folks who will touch the new solution get their voices heard, no purchase can happen.

Current marketing automation does nothing to address the real buying decision journey – the 90% of the purchase decision that is change related, internal, and idiosyncratic - as it’s not solution based. It certainly does nothing to move prospects along each type of decision to help them.

Here are some questions to consider:

1. What do prospects need to do to get the right folks involved to give their buy-in for a purchase? Until they do, they won’t buy regardless of how great your white paper is.
2. How does someone take an idea from a thought in a shower to getting folks to start thinking about making a change? Until people back the idea, they won’t get the buy-in to make a purchase.
3. How does the Buying Decision Team evaluate solutions? Until they know how, they won’t make a purchase.
4. What sort of data does any site visitor need to make a final purchasing decision? Until they have the specific data needed by the entire Buying Decision Team, they won’t make a purchase.

Using the underlying tenants of change management as per my Buying Facilitation® model, I have developed an Intelligent Contact Sheet called the EXpediter© that gets the appropriate data to site visitors at each stage of the buying decision path, starting from an idea. And it leads them from one step to the next. Some facts:

• It’s easy to slip into your current marketing automation set up.
• You will know exactly what stage the visitor is at, what specifically to send them, and whether or not the Buying Decision Team is already on board.
• You will be able to lead site visitors through the range of their off-line decisions.
• You’ll be able to follow the site visitor to other sites, know how/if they are evaluating your solution, and help them move to the next stage of their decision.
• You will know who to call to make an appointment with, at what point to place the call, and your success rates for appointment-getting and closing will be much higher.

I’ve got the content. I can work with your tech team to implement it. Or my technology partner Genoo can lend a hand. Interested? Let’s speak.

sd

Discover how Buying Facilitation® works with marketing automation and can help you close more sales.

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.

An Intelligent Contact Sheet is a post from: SharonDrewMorgen.com

I’m here to tell you that cold calling can be one of the most effective ways to meet new prospects and close sales. And it’s a whole lotta fun.

I know, I know. Most sellers eschew cold calling, preferring instead to network, get referrals, golf, meet face-to-face or make friends through facebook and twitter.

Did you ever ask yourself why you don’t like cold calling?

Think historically: Dale Carnegie, in How to win friends and influence people published in 1937, told us to meet prospects in person (and his choices then were….. were what?). You can think about trying to ‘get through’ the gatekeeper. You can think about trying to gather information or pitch product with no ability to understand or share personal expressions on a phone.

So let’s say you do your networking, getting referrals, golfing, face-to-face meets and tweeting. What does it give you? Well, it gives you a connection, but it doesn’t necessarily help you close more deals: buyers still need to do their part to manage their behind-the-scenes systems (change management) issues and get buy-in at all levels, or nothing will happen whether they need you or like you.

The bigger problem than meeting someone who might buy is how to help buyers manage those off-line issues, because until they do, your sterling personalities are immaterial: If you start your conversations by shifting from making a sale to helping manage the internal buy-in issues, you can use the phone effectively AND make a sale in at least half the time.

WHY ARE WE CONNECTING?

Let’s begin with the question: Why are we attempting to make contact?

If you begin by trying to understand need, push product, or influence with your personal charm, then I agree; cold calling sucks.

But when you begin as a true consultant to help buyers manage the change of a buying journey, cold calling is wonderful. Buying Facilitation® is a change management/decision facilitation model I”ve been teaching globally for decades that employs a totally different skill set than sales, and helps buyers understand and manage the off-line portion of the buying decision. And then your sales skills are necessary. First manage change, then place the solution. Different way to think, right?

Given the space we’ve got on a blog post, I’ll give you a simple example.

I read about California Closets in the late 1990s and wanted to have them deliver Buying Facilitation® throughout their franchises. I did some research, and found what I later discovered to be a ‘bad’ number – but at the moment I called, it turned out to be a lucky error. A man answered:

SDM: Hi. My name is Sharon Drew Morgen, and I’m an author and developer of a new selling model. This is a sales call. Is this a good time to speak?

EL: No. It’s terrible. But I’ll give you 5 minutes.

SDM: I can call back. It’s only a sales call and I don’t want to disturb you. We didn’t have an appointment.

EL: Let’s start now and we can finish later. I already like your style. How can I help you?

SDM: Thanks. And at any point you want to end, we can stop and pick it up at another time. I was wondering how you are currently adding new sales skills to the ones you’re currently training your sales people and designers.

EL: Are you using the model you’re teaching? Because if you are, I’m buying. I’ve been looking for a new model for 2 years, and from what I’m hearing, I’m happy. How ‘bout if I get the heads of Sales and Training on a call next week, and think about doing training, or training our trainers at the end of January. Call me in a week at this number: XXXXX. Nice job.

And he hung up. We’ve been working together since then. And this was a cold call. Of course, I did get a bit lucky. But if I had used conventional sales techniques, or twitter or facebook, these folks would not have been my clients – even if I had managed to get in front of them.

DON’T USE YOUR BODY AS A PROSPECTING TOOL

When I understand that my job is to be in a ‘We Space’ (the conversation was all about him) and truly serve by helping  prospects discover how to move toward excellence, it doesn’t matter if I’m in person or on the phone, because there is no manipulation or personal persuasion tactics. Also, the focus of the entire call at this early stage is about the internal issues they need to manage (that a seller can never be a part of) within their system. It’s not about their need, or our solution. Sales does that way too early.

In the Buying Facilitation® model, every interaction, every comment, is based on helping buyers traverse their off-line buy-in issues. I understand that my solution can only be purchased AFTER buyers have managed the needed buy-in. And the telephone is a very handy tool. Of course, once the buyer manages their off-line decision issues internally, and their decision team discovers it’s ready to change and add a new solution, it will need to know more about our solution. THEN we can go visit them, and the entire Buying Decision Team will be there, with us on it. Try it. You might like it :)

So focusing on each cold call as if it were a puzzle, and you are the puzzle master who is not in front of the puzzle, but whispering in the ear of the person doing the puzzle, you can have fun. You won’t have to try to get an appointment, you’ll save travel time and funds, you’ll find a whole lot more prospects, and when you do go to the client site, it will be to sign the contract.

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

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

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

Buying Facilitation® will help you begin facilitating  the buyer’s decision path - defined as those back-end human issues (relationship, political, and financial) that must be managed prior to any agreement to  purchase – from first moment of the call.  By starting connections with a different focus, you can activate the purchasing decision process   immediately.

THE PROBLEM WITH STARTING WITH A ‘NEEDS’ FOCUS

Starting with the needs assessment, you are limiting your prospect audience by a factor of 4: in the studies I’ve done with my clients, they have brought in 4x the prospects – prospects that not only invited them in to visit, but had the entire Buying Decision Team waiting for them on first meeting/call.

When you begin your communication (either calls, or marketing automation) by attempting to find a buyer with a need that matches your solution, you are limiting your business.

• The only people who will agree to speak are those already searching for a solution similar to yours – and you will not know where they are in their search process;
• Prospects who might need your solution but hadn’t started the process of enlisting internal support for change will tell you they are fine, thanks.
• Prospects who might need your solution but are battling internal demons will tell you it’s a bad time and call back in, oh, 6 months.
• Prospects who don’t know you, or don’t want to speak with a stranger, will tell you they are fine. That may or may not mean they need your solution. And you’ll never know.

The problem is that the focus is on resolving a problem they aren’t ready to resolve. If they knew how to resolve their problem, they would have done so already.

Imagine if you focus on Excellence. Look at the difference between these openers:

How are you adding new sales skills to those you’re currently teaching your folks, for those times when you need them to be closing more business?
vs.
We’ve got some powerful sales training that will help you close more. Do you mind if I ask you a few questions?

What’s the difference? Or this example:

How would you know if it were time to bring in additional banking solutions for those times when your current bank can’t give you the flexibility you might need?
vs.
I’m a small business banker, and I’ll be in your neighborhood next week. I’ve got some wonderful new products designed specifically for small businesses such as yours. Do you mind if I stop by either Tuesday or Wednesday?

What’s the difference?

In one question you’re helping the prospect decide if they want to add something new, and start them thinking about change. In the other, you’re attempting to place a solution before they have had the chance to think about whether or not they want to change.

BUYING IS A CHANGE MANAGEMENT PROBLEM

Until or unless buyers figure out how to manage all of the back-end change management issues, they cannot buy. They absolutely cannot buy. Remember: they’d done ‘well-enough’ until now, and if they really needed you, they would have purchased you (or your competition) already.

The system buyers live in is sacrosanct. I have a full chapter about this in my latest book: Dirty Little Secrets: why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell and what you can do about it. They will always choose to preserve the system rather than face the mess that buying a new solution will bring….unless they figure out how to minimize the mess and make sure the change issues are handled and there is appropriate buy-in to something new.

If you begin your conversations, as I did above, with Facilitative Questions and Buying Facilitation®, buyers can start figuring out their change issues right from the first call. Note: you thinking you know what they need does not help them get the internal buy-in necessary. Not to mention without the entire Buying Decision Team on board, they won’t know what they need, either.

By the end of the first call, you can actually teach prospect how to bring together the full Buying Decision Team, and all be on your second with you, to lead them through their change and choice issues re seeking excellence - hopefully with your solution.

I go back to the question I’ve been posing since 1988: Would you rather sell? or have someone buy? They are two different activities. Start by helping them decide how to buy, and you’ll sell a helluva lot more.

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Learn Buying Faciltiation® with Sharon Drew in a classroom setting, or through individual learning.  Listen to Sharon Drew have live prospecting conversations with learning discussions.

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

Where does selling begin? Activate the buying journey immediately is a post from: SharonDrewMorgen.com

I”d like to talk about what that means for me…and admittedly, I’m a hammer looking for a nail: I”ve written a NYTimes Business Bestseller (now-outdated) on the subject (Selling with Integrity: reinventing sales through collaboration, respect, and serving). So excuse my rant. But rant I will.

SOLUTIONS VS. CHANGE MANAGEMENT

The sales model is designed to place solutions: sellers are trained to understand need, and place a solution accordingly. Arguably, the buyer gets what they need and the seller makes a commission: win/win. But is a win/win?

In my map of the world, the above ends up as a net loss. Here’s why: because the sales model merely enters at the solution placement end of the buying decision path, it avoids and ignores the entire path buyers must traverse to enlist the right people, manage the change, and ensure system stability as they attempt to discover their best solution options. Therefore, sellers just come in at the end (or come in far too early with this data at the beginning) to offer a solution, and do not have the skill set to facilitate the back-end change management journey, leaving buyers floundering, trying to get the right people on board, and get the right agreements.

Ultimately, using the sales process without Buying Facilitation® (which manages the change management end of the buying decision journey), sellers end up closing only those buyers who show up with all of their ducks in a row (about 7%) – the low hanging fruit.

Indeed, if all of that needs assessment and relationship building and getting-past-the-gatekeeper stuff worked, we’d be closing a lot more sales. And buyers would be getting their needs met much faster: the time it takes them to figure out how to manage the backend change is the length of the sales cycle.

So by not helping manage the change and the behind-the-scenes decision path – very different from solution-focused/choice activities - we are actually harming buyers: with no help, it takes them longer than necessary to determine the folks to include in defining a solution, or figure out how to manage the change so there is no disruption, or how to get the necessary buy-in, to purchase our solution.

Net net, it obviously harms us also by elongating the sales cycle…not to mention we can’t close those prospects who can’t figure it all out.

OUR BUYERS WILL BUY EVENTUALLY – BUT NOT FROM US

The industry standard says that 80% of our prospects will buy a similar solution as ours within 2 years of us speaking with them. That means: they’ve got the need, but don’t know how to get their ducks in a row to buy. And we didn’t know how to help them figure out how to do it sooner.

Buyers don’t want to buy. They want to resolve a business problem. If they must make a purchase, they must make sure there is appropriate buy-in from the people and rules and and and…

Sellers tend to think in terms of  placing a solution. Buyers think of avoiding chaos. We forget that 90% of the decision issues buyers must address before they get to the solution choice stage is based on creating an environment that will accept and adopt a new solution. The last thing they consider is making a purchase.

In my humble opinion :)  without helping buyers manage their change -

• getting the right folks onto the Buying Decision Team,
• finding and listening to the voices of those who will ultimately touch the new solution,
• making sure the old and new meld -

we are not in integrity with our buyers, but merely serving our product sale.

Here is the question: are you willing to go outside of your sales thinking, and start considering helping buyers manage their behind-the-scenes, non-solution-related change management issues? It’s the Buying Facilitation® process, of course, and not sales. But between the two models, we can truly sell with integrity.

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Get a copy of Dirty Little Secrets and understand how buyers buy – and how you can help.

Listen to Sharon Drew make prospecting/qualifying calls using Buying Facilitation®.

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

Selling with Integrity is a post from: SharonDrewMorgen.com

Here are the ‘Dirty Little Secrets’ of why buyers don’t buy, taken from my book of the same name:

1. Sales focuses on solution placement and needs assessment, and has no skill set to help buyers maneuver through their off-line, personal, idiosyncratic, behind-the-scenes planning and decision making that must take place in their environment before they can buy.
2. Buyers will make no purchasing decisions until they get buy-in from the components (people, policies, initiatives, groups) that are in any way connected to, or will touch, a solution to their ‘need.’
3. Until or unless there is buy-in, and the system is ready, willing, and able to buy-in to necessary change, buyers will not accept a solution no matter how great the need.
4. Buyers live in systems that operate, as all systems do, from the law of homeostasis, and thereby must resist if something new were to threaten disruption. To insure minimal internal disruption, buyers face internal change management issues as they bring in something new (a solution).
5. Until buyers understand and know how to mitigate the risks that a new solution will bring to their culture, they will do nothing. The system is sacrosanct; homeostasis is more important than fixing a need. New solutions can’t be purchased until a way is found to maintain internal balance. Includes internal politics and relationship issues.
6. Until all of the Buying Decision Team members have added their voices and fully defined the criteria that a solution must contain, buyers can’t make proper use of  solution information (i.e. pitch, presentation).
7. Sales, and the focus on solutions, enters the buyer’s decision path too early in a buyer’s decision cycle – usually before all of the Buying Decision Team is on board and has added their specific needs to the solution criteria.
8. Helping buyers maneuver through their buy-in and systems issues require a different focus, and a different skill set, than the one sales offers. Buyers don’t buy using a seller’s selling patterns. And the sales model doesn’t have tools to influence non-solution-related decisions.
9. Buyers buy on unique, idiosyncratic criteria that are agreed to by their Buying Decision Team – not on the strength of their need, your product, or their relationship.
10. The type of relationship a seller has with customers/prospects is a buying feature only once the buyer has determine how, when, why, and if they are going to buy.
11. Buyers seek a solution only after they manage their internal systems issues. Part of their decision/choice is the assurance that the new solution will maintain the ecology of the system.
12. At the start, buyers don’t know all the issues they need to manage as they begin the process of resolving a problem and choosing a solution.

Your current sales skills do a great job understanding need and placing solutions. But they don’t work with the behind-the-scenes non-solution-related change management issues buyers go through privately.

How will you shift your skills to help buyers manage their buying decision issues?

If you want to help buyers facilitate their off-line, behind-the-skills decision issues, you may want to learn Buying Facilitation® – a set of change management/decision facilitation skills that are wholly different from (but work in tandem with) sales skills, designed to help buyers navigate through their decision path as they prepare to choose a solution. It speeds up their change management process: we sit and wait while they do it anyway.

Add Buying Facilitation® to your sales skills as a facilitation tool, and decrease your sales cycle, find the right prospects to spend time on, and close more sales. Here are some sample chapters to give you more data: Dirty Little Secrets: why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell and what you can do about it and Buying Facilitation®: the new way to sell that influences and expands decisions.

In today’s business climate, decisions to buy are far more complex than they’ve been in the past, and your selling skills aren’t enough. What would you need to know or believe differently to be willing to add a new skill set to enhance your success?

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Join Sharon Drew Morgen on September 13th for a FREE online webinar about understanding Buying Facilitation®.

To learn how to create the sort of dialogue that supports your client interactions, take a look at Dirty Little Secrets. It’s more about the collaborative communication than being ‘right’ or ‘wrong’.

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

12 Dirty Little Secrets: why buyers don’t buy is a post from: SharonDrewMorgen.com

Sales models to not have the capability to facilitate the buyer’s behind-the-scenes issues and activities to ensure they get the necessary buy-in to bring in an outside solution. But they should, because in the gap between the selling and the buying is where we lose our buyers, and they lose us.

WHEN DOES A BUYER  NEED TO BUY

Just because we perceive a need (And we are right! They do!) doesn’t mean our prospects  want it fixed, or fixed by us, or fixed now. We enter our conversations with a bias: we believe that our solution will rule the day: find the need, pitch the solution. Bingo. Except then we sit and wait. And wait.

But the last thing a buyer needs is a solution. In fact, buyers don’t want to buy anything – they merely need to resolve a business problem. If they are not able to resolve it with a familiar resource, they are forced to select a solution to purchase. But they don’t really want to.

When we enter with a solution – even one that is necessary – buyers have a problem: how do they solve their problem in the easiest, most cost-effective manner? It’s simpler to use an existing resource so less change is necessary. But if they determine they must find a new provider, they must bring in the new solution in a way that leaves their culture whole. All things being equal they really don’t want to disrupt their routines.

BUYERS LIVE IN SYSTEMS

There is a disparity between the selling model and buying behaviors: solutions are ‘things’ and a buying decision is a change management issue. As per my latest book Dirty Little Secrets, buyers (like all of us) live in systems of people, rules, relationships, history and policies. Any ‘problem’ becomes part of the system, which develops work-arounds so it can keep on keepin’-on. So when we gain weight, we buy new clothes rather than change our eating habits, work out more, stop drinking our wine. And daily, the system wakes up doing the best it can.

When we approach prospects using the sales model (i.e. a search for a match between the need and the solution), we are acting as if the problem were an isolated event rather than a part of a larger system of people and policies that maintain it. We don’t realize that they have already created a ‘good enough’ work-around for it.

It is only when – and if – the group of folks that touch the problem daily decide that a work-around isn’t good enough AND they cannot fix it with a familiar resource, that they seek an external fix. Then, regardless of how well we’ve been selling, they have work to do: 1. they have to figure out how to ‘go outside’ for a solution; 2. they have to figure out how to get internal issues prepared for change.

HAVING A NEED DOESN’T MEAN A NEED FOR A SOLUTION

Our selling doesn’t provide us with another tool kit for change management – what buyers do when they go off-line to manage their internal politics and relationship issues.

So what are we supposed to do?

Here are our choices:

• we sit and wait until they figure out how to get everyone together to decide;
• we sit and wait until they get the full Buying Decision Team on board;
• we pitch, send data, nurture, and hope we’ll be top-of-mind when they’ve put all of their ducks in a row;
• we begin with a different focus: we help them navigate through their buying decision path and shorten the sales cycle AND get onto the Buying Decision Team and thwart competitors.

The last option sounds the best, right? And yes, my Buying Facilitation® model is an add-on skill that works with sales to do this.

Given you work within a sales system, let me ask you to consider adding Buying Facilitation® skills to the sales skills you use:

How will you know when it’s time to consider adding a new skill to what you’re already doing successfully?

What skills/activities/beliefs do you want to keep so anything new will not disrupt your normal functioning that you’ve become familiar with? And how would you like something new added in a way that maintains your activities and motivation?

What would you need to know about Buying Facilitation® before you consider an addition, to know if it would work for you? How difficult it would be to learn/add? What the downsides and upsides would be? How your boss/team would react when you begin selling differently?

What would you need to know from me, as the developer/seller, to know if you’d get the support you need to be successful?

It’s not about your solution. To really sell well, you must have 2 skills: helping buyers navigate through their back-end change management issues; place solutions.

Or just sit and wait for the low hanging fruit to drop. Remember that 80% of your prospects will buy a solution similar to yours within 2 years. They have the need – they just haven’t figured out how to manage the change. Help them. And close more sales, quicker.

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Read sample chapters of Dirty Little Secrets. Or buy the book.

Hear Sharon Drew make cold calls, prospecting calls, and qualifying calls, live.

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

A buying decision is a change management problem 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.

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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

I originally labelled the trip through the behind-the-scenes issues buyers must contend with (those political, relational, strategic issues that will be touched when a new solution enters) ‘navigating the buyer’s decision.’

DIFFERENCES BETWEEN SELLING AND MANAGING OFF-LINE BUYING DECISION ISSUES

Historically, sellers have mistakenly assumed I focus on decisions related to the purchase and the need. In fact, folks have had a real hard time understanding my intent: some sellers, regardless of illustrations, or webinars, books or speeches, assume I mean what every sales person must do: help buyers

1. figure out how to purchase the right solution for their need,
2. get the funding to pay for it,
3. understand all of the choices that would be a plausible solution,
4. choose the right vendor.

Smart, savvy business folks and entrepreneurs still believe that’s my message or have just defined the term to fit their comfortable level. Regardless of what others say, it’s important for me that it’s understood that my work is not meant for the solution-placement end of the buying journey, but for the non-needs-related set of activities buyers must handle amongst themselves to

1. find the right set of people for the Buying Decision team as they begin consideration to make a change,
2. make sure that every department, job function, existing solution, and political relationship that will touch a new solution gets managed appropriately to ensure minimal disruption to the status quo,
3. get the appropriate buy-in so folks work together to design a way for the new solution to fit.

It’s the stuff buyers must do before they buy. They do this without us. And we sit and wait, because sales doesn’t handle this portion of the buyer’s journey.

BUYING FACILITATION® AND SALES TOGETHER

Just to clarify: sales manages the needs assessment and solution placement end of the buyer’s journey – the last 10% of their activity. Because

• if the tech guy doesn’t want the new solution and won’t free up people without a fight,
• if the user group doesn’t want to take training,
• if the company is going through an M&A,
• if the regular vendor can handle a portion of the need,
• if the tech person and the marketing person are having a turf war,
• if anything that affects the status quo cannot make the necessary internal changes to handle a new solution,

the buyer will take no action, regardless of their need.

And that’s why 7% of your prospects buy now, and 80% of your prospects will buy within 2 years, and from someone else: the time it takes them to do this is the length of the sales cycle.

With my Asperger’s systems-thinking brain, I’ve actually coded the change management issues buyers must handle before buying: Buying Facilitation® is based on how systems work (and sales treats a ‘need’ as if it were an isolated event – it’s not), and how to maintain homeostasis as the system faces change. It teaches sellers how to put on the hat of a change agent and help buyers navigate through all of their idiosyncratic and people/policy issues. It  includes using Facilitative Questions, Systems Listening, and Decision Sequencing, all designed to lead buyers through their internal issues to make the right decisions that will leave their system intact and better than when it started.

It’s not sales. But it collapses the decision cycle and helps folks come up with their unique criteria for buy-in so they’ll take action. It’s great for coaching, negotiating, leadership, and personnel issues.  All marketing automation technology should add Buying Facilitation® to their contact sheets, and to their telemarketing scripts and lead scoring.

FACILITATING THE BUYER’S JOURNEY

Finally, around 8 years ago, I coined the term Facilitating the Buyer’s Journey, thinking that I finally ‘got it’.

Except the term is so terrific that it’s been co-0pted by the sales field which  is REdefining it to  fit into ‘sales’ and solution choice.

Now I’ve got a quandry: if the term ‘facilitating the buyer’s journey’ gets co-opted into the conventional sales thinking, we all run the risk of losing the intent, the model, the brand, the powerful methodology that actuallys help the buyer manage change. If I start writing a lot about MY definition, I run the risk of being a johnny-one-note.

Of course, this is journey of all new ideas: the originator finally learns how to say it, and then it gets stolen and co-opted by the mainstream. And the originator dies with one ear, in poverty. And the original idea get subsumed. We don’t see many geodesic domes; thankfully impressionism was picked up by others besides Van Goch.

My biggest fear is that we’ll lose the original intent and fail to learn a new skill set.

So I’ll leave the choice up to you: would you rather sell? Or have someone buy. Because if you’d rather sell, you can shove ‘facilitating the buyer’s journey’ into sales, and probably not notice there is a far, far more successful way to help buyers buy. If you’d rather have someone buy….. have I got a term for you! :)

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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

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

Facilitating the Buyer’s Journey: a definition is a post from: SharonDrewMorgen.com

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

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

SELLING VS BUYING

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

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

Used in front of sales it:

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

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

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

HOW SALES DOESN’T WORK

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

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

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

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

Would you rather sell? Or have someone buy?

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

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

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

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

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

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

Let’s take this one piece at a time.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

SELLERS ENTER TOO EARLY

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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