If you want to find out if you’ve done what you need to do, will get the results you want, have a look at these two links – I think they are very useful:

• Some Hard Line Questions
• The Decision-Driven Organization

Jim is a guy who comes into a company, makes a big mess (on top of the mess you’ve already made for yourself) and then cleans it all up so you barely recognize it – and it’s in better shape than you could have wished for. I don’t mean to keep quoting him, but the guy is SO quotable:

“Too often change gets treated as though it can be simply installed, managed and engineered. The key to implementation is bringing your people together, interdependently, and thinking in terms of “we” versus “you and I”. People only support what they help create.”

If you need some help strategizing to get to a place where you feel successful, listen to this:  “What I am is a get it done, hands-on, go-to-guy, dedicated to making the changes and achieving the goals you want to see within your company.  I encourage planning and push execution. I utilize a combination of strategic and tactical approaches to help you create a strategically aligned, horizontally integrated, customer focused interdependent company..”

I love what he says about hiring a consultant: “The consultant’s role is to augment your thought process through discovery, engagement and dialogue. The consultant’s role should never be to take control away from you or anyone else in your business.”

OK??  Got it? He’s the ‘fix it up chappy’ as Dr. Seuss would say. I sure hope you never need him cuz your business is just rolling along perfectly. But in case you need some help, call Jim.

Sharon Drew

Asking The Hard Questions: Jim Altfeld is a post from: SharonDrewMorgen.com

What has finally become obvious (and I’d like to think that I had something to do with it being so obvious) is the yawning gap between the Implicit buying decisions buyers must make on their own, and the Explicit ones that sellers play such a large part in helping them make.

The Explicit decisions include everything to do with fixing the need (I call it an Identified Problem – certainly not ‘pain’ cuz they would have fixed it already if it were ‘pain’): making sure the issues are resolved and work far more efficient, possibly even Excellently; that the decision makers are happy and make sure the solution fits well and is affordable with minimum risk; that the sellers are available before, during, and after to manage the implementation, the fit, and making the buyers comfortable with their choices. Once the Explicit decisions are made, the solution is purchased.

But if that were all it took,  we’d be closing a helluva lot more sales than we’re closing. The problem is the Implicit decisions.

What happens when the guy in the next department doesn’t want to collaborate – and you share one tech team and budget? What happens when there is no precedent for bringing in an external vendor? How does it get managed when the Senior Manager wants a solution and has the budget for it, but the team doesn’t want anyone to come in. What about when the current vendor has been around for a decade, works in every department with great professionalism, and everyone wants this vendor to just design something new rather than bring in a new vendor? And what about the work-around that’s been managing the Problem Space until they choose a better solution – does Fred in Accounting get fired because the boss is bringing in a new accounting package?

Buyers have managed these decisions on their own while we wait. There is really no way that an outsider – even a smart one – can understand all of the unconscious, historic, hidden, mysterious, and highly personal decisions that need to get handled before buy-in can occur. Sales has had no model to help buyers manage these implicit decisions. One of the ‘dirty little secrets’ that I talk about in my upcoming book (The Dirty Little Secret: why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell and what to do about it) is that the buyers have no idea how they are going to handle these decision issues either, if for no other reason than they don’t know what they are going to find when the start picking up the rocks. In other words, sales enters the buying decision cycle far too early.

One of the problems is that because the buyers don’t know the exact route they need to take, and sellers can’t know these personal and idiosyncratic systems issues, no one really knows how to manage the Implicit decisions. I’ve coded the system behind how decisions get made in systems (cultures, environments) and can lead folks down their decision cycle generically so they can pick up the pieces they need to address along the way and bring in the right people. Very often, they can figure this out immediately with me, rather than taking one month or one year, and deciding to bring together their buying decision team for a phone meeting (or whatever) within a week of our first conversation. And we do this consistently, time after time, in every industry or size of sale.

Buyers have to go down this route anyway, and goodness knows we sit and wait for them while they figure it out. This fact alone is the cause of the huge delay in the sales cycle.

I’m  not competing with sales; I’m adding a new piece – a front end, if you will – to the typical sales model. It’s not about gathering data. It’s not about understanding the buyer’s needs. It’s not about ‘being there’ when they are ready (Buying Facilitation teaches them how to be ready). It’s  not about becoming a trusted advisor or a relationship manager.

It’s about being a decision facilitator and taking a leadership role to help buyers walk through the Implicit stages of their buying decision process BEFORE they are ready to answer questions about their Explicit needs.

Let’s start using a two pronged approach to sales: first help buyers walk through their unconscious Implicit decisions; then they can walk with us through their conscious Explicit decisions. Because by not doing this we’re losing a lot of sales, spending too long in the sales cycle, causing objections (yes, we cause our own objections) and NOT serving our buyers.

So, do me a favor: start thinking of sales as a two-phased process, and the sales models we’ve been using for decades handle the Explicit decisions. And Buying Facilitation(R) – which is NOT SALES but a decision facilitation model that handles buy-in – can handle the Implicit. After all, would you rather sell? or have someone buy? They are two different activities.

I’ve been teaching this stuff for over 20 years, and we have had quite extraordinary results (remember that it’s NOT SALES) with many global corporations in every industry.

For more, go to www.newsalesparadigm.com

Buying Decisions: The Implicit Vs. The Explicit is a post from: SharonDrewMorgen.com

• Get agreement from clients, colleagues and partners.
• Need to negotiate with departments of finance, CFOs and the IRS.
• Ensure you understand, and are understood by, all people you communicate with.

Failure to do any of these is costly, financially and personally.
You don’t make many errors with your numerical calculations, and yet your verbal communications end up fraught with misunderstanding, disagreements, assumptions and failed connection.

What is going on?

What’s going on is that the system of communication is very different from the system of numbers. Numbers are based on facts; communication is based on beliefs. Numbers can be proven right or wrong; communication is subjective. Numbers and their behaviors are predictable and static; you can’t know people, and their behaviors vary according to the situation.

Without good communication, your skill as a CPA is in question, much like a chef with no one to eat the food, or a clothing designer whose product doesn’t get purchased.

There are rules to communication. But they are different rules from the ones that govern numbers. Let’s take a look at how you can achieve buy-in from your communication partners by following a few simple rules:

1. Information doesn’t teach someone how to make a decision. Being right is very different from being in a relationship. Your numbers are right: how is the net take away being received? Acted upon? Do you know what should happen from your communication as opposed to what is happening? Have you stepped on a closely held belief that needs to be managed before the person can agree? You may be right, but until or unless the other person buys in to your suggestions, nothing will happen.What do you need to say differently to help the other person either agree or agree to collaborate in resolving an issue? What level of responsibility do you need to take to follow the person through the agreement process? What does this person need from you differently in order to have an easier time buying in?
2. The sender of the communication is responsible for ensuring understanding. If you are not getting the type of response you need from your communication partner, you must say it in a very different way.What does a successful outcome sound like? How will you know when you both have achieved a level of agreement? When you need to use different words to get your point across? When you need to change your point and choose a different outcome in order to compromise?
3. The meaning of the communication is the response it elicits. This is an old NeuroLinguistic Programming rule. Your communication partner didn’t hear it wrong. You said it wrong.How do you know when it’s time to reconfigure your speech pattern to ensure understanding and agreement from the other person?
4. You have a choice of being right or being in a relationship. It’s that simple.

The question now becomes: What are you willing to believe differently to ensure that your communication is a win-win; capable of being collaborative and flexible; and a joint outcome can be met?

What skills do you need to learn differently to help you manage a collaborative communication style that makes your numbers or financial plan accepted? How will you know the difference between being understood and not being understood – and when it’s time to communicate differently?

At the end of the day, no matter how right your numbers are, or brilliant your financial plan, if you can’t communicate to ensure buy-in, it doesn’t matter. Have the necessary flexibility to ensure buy-in, and your end results will be achieved.

Collaboration Management: Ensuring Necessary Buy-in From Communications Partners is a post from: SharonDrewMorgen.com