Currently digital activities work from a single assumption: that the right content data – offered or received -  at the right time will give the seller the ability to close a sale.

There are many problems with this assumption.

1. buyers don’t know, until almost the end of the buying decision journey, the full set of criteria they need to meet in order to get the buy-in to make a purchase, and therefore don’t know the content they need;
2. using a sales model, we cannot know ‘who’ on the Buying Decision Team needs to get ‘what’ data. We therefore can’t know if the right people are getting the right messages – and certainly don’t know if the ‘right’ person is sharing it with others;
3. using a sales model, we don’t know what buyers are doing with our data. Really. They might give it to their own internal group and add it to their capability – and never need to buy from us.

The truth is, we don’t know. By using ‘content’ as the major assumption to focus our efforts (both sending, collecting, or following) we are missing the real buying decision journey.

BUYING HAPPENS PRIOR TO SOLUTION DATA

Until or unless you decide to lose weight, information about the gym won’t mean anything. Ditto about moving: info about a great real estate agent or house or neighborhood is useless if you and your spouse can’t decide on the right neighborhood. Did you buy your music set up by looking at products first, or by deciding you wanted to upgrade your system and getting permission from your kids to make a change and then getting their buy-in and criteria?

Sales has always assumed content is king and a good salesperson could recognize a need and place a solution. How’s that working for you? How different from the accepted 7% close ratio are you? In my mind, that makes the sales model a spectacularly ineffective model for helping buying decisions get made.

I’d like to shift the starting point to early in the buying decision journey. Without the human side being managed, the new digital activity will do little more than find those people who were going to buy anyway.

There is a way to enter earlier, and  use the digital capability. To understand the whole journey, take a look at my latest book: Dirty Little Secrets.

PURCHASES ONLY HAPPEN IF THERE IS BUY-IN

Until or unless there is appropriate buy-in to make a change, nothing will be purchased regardless of how imperative the need. It’s just not worth it to have a systems melt down.

To get buy-in requires a criteria alignment, a knowledge of how systems go through change, and a change management activity that enables all who will touch the solution to get on board with in-put and buy-in. None of this is part of the current sales model, nor is it part of any of the digital sales activities available now except for Kadient (I’m developing Buying Facilitation™ modules for Kadient).

So long as the digital world is focused on placing content, and following buyers as they peruse a site (collecting data that is specious at best), buyers will not be aided in the way they need to be – and we will continue to not meet our quotas as 50% of us are finding now.

Read my post from Friday, October 8th, as a companion to this post.

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Find out more about Buying Facilitation™ digital selling.

NEW! MP3s with me using  Buying Facilitation™ for cold calls, prospecting, and customer service calls. Check it out.

Listen to my free 3 part podcast series entitled: Keeping Sellers Relevant.

Digital Sales Activity: finding buyers too late in their journey is a post from: SharonDrewMorgen.com

The short answer is, you don’t. At least not when you are accustomed to. Because that’s not the first thing buyers need from you. The buyer first needs assistance navigating around their off-line decision issues. See, we actually enter our buyer’s sphere far too early in their decision cycle. And we end up attempting to gather needs, understand, and place product before a buyer really knows how to have this conversation with you.

The first thing buyers do – well  before they are ready to choose a vendor or a solution  – is to figure out what needs to happen internally for them to be assured that they can achieve excellence AND keep their organization in tact.  THEN they are ready for you to understand their need and place your solution. The sales model does not help the buyer at this initial part of their decision cycle because it’s private, unconscious, idiosyncratic, and for insiders only. But they must do it – and we needlessly wait as they do. It would like finding the house or car of your dreams before you discussed a move or a purchase with your spouse or bank.

GOING INTERNAL

Where do buyers go when they say, “I’ll call you back?” They go internal, to make sure the department heads are in agreement, that the status quo can allow change without creating a mess, that the historic fight between rival teams is cleaned up, that the new software will work with the old. Until or unless they manage the interal stuff of relationships,  initiatives, rules, etc., they will not be in a position to buy anything. Regardless of their ‘need’ or ‘pain.’

Think of moving. You and your spouse find the perfect house. Are you going to buy it? Well, that depends on if you can get a loan, or if the school district is viable, or if your spouse really wants that separation, or … And these things are private and off-line and have absolutely nothing to do with the house or the realtor.

It’s possible to add a front end to what you’re already doing successfully and use a different skill set to help buyers maneuver through their internal pitfalls. But it’s not sales. And it has absolutely, absolutely nothing to do with understanding: as an outsider you’ll never understand. Can I understand if, in the example above, your spouse is thinking of separation? Or how to handle the bank if you were overdrawn for 3 months last year?

Once a buyer manages the internal issues sellers can use rapport and sales and understanding skills to make sure the solution is superb. But trying to understand the personal stuff is impossible.

GATHERING DATA AT THE WRONG TIME DOESN’T HELP BUYERS BUY

Sales is faulty (see my new book on this: Dirty Little Secrets: why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell and what you can do about it) and only manages needs assessment and solution placement where it is imperative that you understand. I’m suggesting you acquire an add-on skill set to merely act as a GPS system that says left/right/left, through the maze of the types of decisions buyers must make as they consider their internal, systemic issues that hold their status quo in place. Until they do this, they can’t buy from you anyway. But when you use Buying Facilitation™ first with them and do some neutral navigation that is system- and change-based, you will be placed on their Buying Decision Team.

I recently spoke with a potential vendor who I was referred to. She automatically assumed I was ready to buy because of the referral (I certainly was not), and she went ahead gathering data (that I found myself very reluctant to give since I didn’t know her or trust her yet) and trying to sell her services. When I told her that until I knew how I would have a good chance of getting the results I wanted I wouldn’t be able to buy, she was quite adamant: “You’ll know when I give you results.” Well, in my mind that’s kinda foolish. That means I have to buy her services, pay her a lot of money, go through internal disruption, and I won’t know until AFTER all that whether I’m going to be successful or not??? Before I’d be able to choose her, I’d need to figure out the criteria I’d use to know if her suggestions, her personality, my needs, my market, my folks who would be working with her, my company, would act together in a way that would bring me the change I’m seeking. And if it would be worth the money and disruption. She’d have been far better off to have used a Facilitative Question:

How would you know before we begin that you would have a good chance of reaching your goals? What would need to happen within your organization to make sure they are ready for the type of change you are requiring?

It’s not about my need or her solution. It’s about the issues I need to manage internally in order to allow change to take place in a way that minimizes disruption.

Until you realize there are actually two different types of decisions buyers must make – the vendor/solution decision that you handle, and the behind-the-scenes issues that they must handle first – you will be trying to understand too early and not be present to help them with the main decisions they must make first.

You can add a new set of skills to what you’re doing already, and actually become a part of your buyer’s buying decisions. And, when it’s time for you to understand, you will be there with just the skills you need to do it. But first, let’s help manage the private process that you’ve left unattended until now.

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To learn how to do this, consider buying my new book Dirty Little Secrets: why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell and what you can do about it

How do we sell if we don’t understand needs? is a post from: SharonDrewMorgen.com

Whenever we stand in front of a room and pitch data, we have no idea how the folks are viewing us or our solution, what the politics in the room are and how the personalities are weighted, how we are being perceived in relation to our competitors, their old vendors or their on-site team mates who are currently providing a work-around until a new solution gets chosen.

We’ve made great pitches to buyers who have needed us, but haven’t gotten the work because we haven’t managed the off-line issues that we are blissfully unaware of until we lose the sale. That doesn’t need to happen.

Watch my brief video and begin thinking about how to use the presentation process differently. After all, you’re there, in front of the prospect anyway: consider adding a decision facilitation session to the front end of your conversation before you show them your solution details. They won’t make a buying decision until they do that anyway, and if you don’t help them, they’ll do it off-line, without you.

Do you want to be on the Buying Decision Team? or do you want to sit and wait while they make their decisions without you. Because they need to make them anyway. Might as well be with you.

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Today, Oct 29, is your last day to get your freebies for purchasing Dirty Little Secrets.  I hope you’re all enjoying the new book. I’m sure enjoying our emails and your questions. I’ll soon put together call-in coaching sessions so I can help you learn. Stay tuned. And thank you for your care.

A New Presentation Model: Facilitate the Decision is a post from: SharonDrewMorgen.com