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

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

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

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

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

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

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

MUCH SHORTER SALES CYCLES USING BUYING FACILITATION® AND SALES

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

When you have a need for a new car, how do you and your family choose it?

When your work unit (team, company) wants a new training program, how do you go about choosing if/when/why to have one, and with whom you’ll study?

AT THE START, NO ONE KNOWS THEIR DECISION JOURNEY

When I ask you these questions, do you know the complete answer right now? Do you know now how everyone is going to react - at the start of, or during, the decision  process? What everyone will add to the conversation and weigh in on the choices? How you will shift perspectives, or reconsider needs based on other’s needs or comments? What  problems will arise? What additional solutions will arise? What will happen to your relationships as you all go through the process? What sort of a choice will you end up with in relation to the thoughts you had when you started?

Often when people are first aware of my work, they think I suggest that sellers  find out more about the buyer’s decision making. This always surprises me: I’ve never suggested this at all. Indeed, it’s impossible.

As sellers, we  work to understand a buyer’s needs, and then find the best route to showing how our solution fits. We absolutely need to understand the who, what, why, where, when.

But make no mistake: we will never, ever, understand what is going on during their behind-the-scenes decision process. And here, I speak not only of the decisions around a solution choice, but all of those change management issues they must address privately before they even get as far as choosing a solution. If your partner doesn’t want to move, you’re not moving. If your family needs a van, you’re not getting your Porsche right now. If your team wants to use their old vendor, they won’t choose the new solution.

OUTSIDERS CAN’T UNDERSTAND THE PERSONAL DECISION CRITERIA

Can I ‘understand’ your relationship with your spouse and/or family and the relationship issues and history involved in your decisions? Never. Gosh – YOU don’t even understand it sometimes. But as an outsider, I’ll certainly never understand. Do you understand your parent’s marriage? No? You lived with them for at least 18 years – and you still don’t understand?

So how would you ever expect to understand folks who you don’t know? THEY don’t even understand their process!

But let’s say there was some magical way you could understand – some way you could

• get into each individual’s head and heart,
• be there when they unconsciously figure out the reasons why they are saying what they are saying or pushing for their specific choices,
• understand what’s going through their heads at the moment they decide to compromise or dig their heals in,
• understand how their communications with colleagues have taken place over time and their relationship history.

Let’s say you’re wearing a cloak that makes you invisible and enables you to go into everyone’s unconscious individually, and then be there during the several meetings and dialogues take place. Even if you could do all that, you STILL wouldn’t have the capability to influence their private issues.

• You can’t help them figure out whether to fire the guy who has been running the work-around that your solution will replace.
• You can’t help the CSO and CMO communicate effectively with the CTO.
• You can’t help the tech guys work better with the users.
• You aren’t there when your Internal Client seeks out several alternatives to using you.
• You can’t choose the criteria that will make or break their personal log-jam.

Sellers must understand need so they can place a solution. But the sales model does NOT handle the behind-the-scenes decision issues buyers must address to manage the change that will occur, to elicit the buy-in necessary to move forward – and design new pathways to allow change to happen without disruption. Because until or unless they do, they will make no decision – and hence the length of the sales cycle.

Asking ‘what is your buying decision’ is specious. As is ‘who are the decision makers.’ You knowing all that – which you can never do as there are far too many unknowns even for the buyers – will not help the buyer make their decisions. Sorry. It just won’t.

Buying Facilitation™ is a change management model that adds a decision facilitation capability to your sales model. Then you can be a support to the buyer’s private decisions instead of just sitting and waiting while they do this.

Have a look at Dirty Little Secrets – read 2 sample chapters. It explains exactly what buyers are doing internally while you’re hovering waiting to sell (and actually shows you how you can facilitate their decision making with a new skill set). Look at the Learning Accelerators that offer Buying Facilitation™ skills to help you help them manage their change. But make no mistake: the sales model does not give you the tools to be effective in this space.

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For those wishing to hear Sharon Drew live in Boston, please register for the September 23rd evening event titled: A Trail of Dead Salespeople https://m360.smei.org/ViewEvent.aspx?id=20780&instance=0

Listen to Sharon Drew on the following webinars and podcasts:

• Leadformix - What’s the Difference between a newspaper and a sales professional? Hint: both are doomed. – Sept. 13 at 11:00 AM PST - http://www.leadformix.com/webinar/aug25/webinar.html
• CustomerThink Sales Summit - Start at the beginning: add new Trusted Advisor skills earlier in the buyer’s journey – Oct. 5-7 with Dave Brock. Time TBA. - http://www.customerthink.com/summit/sales_edge_2010
• Focus.com - The Focus Interactive Summit: Evolving your sales game plan – Oct. 21 - http://www.focus.com/interactive-summits/

Sellers can’t understand the buyer’s decision process is a post from: SharonDrewMorgen.com

Let’s begin with my friend Jeff Thull. Jeff’s work (Exceptional Selling) most parallel’s my own. He works with companies doing complex sales, and connects the solutions to the client’s business drivers. He’s prolific, professional, and certainly is focused on incorporating the buying end into the sales effort. Buying Facilitation would add yet another tool into Jeff’s fabulous toolbox of skills, and would actually add another layer of systems management to the very front end of the seller/buyer relationship and actually offer an additional toolkit for the buyer to recognize, and manage, all of the systemic elements that need to be included, shifted, and reconfigured for any change to take place. Not only would Buying Facilitation add to Jeff’s current (amazing, professional) skills set by minimizing the purchasing
decision and time it takes to garner internal management decisions, it would also support effortless buy-in for the client side and also parallel Jeff’s focus on ethical, values-based collaboration.

http://www.primeresource.com/

Brian Tracy is of course, well, Brian Tracy. He’s not only the carrier of SALES as we’ve known it, but he’s smart, kind, professional, and really cares about people. He was certainly very giving to me when I needed a friend’s ear. Brian has more product than any other sales professional out there, and it’s all professionally done and very relevant to the seller who is seeking to learn the basics: give your customer what they want, at the price they want to pay, and give them the service they deserve. Buying Facilitation could easily tack on to Brian’s thinking: give sellers additional tools that are not about product but are geared to help the buyer make their best decision (the ones that are outside of the seller’s purview – the ones that the buyer’s have to make privately, internally, to be ready to make a buying decision that their status quo can tolerate). Once they know how to line up their internal decision process, then the pitching and information gathering, the presentations and the follow ups all become easier. I look forward to getting feedback from those of you willing to try adding Buying Facilitation to what you’re already doing with Brians work.  http://www.briantracy.com/

Tony
Alessandra is adding streetsmarts into the equation: how does it REALLY get done. And, Tony has built several  assessment tools to help you figure it out. He’s an amazing speaker. Really fun and professional, and his clients adore him. Adding Buying Facilitation to his work would make the decision making even quicker, while maintaining all of Tony’s unique take on the buyer/seller relationships. http://www.tonyalessandra.com/

Tomorrow I’ll take this even further. In the meantime, I look forward to some feedback.

Adding Buying Facilitation® to Consultative Sales: Friends is a post from: SharonDrewMorgen.com

Until now, our communication rules have assumed that when we kindly or persuasively offer others good information that could solve problems and achieve successful results, or coach them toward making a much-needed change, or even just pitch a product they sorely need, we can expect a positive reception. Obviously, if our communication partner (called Partner in this article) has a problem and we’ve got the true solution – and we do! We do! – they should take our advice. But they don’t.

We watch our Partners nod their heads in agreement with our clever suggestions, and promise to do something different, but then quickly return to their old less-successful behaviors.

DISCOVERING THE PROBLEM VS. SUPPLYING THE SOLUTION
When we offer our Partners seemingly obvious solutions and expect them to change, we are failing to take into account their need to make comprehensive systems decisions first. Indeed, our Partners need to recognize and manage all aspects of their presenting problem before they can make sense of our suggestions. But it’s not so easy as we think.

Let me make up a silly analogy using an iceberg: we all see the tip; but if an iceberg engineer (I’m obviously making this up) needs to move the iceberg, he can’t until/unless he understands its size, shape, weight, as well as weather conditions, sea conditions, and its course of travel. Until the whole iceberg is measured and a new location is found, the tip ain’t movin’.

There is so much more to influencing choices than we initially recognize.

Of course, our Partner’s presenting problem seems obvious to us, especially when we’ve been in business a while and have seen it all so often. But the full ramifications of the problem – all of the elements that it contains, all of the legs it has to-and-from the rest of the Partner’s environment, all of the beliefs and constructs that maintain the problem – are quite hidden.

And until or unless the client understands and resolves all of the elements that created and maintains the problem, she won’t know how to make a change. She might act differently for a bit when she intellectually understands the reasons to adopt new behaviors. But if the complete set of issues aren’t understood, managed, and accounted for, permanent change will not occur.

INFORMATION DOESN’T HELP PEOPLE CHANGE
Too often, sellers of change focus their drive toward change around rational, proven facts, generally accepted knowledge, or unique data – all of which I am labeling ‘information’. While information is necessary, and will be useful at some point later in the decision cycle, there is no way early on for people to know what to do with it. It’s akin to explaining to the iceberg engineer all of the dynamics of the moving crane before he’s sized up the components of the iceberg, the weather, or the sea.

It’s difficult to understand that accurate information is not enough to warrant change: people just end up resisting.

This problem shows up when buyers take too long to purchase. Or when people don’t heed our advice and continue on doing the same-old, same-old, complaining fervently of an unresolved problem. It seems curious for us to see their problem so clearly, and have a viable solution, and then be ignored, while the Partners continue to muddle along with the same problems.

But a note of caution: it’s not our job to understand or fix our Partner’s problems although we’d sure like to. It’s not our job to know what our Partner needs. The Partner must effectively manage all of the elements within their existent system before change can occur. Once they do this, as part of a facilitation process of painstaking discovery you can lead them through, they can develop all the necessary criteria for designing a unique solution; as support folk, we then just supply it. So much easier than us trying to create a solution based on a small segment of data.

I recently got a call from a young woman in a large recruitment company. She wanted to know how I would train 3000 people.
“What criteria are you using to know if they’ve been successfully trained?”
“We just want a training program. We’re talking with several different groups, and want to know what you can do for us.”
“But all programs don’t offer the same things, and your sales staff would learn different skills from each program.”
“Well, we want you to tell us what’s different about yours so we know and we can compare.”
“But what are you comparing if you don’t know your criteria?”

I then used Facilitative Questions to help her determine her success criteria. Here’s what she came up with:

1. differentiation from the competition;
2. loyalty and trust created from each interaction;
3. a ‘true’ consultative approach in which the seller helps the buyer understand and solve her own business problems;
4. consistent skills among all sales staff;
5. creation of value through each interaction.

Once we discovered the criteria, it became clear that Buying Facilitation would work for her. But until then, she wouldn’t have known how to discern one program from another since ‘sales training’ meant something unique to her that I had no of understanding without making guesses.

SYSTEMS
Let’s digress here to underscore the importance of ‘systems’, which are the elements of the Partner’s company that must be managed before change can take place.

People and groups of people possess unique, internal elements, or ‘systems’: they operate through certain beliefs; hold religious or personal or company values; collaborate with others (family, partners, vendors, colleagues) with whom they have another set of beliefs and values; work/live with rules, politics, and norms; have hopes and dreams, fears and regrets. In business there are often vendor or multinational relationships that alter the fact pattern. Indeed, all of us have very unique mind-sets, compounded when there are several people within the system, such as families or business colleagues. And these elements – which I’m labeling ‘systems’ – cause and create the Partner’s landscape.

People/teams are generally unaware that their problems are a direct result of the mix of these very idiosyncratic systems issues. It’s the system itself, in the precise way it exists, that has created the problem situation.  Indeed, whatever is going on actually looks and feels ‘normal’ cuz that’s the way it’s always been. It’s only when a significant problem crops up that people look beyond the conscious-comfortable status quo.

As outsiders, there is no way we can address, manage, or alter those unique internal issues. We just see the results of the decisions made: there is no appropriate training program in place; the person is overweight and facing serious illness; the employee comes in late every day; 20 people are working from a server that handles 5 people.

A solution looks obvious to us; even when a needs-analysis is done it often looks like our solution would solve the problem (see newsletter #51 – Needs Analysis: who is it for?). But no matter how smart we are as outsiders, no matter how much we can see, no matter how right we are, we are still only seeing the tip of the iceberg.

THE TWO STAGES OF DECISION MAKING
Let’s start with one of my basic premises:

Information does not teach people how to make a new decision.

Since most of us use information transfer as a way to instigate change, let me offer you my rationale for the above statement: unless our Partners address and manage their internal systems issues before seeking a solution, they face the prospect of upsetting any elements that hold the status quo together. In fact, there might be chaos if change is not managed appropriately.

In our iceberg analogy, that means until the engineer understands what he’s got to move where, understands the depth and mass of the ice, and understands the water factors, he faces possible destruction of the iceberg if he tries to move it with only knowledge of the tip.

So there is an up-front set of decisions that need to get made in order to consider doing something new, and a secondary set of decisions to determine an appropriate solution.

In the first stage of decisioning – the choice to make a new decision by managing all internal variables – there are three distinct, sequential phases that all people and teams go through and which must be resolved (consciously or unconsciously) before a final decision can be made. In fact, each of these phases are carried out (consciously or not) in every decision made, whether it’s a simple or a complex decision, or a decision made by an individual, a group, a family, or a company.

1. What’s missing and how did it get missing;
2. How can we fix that with familiar resources;
3. What are the full range of internal variables that need to be recognized and addressed before a new solution can actually be embraced.

1. Where are we? What’s missing? – Recognizing, understanding, and managing the complex issues.

Our Partners must be able to examine the full extent of the elements of the problem and acutely recognize (I mean deeply understand) what’s missing that is creating the problem at hand. Does this sound simple?

How many of us, given all the time in the world to sit down and think, can actually recognize all the elements in play that have gotten us where we are, not to mention what might be missing from our potentially comfortable status quo?

Think of something about yourself that you don’t particularly like: your penchant for procrastinating? Your push to work harder rather than take time with your family? The way you speak to people sometimes or your inability to really listen if you’re distracted? Your forgetfulness?

We all have annoying habits or behaviors that we either try to hide, or wish we could fix. And even when we’ve tried to fix them, they don’t stay fixed. Why? It’s actually difficult from an up-close-and-personal standpoint to fully recognize, understand, or pinpoint all of the elements that have generated and maintained this quirk. It all just ‘is’, and has grown into comfort.

If seeing ourselves clearly is that difficult for us, how can we expect others to have an easier time?

Following this thinking, the main idea here is that only your communication partner – your client, your prospect, your employee – can know the full range of elements she is willing to address, not you. It is faulty for us to think it’s our job to understand (so we can offer our solution?). Our jobs are to help our Partner understand by asking the facilitative questions that will direct them to their own solutions.

2. Fix problems with known resources – Seeking to fix what is already there, or find familiar vendors/sources of change management.

The next piece of the puzzle is that systems try to self-correct. Even when it’s painfully obvious that there is a problem that needs to be solved, the first place that people or teams go to fix it is internal: they end up going back to those same systems that created the problem, hoping for a different outcome.

Of course that’s insanity, but until they at least make the effort, they won’t consider a solution outside of their comfort zone. Our training doesn’t work? Let’s tweak it. I’m overweight? All I have to do is stop eating ice cream every day, and I’ll start today – uh, tomorrow.

One of the problems we have as change agents is that we actually believe people or clients want us to help them change at the moment they come to us to fix their problem. They are only attempting to get ideas to use so they can fix their own problem.

3. Manage all internal variables so no chaos will occur through change – pinpointing the actual ideas/people/initiatives/decisions that would need to buy-in to any changes.

It’s only when people truly understand that they’ll need a solution that’s unfamiliar – possibly uncomfortable, unfamiliar, uncontrollable – that they sit down to truly make sense of all of the issues they need to manage in order to make a change that won’t wreak havoc on their status quo.

Until or unless all of the internal criteria that created and maintain the problem are recognized, and a route is designed in which they can manage an efficient change progression throughout their system, people won’t change. That means having the prospect address relationship, financial, people, historic, branding, belief, and (especially) political issues – whatever they see as elements within the larger system that maintain the current fact pattern. Let me say again, that as an outsider you will never fully understand what is going on. Your job is to support your partners through their own discovery and solution creation.

NEW JOB
The jobs of sellers, coaches and supervisors must now shift to include a decision support model on the front end. The Buying/Decision Facilitation Method is a method that leads people through the components of their decisions so they can recognize the systems elements they need to address and resolve. Our roles are to be neutral navigators who chart the course of discovery.

This will bring the following results:

1. what needs to get changed will be recognized and acknowledged quickly.
2. decisions get made with all elements included and our Partner knows she has all answers for her solution;
3. all decision partners are brought into the problem/solution within a few hours/days of the initial phases of discovery. In that way they create their own solution and have no resistance;
4. the seller/coach/supervisor is seen as a true advisor, and any competition is dispensed with.
5. the relationship between Partner and change agent becomes loyal;
6. pitching and presenting is minimized, as the solution comes from the Partner and the seller/coach just supplies it.

We’ve been trained to have answers, to uncover ‘pain’. But we can share the job with our Partners: they have the detail; we have the overview. Between us, we’ve got the whole picture.

Help your Partner change and have a full set of resources. Be the navigator that supports them. Don’t have the answers, have the questions. Trust your partners to do their own changing. Your job is to serve, and supply the appropriate solution when they discover how to manage their own change.

Influencing Change – A Guide For Sellers, Coaches, And Supervisors is a post from: SharonDrewMorgen.com