BUYING DECISIONS ARE BASED ON SYSTEMS AND CHANGE MANAGEMENT

We live in systems (My book Dirty Little Secrets: why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell and what you can do about it explains a systems and how change and decisions take place.).

A system is a bunch of things that have agreed to operate together, using rules they all agree to. And systems don’t recognize one thing as ‘bad/needs help’ and one thing ‘good/leave alone.’ It’s all just stuff that keeps recreating itself daily – like our weight, or our relationships, or the way our teams/families function.

When a problem occurs within a system the system quickly creates a work-around so it can continue on it’s normal route. It doesn’t say, “OH. We need to make a purchase and get rid of the thing that’s problematic!’ It just does a fix and keeps going. It’s not until several parts of a system are ready to create a change and manage any resistance, that a change (or purchase) will take place).

One of the problems with the sales model is that it assumes when sellers ’understand need’ and move to introduce a ‘fix’, that the buying journey can be influenced. This is far, far from true (or we’d close a lot more sales). Until the system is ready to change without resistance, it will do nothing.

Here are the major systems issues that must be resolved before a purchase will be made, regardless of the type of size of the solution or the costs of the underlying need.

1. The Buying Decision Team must be formed – an interesting process in an of itself and takes quite a while.
2. The political infighting must be minimized. But oh, what a painful, personal process!
3. The familiar vendor must be checked out.
4. The recommended vendors must be checked out.
5. Everyone who will touch the solution must agree to change. This is a long, hard process.
6. The implementation/change management issues must be in place.
7. The management must be bought-in and know how to manage the change.
8. People have to be hired/fired/outsourced, or calendars scheduled to take care of the appropriate staffing.

Because we are not part of the system that buyers make decisions in – their relationships and their policies are idiosyncratic and not open to outsiders – using the sales model merely  manages the last stage of the buying decision, but offers little to manage the back-end systems piece and decision paths.

A NEED IS NOT AN ISOLATED EVENT CASE STUDY

When sellers notice a problem – and let’s face it: we’re hypervigilant around problems we can solve with our solution - we hone in on it as if it were an isolated event. And try to prove to the system that it’s wrong, and can only be ‘righted’ if it purchases OUR solution.

But that’s lunacy. Many years ago I was working with IBM. They were running Betas on a new system – AS 400 to replace the slower System 36 – and needed one particular small company to take the Beta as it fit the criteria for testing perfectly. They had 3 sales people attempt to offer the company the new hardware for free, and it was declined each time. They asked me to see if I could have better results. Here is how the conversation went:

SDM: Hi. I’m Sharon Drew Morgen with IBM. This is a sales call. Is this a good time to speak?

Owner: Sure. What are you selling?

SDM: Actually, I’m trying to give you a free computer cuz we’re doing a Beta test and want to include you. How is your computer working for you?

Owner: Um. It’s OK. Fine, I guess.

SDM: What’s stopping you from getting a computer that’s better than OK??

Owner: Dad.

SDM: DAD? What does that mean?

Owner: This is a Mom & Pop shop. Dad is the owner. He’s been around over 40 years, and he’s retiring in 2 years. He’s in charge of all technology, and I don’t want him to stress over trying to learn something new that will probably be beyond him.

And there you have it. The problem was not a problem at all, as a very slow computer was worth the systemic issues that held it in place. I must admit that I figured out a way to move ahead, though. But not by discussing the merits of the new computer or focusing on the need. I helped him decide how to take care of Dad.

SDM: I hear that until or unless Dad would be able to learn a new technology easily, and would be able to maintain it comfortably, you’d rather continue with your slow computer. What would you need to see from me to know if we could create a way to help Dad decide if he could handle it?

Owner: Are there any other Beta sites around here that you could take Dad to and he could see for himself?

He did, and it was fine, and they took the Beta.

Stop selling a solution. Until ‘Dad’ is aboard, the rest of the system will fight to maintain the status quo. Focus your efforts on helping the prospect figure out how and when and if and with whom to change and help them manage their decision paths. And then you can sell.

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Read 2 sample chapters of 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 expands and influences decisions.

Hear Sharon Drew make live prospecting calls.

How do systems determine buying decisions? is a post from: SharonDrewMorgen.com

And, why am I recording a Change Management series? For those of you familiar with my decision facilitation model, you’ll recognize that it’s basically a change management model that helps buyers (or teams, or patients, or or) navigate through all of the unconscious, behind-the-scenes, private issues they have to decide on, en route to doing something different. After all, anything different means change. And any time we change, we have issues to manage within our status quo, so we don’t create chaos unduly.

ALL DECISIONS ARE CHANGE MANAGEMENT ISSUES

Whether you’re going to change your hairstyle, or buy a house, or adopt a new ERP system in your company, or bring in new staff, anything that will shift the status quo is a change management issue. Because the status quo is happy with whatever rules or relationships or technology already exists (or it would have been changed already), adding anything new upsets the apple-cart, so to speak.

Until now, the change management model has focused on designing the change and managing the resistance. But I believe that resistance isn’t necessary if the change agents first seek buy-in. Interesting, that when a search is done for the term ‘Buy-In’ in the change management field, only one instance came up! Yet every book on change management is about, in large part, managing resistance.

In this series, Nathan and I discuss change from a systems standpoint, and how to achieve buy-in by getting systems to agree to change – before even introducing the change initiative. Is it possible? Listen to the podcasts and let me know. We’ve got a new site dedicated to buy-in, discussions around buy-in, and creating community to help buy-in become a recognized aspect of change management.

The titles for the 6 part series are:

• What is change? And why is it so difficult?
• What are systems, and how do they influence change?
• The historic problems with change management models: bias, resistance, and push
• What is resistance, how do current change management models create it, and how can it be avoided?
• Why is buy-in necessary and how to achieve it.
• Putting it all together: a radical approach to change management and real leadership

STRATEGYDRIVEN

For those interested in change management, have a look at www.StrategyDriven.com. It’s a truly neat site. Here how it is described:

StrategyDriven represent tried and tested business world methods based on years of business planning and execution experience and founded on solid research and academic principles. We provide readers with the best practices needed to create the high level of organizational alignment and accountability characteristic of world-class organizations and introduce warning flag processes and behaviors that signal a retreat from world-class standards. Our framework not only addresses performance of discrete planning and execution functions but also the interrelationships between an organization’s mission and objectives to its executable programs, budgets, and procedures, and finally to its products and services and the market it serves.

At a more granular level, our framework and supporting practices enhance organizational alignment by reinforcing business process interrelationships from strategic planning and resource management to tactical execution and evaluation and control. We also discuss the management and leadership practices needed to bring employees and the system together; all running smoothly and seamlessly with one another. And all of these practices focus on achieving the organization’s vision, values, and mission goals.

Go to www.strategydriven.com. Have a look around. You’ll be filled with new thoughts, find all sorts of articles, and leave the site hungry for more. Enjoy. And, make sure you listen to our Making Change Work series. We’ve worked hard to provide some new thinking.

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Once you finish this podcast, check out part 2 of making change work.

Making Change Work: a change management podcast series with StrategyDriven is a post from: SharonDrewMorgen.com

Here is a story from a client in Australia.

Jack was the MD of the Sydney office of his firm, with his supervisor living in the States. He was successful, and left to his own devices much of the time, but needed his superior for large out-of-budget decisions.

One day he decided that if the company manufactured a new tool, that there would be a huge savings and would address the lagging market share. He spent a month looking around, and found a tool manufacturer in Germany. The sales rep and engineer flew from Berlin down to Sydney (a loooong bus ride) and started designing this tool. Over the course of a year, they all met 3 times (Are you calculating the costs yet for these trips?). Once he had the tool in hand, my client flew to the States (Are you still calculating travel costs??) to talk to his boss. The conversation didn’t take long.

“A new tool? Looks great. We’ve been trying to figure out how to tackle the market-share problem, and we think we’ve come up with several ideas. We’re going to try these – roll them out and follow them. And if we don’t have the success we think we’ll have, I’ll give you a call and we can talk about this new tool. Give me about 2 years to roll out and trial everything we’re already thinking of.”

But there is another way this might have happened that would have been more successful – and cheaper.

First, from the German manufacturing folks:

BERLIN: You want a new tool? What would you want it to give you that you don’t already have now? And what has stopped you from creating one yourselves? How would you and your Buying Decision Team know that this tool would give you the results you seek?

NOTE: these few Facilitative Questions would have gotten everyone on track, and saved the guys a lotta money traveling down to Sydney — and gotten the MD on the phone to his boss before moving ahead on anything. Like other sales folks, they assumed they had a buyer. They merely had a prospect: the buyer did not know how to line up his ‘team’ around a buying decision. And it had nothing whatsoever to do with the solution, the price, the need, or the relationship.

Next, let’s look at it from the ‘client’s’ viewpoint and see how he could have mitigated the situation before spending an expensive year. Not only would he have known that it wouldn’t be possible, but he actually might have shifted the possibility.

MD: Hi Steven. I have a question: How are you and the Board currently thinking about increasing market share? I have an idea that includes a new piece of equipment and would differentiate us at very little cost. How would you all know that something like that is worth considering? What would you need to see from me? And how would you and the Board want to own the solution so it could ‘come from you’ seemlessly without the other MDs feeling I went over their heads?

There are always political problems between the ranks that are part of the system that keeps the status quo in place. Folks have to figure out how to manage these so that when they decide on solutions, the internal  political issues don’t get knocked out of shape. This exchange would have not only opened the possibility of a new solution, but managed the internal issues – and all before any trips or time or cost. And it could have taken place on the phone or on a video call.

For some reason, we always have our sales radar ON: is there a need? what is the problem that we can resolve? We listen and ask through biases, and only focus on how our solution can be used. We forget that it’s merely one part of what needs to get done. And it’s now possible to help buyers do the stuff they’ve always struggled with: get their entire buying decision team in place so they can figure out if they want to move forward to fix a problem that your solution can resolve. Until they figure out how to do this, they will do nothing. And your solution will never be bought. Would you rather sell? or have someone buy?

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It’s not about your solution, folks. That’s the last thing that happens. The system must first decide to do something different. And you can have a bit of control by using Buying Facilitation™ before sales.

The Decisions Before Selling is a post from: SharonDrewMorgen.com

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

SDM: What happened? I never heard back.

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

MAKES NO SENSE

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

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

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

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

Do you remember, back in the day, when docs said that women suffering from PMS were hysterical and they needed to have a hysterectomy (that’s where the word ‘hysterical’ comes from btw)? They didn’t understand the physiology underlying the physical issues, and relegated the problem to emotions.

My son has a neurological disease called Dystonia. There is no physical/medical test for it (although it’s very obvious what it is if you are familiar with it), and for many years people suffered with it and had to go to mental institutions because it was called an ‘emotional’ disease. In fact, when I lived in London and my son needed his perscriptions filled from our NY neurologist, our ‘surgery’ doc (the UK medical model) told us he needed a psychiatrist, not meds for his uncontrollable spasms.

Historically, when we don’t understand the roots of something we assume there is an emotional component, with the underlying belief being that there is something ‘not quite right’ with the person experiencing what is outside our comfort zone.

BUYER’S PURCHASES MUST COMPLY WITH THEIR SYSTEM

Because buyers take actions that sellers regularly believe to be ‘irrational’, we say that they are either ‘stupid’ or making an ‘emotional’ decision. Neuroscientists calls these decisions irrational or emotional as well. But we – sellers and neuroscientists – are rather biased: we see a problem, believe we know the solution, and consider our solution to be the best because it’s the most rational. We forget that every person, every group or family, every system if you will, has a very unique and idiosyncratic set of beliefs and criteria that determine their choices. And what may look irrational from the outside is very very rational on the inside, even if sometimes unconscious.

Indeed, before anyone makes any decision, they consider it against their own beliefs. Would you walk over to a stranger in a park and harm him? No? Why not? That would be an emotional, irrational decision. But you wouldn’t do it because you have internal, unconscious beliefs and values that wouldn’t allow you to harm another person – especially a stranger.

No one makes decisions outside of their beliefs. The internal, private ‘system’ that makes up our functioning rules (as individuals or groups) is sacrosanct, and if any decision might render the system useless, or ‘less-than,’ then another decision will be made. And outsiders cannot understand what’s going or become a part of that decision becasue, well, because they are outsiders.

Ever wonder why your friend stayed with her/his spouse? You’ll never understand. But it’s not irrational to him or her; it meets a need of some sort. Indeed, why haven’t you lost those ’5′ pounds? And why don’t you eat healthier, or work out more, or spend more time with your kids, or or or or. It might look irrational to me, but you have a very unique, idiosyncratic set of internal beliefs that kinda fit together and make up who you are, and if you try to change one piece of this, the rest of the system has distress.

If you were going to start working out daily, you’d have to either get up earlier or move something else in your schedule around. You’d have to probably start considering to eat healthier, and maybe stop having so many beers. It’s not about the gym, or about the weights; it’s about your system and how it’s willing to change so it all becomes a seamless whole that operates in tandem to serve you.

Buyers live in a unique system of rules and roles and relationships, history and initiatives, feelings and vendors and budgets. Change anything and everything else gets touched in some way. Before buyers buy, they must figure out how to manage all this so it ends up butter-side-up; understanding their needs, doing SPIN or Sandler or Relationship sales, or or or, only manages the problem end of the buying decision – the very very last action that buyers need to take – AFTER they’ve managed their systems change bits. And again, no matter what we ask or what we are told, we can never, ever understand someone else’s system, just as they can’t understand ours.

My new book discusses all of this in detail, and explains what’s going on behind-the-scenes, and why. And it teaches how to help buyers discover and address all of their unconscious issues so they can make a congruent decision. Think about it. Think about your decisions and how you make them, and the beliefs you must consider first. Then apply the same beliefs to your buyers.

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There is still time to get the freebies for: 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. 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. You still get the freebies with the bundle order.

Decisions are Never Emotional is a post from: SharonDrewMorgen.com

1. Information does not teach someone how to make a decision.
2. Decision-making follows a specific, unconscious process.
3. Decisions are neither haphazard, irrational, emotional, or faulty.
4. Decisions are based on conscious or unconscious values-based criteria, generated from historic beliefs, that created and maintain the current internal, underlying system of rules, roles, relationships.

WHAT DO DECISIONS DO?

Whether in the field of sales, negotiations, change management, or just getting a three year old to clean her room, nothing will change without a decision being made. And, decisions correspond to the unconscious, values-based norms of a person’s (or group’s) internal, beliefs-based criteria.

Historically, we have assumed that offering good data can influence a decision. We have built industries on this assumption: sales, marketing, advertising, training, coaching, PR, politics, teaching. Indeed, even the foundation of Decision Sciences is information: the testing of what a person decides given X input, regardless of what internal criteria is involved that would influence the behavior.

The basic belief has been that if, as Outsiders (marketers, sellers, influencers, parents, coaches), we presume an Other is experiencing a Problem, and we offer to resolve that problem through our solution by pitching, presenting, promoting, or marketing the ‘right’ information, in the ‘right’ way, at the ‘right’ time, to the ‘right’ demographic, we will be able to influence decisions to get the Other to adopt our solution.

I’m here to tell you that the premise is wrong. And this premise has been singularly responsible for the 90%+ failure rate in the field of sales, and 50%+ in marketing, advertising, coaching, and training.

CRITERIA VS. INFORMATION

We make new decisions only when our values-based criteria are triggered and found to be deficient; we rarely make a decision that is out of alignment with our underlying beliefs, and if we do, we are incongruent and, therefore, uncomfortable. Indeed, behaviors are the external manifestation of our beliefs – our beliefs in action, as it were.

I once noticed a young man smoking. It was quite a surprise for me, after seeing the array of pictures he produced of his young family. It seemed odd that he hadn’t noticed the incongruence between smoking and being a healthy Dad who would want to be around to raise his very young family.

“How will you know when it’s time to shift your criteria from the pleasure of smoking to the need to be a healthy Dad as your children grow up?”

He threw his cigarettes away at that moment. Last I heard, several years later, he was still abstaining from cigarettes. His decision to quit was based on a different criteria than his decision to smoke, and higher up the criteria ladder in his unconscious.

Note the use of the Facilitative Question. I formulated the question to help him make conscious his unconscious criteria around pleasure and fatherhood, and trusted that once he saw the incongruence, and shifted his criteria to fatherhood and health, he would reconsider his decision to smoke. If I had asked him why he was smoking (gathering information), he would have told me. If I had told him it wasn’t healthy (offering information), he would have agreed. But once I led him to his unconscious, and taught him how to engage a higher-level criterion (family and fatherhood being a higher level criterion than smoking), and assign a different weight to ‘smoking’ and ‘fatherhood’ and ‘health’ than he had, he was able to make a new decision for himself.

DECISIONS ARE IDIOSYNCRATIC AND SYSTEMS BASED

We each internally hold a tangled system of unique, idiosyncratic, personal values and beliefs acquired from our history of family, school, religion, friends, and living conditions.

From here we build a series of beliefs, values, hopes, dreams, fears, assumptions, biases that I call our ‘internal system’, making up a set of belief-based criteria from which we make all of our decisions. And, to make a decision, we unconsciously filter all incoming data through our system.

As a lifelong health person, I automatically filter out any conversation, ad, or commercial, which might suggest I smoke, eat processed food or wheat, purchase candy, or harm the earth. Regardless of the quality of the data or the intent, I will not attend to it. It would be going against my beliefs, and is therefore a waste of my time. I am a sucker for articles or shows on health, longevity, exercise. When I buy a health magazine at a check out counter on ‘impulse’, it’s never a behavior-based decision but a decision that has already (quickly) gone through my belief criteria.

As with others, much of my decision making is unconscious and automatic, biased and comfortable. I ignore direct mail no matter how clever the packaging. I hang up on any cold callers that begin a conversation trying to get me to listen to them (i.e. taking care of their needs rather than mine). I ignore people who think they know what’s right for me and offer to show me the error of my ways without discussing criteria, beliefs, outcomes.

Like each of us, I have a whole slew of things that I believe and that influence – and bias – the data I seek, the thoughts and activities I’m willing to attend to, the filters I listen through, the conversations I’m willing to have, my choice of friends, clothes, food. They influence where I live, who I marry – or not – what I read or watch. And we all have the same sorts of influences and biases that are self-sustaining. They are part of our internal system that maintains itself daily.

IRRATIONAL BEHAVIOR

Decision Scientists, OD folks, leaders, sales folks, and change agents, would like to pretend that people are blank slates, and available for influence if approached nicely or rationally. People are deemed irrational, or making a bad decision, or stupid, if their behaviors are outside of our comfort zone, or our proposed solutions.

But do people understand exactly what is going on for them internally that is instigating their biases and decisions? Maybe. Maybe not. Depends on the motivation or ability to look inside. But just because underlying beliefs are hidden doesn’t mean people don’t, or can’t, understand what is going on, or that they can’t be influenced to do something differently within the boundaries of their personal criteria.

We make these sorts of assumptions in Sales and Coaching: as outsiders with a knowledge of what a ‘problem’ in our field looks like, we might recognize that someone has a problem that needs resolution (with our product or ideas, naturally) and we can’t understand the hesitation. In Change Management, we offer the initiative and all of the strategic behaviors that need to be addressed, but there is resistance that cuts short success. Vendors place product, but users won’t do what they are supposed to do after the implementation – and we never got buy-in before we started.

We fail to realize that external data will only be used or perceived or considered in relation to beliefs and values and are not considered in a vacuum.

Sales mistakenly acts as if an Identified Problem is an isolated event and ignores the entire body of internal systems that created the problem, and develop creative work-arounds to maintain it daily. Change Management mistakenly believes that if requests for change are positioned and presented rationally and nicely, people will behave as requested. Parents and doctors, lawyers and teachers, believe that they should be obeyed because they have professional, historic or well-meaning data, separate from the beliefs held by the Other.

ONLY INSIDERS CAN UNDERSTAND THE SYSTEM

Sadly, Outsiders cannot understand the full range of internal/hidden influencers of Others. It’s been the basic underlying flaw of sales, advertising, marketing, medicine, teaching, negotiating: as Outsiders, when we perceive a Problem, we mistakenly assume that our viewpoint is accurate and that a fix is necessary.

We then go about gathering data around the Problem we think we can resolve and then we diligently figure out how to pitch or present our solution so the other will buy-in. But we are operating out of our own biases, making assumptions based on partial data, and have no way of addressing the full set of internal elements that would need to buy-in to change.

An analogy would be if we were Iceberg Specialists and noticed a problem with the tip of an iceberg. We might assume that our product could move the iceberg once we understood the dimensions and how our solution fits. While we have the means to move it, the tip won’t move without the entire iceberg being engaged.  And only the iceberg itself can understand and manage the internal elements that would have to be engaged for buy-in to occur.

There is a way we can influence another’s decisions while engaging their full range of internal criteria. We can enter a communication believing that our job is to assist Others in uncovering their own array of beliefs and biases, and help them test for congruence. We can help Others unravel their internal landscape to determine if, where, and how they need to make a new decision. Using a Facilitative Question such as “How would you know when it was time to reconsider your hairstyle?” might bring up an internal viewing of past, present, and future criteria around self-perception, future needs, relationships, etc; whereas saying “Why do you wear your hair like that?” or “Do you plan on changing your hairstyle?” (both of which are gathering data and challenging current beliefs) only meets the unconscious biases and will not cause reflection or change.

Indeed, when we ask information gathering questions, we are only eliciting answers on decisions already made, and not helping the brain decide differently. Decisions already made are stored in the brain in such a way to be easily retrieved. But recognizing these decisions will not change behavior as we’re not addressing the unconscious issues and internal system that would need to shift if change were required.

It’s time to change the way we help folks make better decisions: we must help them recognize what criteria they need to shift and assist them in considering how to reconfigure their own internal system. This way, change can happen congruently while the tangles that hold the status quo in place get untangled, and the integrity of the system gets maintained.

DECISION FACILITATION

Here is my sequential, internal process of decision making. It’s based on systems-thinking and addresses the order of considerations necessary for a decision to be made (ie: we can’t try to discover a fix before we realize something is broken). I have also developed a new form of question (Facilitative Question) that addresses the criteria and tangles that hold the current decision in place and would have to be reconfigured in order for change – a new decision – to happen.

1. Where are you? What’s missing? Because we begin at the level of the ‘leaf’ and can’t see the entire forest, we start off being unable to recognize the full fact pattern of our status quo. As a result, it’s impossible to get a full understanding of our complete complement of needs or shortcomings – we can’t initially understand exactly what might be missing – so long as we are close to the problem. The first step in Decision Facilitation is to help the Other move away from where they are, and get a bird’s eye view of the entire internal landscape. This includes people, relationships, history, socio-politics, hopes, fears, needs, ego issues, future dreams. All elements within the system must be dissected and examined, in order to recognize how, where, why, and if change might need to happen.

RULE:  If nothing seems to be missing, there will be no decision to change. But once a system recognizes something missing, it must attempt to find a fix.

2. Fix it internally A system seeks homeostasis. At the point that the system recognizes that something is indeed missing, it must attempt a fix to maintain balance. And it must seek the fix internally, as anything foreign and unfamiliar to the system creates more imbalance. This is where many efforts to create change get lost: because outsiders assume that if the Other (client, customer, coachee, friend, etc.) recognizes a problem, they need a fix. But an internal, or familiar fix must be sought first so the integrity of the system can be easily maintained. It’s only when the system recognizes that it cannot fix the issue with something familiar will it consider seeking help from anything outside.

RULE: The system will reject unfamiliar resources until it has determined that it cannot fix a problem on its own. It will therefore do everything it can to find familiar resources – old vendors, colleagues, internal departments – to limit disruption. Once it realizes it cannot self-correct, it will then seek an external/unfamiliar solution.

3. Maintain the integrity of the system during change Once the system realizes that it must use an external resource for a fix, it cannot move forward until all of the internal ‘arteries and veins’ that keep the system in place – including the identified flaw – are in alignment with the external fix. Herein lie the biggest problem with sales, marketing, teaching, advertising, medicine – whatever. The Identified Problem starts off sitting within a complex set of systems that hold it in place and maintain its relevance. Making a change disrupts the system. So the system will fight to remain as it is until the entire system is able to agree to some sort of reconfiguration that will allow for a fix while maintaining homeostasis.

This last is the length of the sales cycle, or the decision cycle. This is why folks don’t floss, won’t eat healthy, won’t stop smoking, or take so long to buy your product. It’s why people buy the same sort of car, use that old vendor or training, and why it takes so long for them to do anything new.

RULE: The time it takes Others to come up with their own answers to maintain homeostasis through change is the length of the sales/decision cycle.

Our current models of influence push IN to the system, rather than teaching the system how to manage and reconfigure itself.

Let’s help our buyers, patients, friends, colleagues, make decisions based on their own internal landscape, not our need to sell or offer solutions. The Buying Facilitation Method® does this. There are several forms of training and coaching to help you learn the skills to formulate the Facilitative Questions, do the Presumptive Summaries necessary, and listen for systems in order to recognize the Other’s internal issues. You can learn to do this in weeks. Call, and let’s see how to work together.

Would you rather sell? Or have someone buy? You decide.

Decision Making: How, Exactly, Do We Decide? is a post from: SharonDrewMorgen.com