From what I gather, the thinking behind this is to ‘be nearer the buyers.’

And what, exactly, does this give you? Have you checked your numbers to notice there isn’t a difference in your close rates?

You can organize by verticals to ‘understand the buyer’ better. You can organize by territory to be nearer your buyers. You can call for an appointment first, or do telemarketing. You can do lead scoring or group sales.

You will close no more than 7%, plus or minus 2%, from first call.

WHY CAN’T YOU CLOSE MORE SALES?

I’ll briefly lay out my thinking here: buyers – like everyone in a system – fight to maintain the status quo. It’s a scientific law called homeostasis. Until or unless there is internal agreement as to how the system will remain stable if there is a new solution brought in, buyers won’t buy.

By reorganizing around geographic areas to be closer to prospects, you’re assuming that

1. ‘relationship’ will close the deal,
2. buyers will buy if they like the seller
3. you need to get in front of prospects for them to choose you
4. the solution choice and needs assessment are the primary points within a buying decision (and can be best done face-to-face often).

#1. Relationship is important only when the buying team has already determined how to manage change and is assured of buy-in and a minimum disruption if there is to be a purchase. Then, and only then, will they prefer one seller over another so long as all else is equal.

#2. Ditto.

#3. Ditto.

#4. Buyers seek only to resolve a business problem. They are not seeking to buy anything – and won’t buy a thing without requisite buy-in across teams, departments, relationship history, and vendor loyalties. It’s not about the need: they will forgo fixing a problem if too many disruptions will occur as a result.

HOW ARE YOUR NUMBERS?

If you count your closed sales from the first contact – not from the first appointment – you’ll find that you close the same amount, regardless of where your sellers are located.

Stop selling. Regardless of where your sellers sit. Selling does not cause buying. Buying is an internal thing that demands decisions amongst peers, and change management, and old vendors, and historic in-fighting. Sales doesn’t handle this – but Buying Facilitation® does.

Help your buyers manage their internal decision path that is change related, not solution focused. You only need a phone, a focus on decision facilitation, the ability to help buyers navigate through their internal changes, and a good solution.

If you want to learn how to do it, call me and I’ll teach you Buying Facilitation®. Or you can continue moving your folks around and getting the same results.

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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

Musical sales people: moving sellers to be near buyers is irrelevant is a post from: SharonDrewMorgen.com

IS IT TIME TO TRULY HELP BUYERS BUY?

There are actually two major things a buyer must do prior to making a purchasing decision. Of course they must ultimately choose a supplier and a solution (that’s the role of sales). But they also must manage all of the off-line, behind-the scenes change issues that must take place internally so they can get buy-in to bring aboard something new (i.e. a solution). And this idiosyncratic, off-the-cuff buying decision activity is not addressed by the sales model – and yet it takes up 2/3 of the time it takes a buyer to do all they have to do before they buy.

We cannot be a direct part of this process. We are not there: we are outsiders, the conversations happen between colleagues, and we are not a part of the buyer’s team. Sure, we know (and learn) how to be professionals, and care, and understand. Yet the time it takes buyers to come up with their own answers – not the ones we want them to have but answers based on the idiosyncratic needs of the internal system – is the length of the sales cycle.

One of the problems we’re having selling now is not about a buyer’s need, or our solution: it’s the internal, behind-the-scenes issues buyers are having difficulty managing internally.  And these issues are now very politically motivated and economy-driven.

Because sales only manages the solution/product placement end of the buying decision, it offers us no tool kit to help buyers manage the conversations that go on off-line, between departments, with old vendors, etc. And because it focuses on the very last thing buyers do – choosing  a solution – and not the nitty-gritty issues that cause buyers to buy (or not), we are basically out of control.

DO WE WANT TO SELL? OR HAVE SOMEONE BUY?

Sales is at a critical point: it’s stalling, taking far too long to close, and prospects aren’t even entering the conversation in ways they used to. Not to mention that our typical closing rates are far, far too low.

The problem is not with the economy, or with the buyer, or with the seller, or even with the need or the solution. The problem is with the sales model itself: it merely manages information gathering about ‘need’ and solution placement options to sell a solution.

As we continue to ‘push’ on the solution-placement end, it’s getting harder and harder to sell. But imagine if we adopted a new set of skills that actually worked WITH the buyer’s Buying Decision Team to help them manage their own internal decision making. Not based on their need or our solution, but based on the management of their off-line elements. Not using sales techniques, but using decision facilitation techniques. Not about ‘understanding’ but about leadership through change management.

To do that takes an additional skill set. Sales doesn’t do this. We’d have to learn how to facilitate the buyer’s off-line decision issues that often have little to do with a need or our solution.

Are we ready to change? Is it time to do something different? Is it worth the discomfort to add something new to our typical selling habits? And what’s the cost if we don’t.

Dirty Little Secrets Site

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Listen to Sharon Drew Morgen speak on MaestroConference on Oct. 14 at 12P.M. PST

Check out my new book coming out October 15: Dirty Little Secrets: why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell and what to do about it. Read two free chapters. Sign up for presales deals, and announcements.

Or have a look at my book Buying Facilitation: the new way to sell that influences and expands decisions. Click here for two free chapters. It will teach you how to understand and manage the route through the internal decision process, and is meant to be read alongside of the new book, Dirty Little Secrets.

Why Sales Are Faltering In This Economy, And What To Do About It is a post from: SharonDrewMorgen.com

He’s got lots to offer on his site, but this was my favorite page: Articles

He’s written bunches of articles that will hit home for the typical sales problem. And he takes such a clean approach to working with clients. On his site, Paul writes that he’s ”a master at developing simple, straightforward, extremely effective processes to enhance sales and the management of the sales function.”

Indeed, Paul focuses on helping manage the way in, the way through, and the way around all of the problems that the sales model presents. Waste too much time on non-income-producing tasks? Paul will show you how to re-apportion your time to make money. Not getting the right referrals? Paul will show you how to ask for, and get, good prospects who will want to do business with you. Prospects not spending money in this economy? Paul will teach you how to have them pay you your regular price.

Paul’s a nice guy with a solid message. Have a look at what he’s doing. It’s not Buying Facilitation™, but it will manage the solution end of the buying decision, and manage it well.

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Dynamic Growth: Help In Today’s Economy is a post from: SharonDrewMorgen.com

Indeed, Chris asks the big questions that we all should be asking:

“We’ve moved from asking our neighbors to believing advertising to asking people we’ve never met what they think about an issue. How does this work? And if you represent a business, how can you be sure that YOU are trusted?”

Chris and Julien Smith wrote this cool book, coming out August 24, called: Trust Agents: using the web to build influence, improve reputation, and earn trust. This is actually the first book I’ve seen that deals with such an important topic.

I don’t know about you, but every day I get inundated with requests for my time (and money). Who do I trust?  The man from NZ who went bust, and wants me to come down there FOR NO MONEY and put life back into his company (he’ll let me stay for free at his home) and then take some of the profits whenever that happens? Am I supposed to trust him because he came through FOUR people that I didn’t know in my Linked In network?

What about the woman who wants me to speak at her company because she liked my article on dancing?  Or the three people who wrote today saying they’d help me promote my book if I”d promote theirs – and I have no idea who they are? Do  I spend hours and hours on line checking everyone out? Give it to my web guy and have him check them out? Do I delete these names and possibly throw away some good possibilities?

Enter Chris and Julien. They will tell me how to know who to trust and how to be trustworthy (so I can ask perfect strangers to work for me for free in exchange for a stay in a cool loft in Austin…. only kidding.): The book “focuses on methods of building trust and wielding influence, and how these efforts impact business processes and goals. … the book defines the landscape of this generation’s web, explains who trust agents are, and analyzes the mechanics of trust in today’s economy where reputation is key.” Have a look at the book and pre-order it.

And, if you want to know how to market on the net so that site visitors will understand how to choose you over the competition, Chris is your guy. He’s the one-stop-shopping for all things relationship/value based. After all, that’s how our buyers are buying, and our competition can easily match our information and product offerings. But who gets trusted? Who has the real value?

Chris is the President of New Marketing Labs, a new media marketing agency. He’s also the kingpin behind the Inbound Marketing Summit conferences and Inbound Marketing Bootcamp educational events. He works with large and mid-sized companies to improve online business communications like marketing and PR through the use of social software, community platforms.

Online Marketing = Chris Brogan.

Call him. Tell him Sharon Drew sent you. And tell him you trusted what I said about him.

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Who Do You Choose To Trust On The Net? is a post from: SharonDrewMorgen.com

With so much confusion and risk management slowing down sales, maybe it’s time to stop doing what we’re comfortable with.

Consider telemarketing. The products sold are perfectly fine products. But we’ve always hated the selling patterns: phone calls on Sunday mornings, late at night, during dinner.

If you think about it, what they are doing is not too different from a typical selling pattern: introduce product, pitch, ask for a sale.

Buyers don’t buy that way. Before they can consider any changes to their status quo – regardless of a need – they must get buy-in from colleagues, make sure the established rules will fit with any proposed change, and be certain that current initiatives won’t be disrupted. And we have no way of helping them manage all that – especially if we use our selling patterns.

This current economic climate is causing a lot of confusion. Buyers have a whole lotta offline stuff that needs to get done, and it’s only once this is complete (the length of the sales cycle) that the buyer will understand their buying patterns.

We’re coming in at the wrong end of the buying decision, using tactics that focus on understanding and resolving need – the very last thing a buyer needs –  when the buyer first needs to maneuver through their offline, internal management issues that have nothing whatsoever to do with what we have to sell.

Instead of focusing on how buyers buy, or who the decision makers are, or understanding need, help the buyer maneuver through their offline issues. Help them figure out what they have to address internally, with their teams and their vendors and their initiatives, so they can develop a set of buying patterns you can work with. They have to do this anyway. Might as well be with you. But it demands a decision facilitation approach.

Then you can sell.

Sharon Drew

Btw: I have a book coming out on this in September: The Dirty Little Secret: why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell and what you can do about it

It’s Not The Economy: It’s Your Selling Patterns is a post from: SharonDrewMorgen.com

In this environment of mystery, change, and transition, a product sale – especially one that follows your accustomed time/relationship trajectory – is unlikely. Business as usual no longer exists.

As the representatives of your company, you are uniquely positioned to gain access to buyers. Indeed, short of a new marketing initiative, you are the only representative of your company to be in a position to lead customers through this difficult time.

Use this time to develop a stronger bond with your clients – one that will not only help you close more sales, but will solidify your relationship with them, exhibit your ability to serve and be trustworthy and smart, and offer them the tools to make sense of their environment (outside of the sales focus). Not only will you differentiate yourself from the competition, but you’ll get sales that you wouldn’t have gotten, and put yourself on the buyer’s decision team for the future.

It’s time to help buyers take a good look at the elephant in front of them. It’s time to change the game, add new skills and change your job description from ‘seller’ to ‘decision strategist’. What the buyer needs is not your product or a new solution.

How Sales Must Shift In This Uncertain Economy is a post from: SharonDrewMorgen.com

How do you know you are hearing what is intended for you to hear? 

How do you know you’re listening to your clients in the most effective way? is a post from: SharonDrewMorgen.com

Sharon Drew Morgen here. As a kickoff to my new book that gives sellers tools to help buyers make business decisions in this uncertain economy – HOW MANY HANDS ON THE ELEPHANT – I’m planning a world tour. My hope is that between us, we could figure out a way to create a half-day workshop to *introduce ways to help clients or staff successfully manage this mysterious economy *help customers learn some new decision strategies *expand our business opportunities.

My book premise is this: Given the state of the economy,  buyers are having difficulty making any decisions at all:

1.  they have no benchmarks, in this sort of economy, to make decisions from;

2 .  they’ve never had to manage risk in an information vacuum;

3.  long term strategic decisions are moot now;

4.  decision teams are shifting, jobs are falling by the wayside, and neither political capital or brain capital are relevant.

My new book introduces the different types of decisions buyers now must make - not necessarily involving product or need - and gives sellers tools to shift their conversation from solution provider to be a true Decision Strategist and servant leader. See the article below as an intro to my new thinking.

My plan is to come to major cities around the world and give a ½ day workshop (Proposed title: The new seller/buyer relationship: using the economy as the instrument to help us serve our clients and engender trust.) to start the discussion around how the economy can be used as a reason to collaborate.

Hopefully, this would help you have new discussions with your clients as well , and bring in some income for us both. I’m also seeking international business partners who might have interest in running new programs  to use this material in Negotiating, Coaching, Risk Management, Decision Making, OD.

Is it worth a conversation? You’d have to help me find participants  and venue. I’m available to run a Webinar, make conference calls, and do the ‘heavy lifting’; I don’t need to get your client emails, etc.

Thanks for your consideration. My goal is to help ensure we all have business and income during this difficult time, and find ways to serve clients in a way that puts us on the client’s decision team.

I look forward to a conversation to see what’s possible. And thanks.

Read: Selling In A Gloomy Economy

Selling in a Bad Economy / 1/2 Day Global Tour is a post from: SharonDrewMorgen.com

Here’s what I came up with. At a systems level, taking a long view, what, exactly did Bush achieve? In 8 ‘short’ (albeit extremely painful for me, the country, and the planet) years, he managed to smoke out corporate greed, problems in the financial institutions, obsolescence in the car industry, greed and stupidity and lack of foresight in the real estate industry and the environment, problems with international relations/wars, abuse of our constitution, laws, and technology, etc. etc. We can all name our favorite 5 – 10 things to hate. Personally, I could start screaming and naming all of the abuses I’ve closely, and angrily, followed for 8 years, starting with his very first dictum on January 21, 2000, of capping all funding for global clinics offering birth control or abortion. I’ve been screaming ever since – so I offer my theory from a place of new consideration.

I now believe that as he brought out the worst of so much, we now have the capability of swooping down, cleaning up the mess, and starting from a spiritual, collaborative, respectful heart space; those of us making a difference in the world will now have a platform to be heard and offer our new models into the world where there was no space before.

It’s like he took the bad stuff and brought it up like a pimple, and now we can clear it up and start fresh, like young shoots emerging after a forest fire. Taking the long view, maybe, Bush did us a favor.

I believe we’re going to end up far better off, with the greed, manipulation, dishonor and dishonesty gone, and collaboration, servant-leadership, true innovation, creativity, and individual leadership finding voice.

Thank you, Mr. Bush.

A Liberal Thanks Bush is a post from: SharonDrewMorgen.com

• Your product is the same
• Your pitch/presentation is the same
• The buyer’s need is the same

What’s different is the decision making process the buyers need to go through. Do they have a problem that needs to be resolved now, and the economy has mitigated the types of solutions they seek? Do they have a problem that can be fixed with a partial, cheaper solution, or with internal resources that can be modified to create a solution? Do they wait until…. until they have some belief that their business won’t be at risk?

NEW BUYING CRITERIA

Your wonderful product data or needs analysis are moot here: they need you, they need your product, and they need a solution. But they now need additional levels of buy-in before they can spend money: it’s no longer ‘who’ or ‘what’ or ‘how much’, it’s ‘when’ or ‘if’. ‘Solution’ is not their criteria, ‘Preserving Assets’ is.

There is a way you can help buyers decide to choose you now. But it will mean a shift in focus – from the problem solving/solution providing outcome that you are currently familiar with, to a decision-support focus that will enable a possible purchasing decision:

1. until your buyer figures out what immediate needs must be addressed – whatever that means to them – they will take no action. In other words, getting their ‘needs met’ might include resolving the problem with a creative or temporary solution rather than a product purchase.

   If you can help buyers actually figure out their immediate needs (i.e. staffing might be a priority, or outsourcing, or finding an alternate route to a problem resolution), and the appropriate choices using the criteria they must work from– separate from focusing on a product sale or the criteria you would prefer they work from – you will be in line as the first vendor they will connect with once they decide to purchase a product.

2. until the buyer’s entire decision team agrees to take action, no action will be taken. That means that your regular contact – who may have been the driver in the decision to purchase your product – now has a larger buying decision team: any decisions now must include corporate economic factors: the risk is too high for anyone to make decisions without agreement from the team.

   If you help your buyer bring together their entire decision team so they can reach agreement – even if their ultimate solution cannot be to purchase your product at this time – there is a greater likelihood of a quick decision to act, although the action might not be the one you would prefer. But it puts you in high regard with the buying decision team.

3. until the entire decision team recognizes that it would make economic sense to resolve the problem using an external solution such as your product, no action will be taken. After all, they have been resolving the problem in a less effective way in their current daily activities, and there is a case to be made for continuing the status quo until the economy gets stable.

If you help the decision team evaluate the difference between the cost and results of continuing doing what they are doing vs. the COST (human, time, political, organizational) of reorganizing around a new solution that ensures the people involved with the status quo are stable, you will become part of the buyer’s decision team. And, if the client sees that all COSTS can be mitigated, or seen in a way that overrides their economic concerns and leaves them better off, they will be able to choose to make a purchase now. But it would be vital for them to understand the full picture of ‘givens’ and include the human systems as well as the financial ones.

A NEW APPROACH

If you can augment your job to include being a decision consultant, you can make good use of this time of economic uncertainty.

Buying Facilitation™ is a model that works with the buyer’s buying decisions and is a perfect add-on to the sales process at this time. In a world where buyers are inundated by choices, Buying Facilitation™ gives the seller a new set of tools – different from selling methods – that provide a decision support capability for buyers to help them understand, manage, and regulate their new economic environment.

Use this time to differentiate yourself as a true consultant. You’ll not only get more business (and faster as you help prospects shorten their decision/sales cycle) than you otherwise would in a gloomy economy, but you’ll also gain access to the buying decision team, line up future business that will close once the economy turns around, and be seen as an important company resource.

Learn more about the modalities you and your team can use to learn Buying Facilitation™ at www.newsalesparadigm.com. Start by reading the e-book: Buying Faciliation® : the new way to sell that influences and expands decisions at www.buyingfacilitation.com. Then, consider if you wish to have MFI develop scripts for prospecting or decision support, or developing the appropriate Facilitative Questions to lead your buyers through the necessary decision issues.

Selling In A Gloomy Economy is a post from: SharonDrewMorgen.com