Today I’m going to vent about sales folks and their stubborn choice to remain doing something so flawed, with such paltry results, that it’s a shame it’s been allowed to exist. Can you think of any other business model that builds in a 90%+ failure rate as acceptable business practice? Amazing. We hire 9x more people than we have to, wait 8x longer for sales to close than we should, get in to 1/2 of the prospects we should be meeting, and have to diminish our prices to accommodate confused buyers – and we keep this model and just keep trying harder? You know that’s the definition of insanity, right?

What is it about sales folks that makes them hell-bent on selling – regardless of their horrific close rates, or the amounts of time they waste, or the prospects who truly need their solutions but don’t get the help they need to buy? I have a guess: that because sales is based on the identity of the seller, and not really committed to the success of the buyer, we’ve implicitly agreed with the failure that’s built in to using this approach. Let me walk you through my thinking.

UNDERSTANDING THE NEED OR THE BUSINESS PROBLEM IS NOT ENOUGH

The problem begins with the basic flaw in the sales model. Sales treats a ‘need’ as if it were an isolated event. Data Point: Buyers live in environments that are actually systems, and any needs they have are part of a whole that maintains itself daily. NO ONE lives outside of a system. NOTHING exists outside of a system. And yet the sales model acts as if having a ‘need’ and a proper solution were all that’s necessary to make a sale! We don’t lose weight unless we’ve decided to eat differently and exercise: knowing about a gym nearby won’t cut any ice with us unless we’ve made those internal decisions first. We can’t move house even if we find a gorgeous place to live, unless we’ve figured out school districts and transportation routes and neighborhoods and banking details. Buyers have to move a bunch of stuff around behind-the-scenes, and sales does not handle this.

Next. Buyers don’t buy until they have managed all of the internal issues that need to buy-in to bringing in something ‘new’ making their internal struggle a CHANGE MANAGEMENT management issue. Will the new department heads be able to work together? How to tell the tech team they will be replaced? What needs to happen with the old beloved vendor? How can we incorporate the new business partner? Data Point: without buy-in, there is resistance to change. It’s a law of nature. Systems seek homeostasis. Hence, when we pull out one piece (i.e. a need) and try to resolve that one piece, the system rejects it.  I’ve actually written a whole book about this (Dirty Little Secrets: why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell and what you can do about it)

Sales doesn’t address these issues, but until or unless the buyer manages all of their internal systems issues and interdependent parts some of which have little or nothing to do with the ‘need’ and everything to do with the day-to-day working of the status quo, they will do nothing. Data point: buyers will seek to maintain the balance within their organizations or teams (i.e. their systems)  rather than fix a need, no matter how vital a fix might be. The system is sacrosanct. Our focus on understanding need and placing a solution plays right into the necessity, the absolute necessity, of the buyer to resist. We create objections, delays, and money issues.

THE FIELD OF CHANGE MANAGEMENT SEEKS CHANGE

I’ve spent over 20 years of my life writing writing writing, training, speaking, writing, training, speaking, about changing the sales model to add a front end that helps buyers figure out how to manage the change first. They have to do this anyway (You can’t move into that great house until you’ve figured out all of the details re neighborhoods and schools, etc).  Visionaries, thankfully, have found me. But the rest of the field has fought me tooth and nail. It’s fascinating that there is such a fight to maintain failure.

I’ve begun writing for, and doing podcasts with, the Change Managment field. They are ecstatic! ‘Yippee! they say. You’ve showed us a way to minimize resistance and help change happen effortlessly! We’ve had such failure for years! And now with Buying Facilitation™ we don’t have to have these problems any more!!!’ This, after just 3 months!

Why do sales folks fight to maintain their ‘system’ of failure? With close rates of less than 10% sellers not only harm themselves, but their companies (who accept these numbers as being industry standard), and their prospective clients who truly need the solutions!

What do sales people want? To get an appointment so they can show up looking smart and pretty? To complain about the stupid buyer? To run around and waste time trying to accomplish something (the operative word here is ‘trying’)? To feel in control? To do whatever they want the way they want and if they don’t achieve anything the other person is nuts — and then they get paid anyway?

Because if sellers REALLY wanted to accomplish something, and companies demanded results of, say, 35%, they’d have to close more sales! So even the management is enabling bad practices.  If they were to focus on actually helping buyers buy, they’d see that before they could buy, stuff needed to happen that sales wouldn’t be fruitful in managing. And they’d be excited to add a new skill set.

But until then, the Change Management field is ready for new material, and I’m going to show up and help. I must say that after 20 plus years fighting the good fight in sales, I’m rooting for sellers to eventually get it and want to change. I’m still hoping. But getting really tired.

sd

Why do sales people like failure? is a post from: SharonDrewMorgen.com

The Identified Problem – need, or pain, as some of you may call it – has been there for some time, and the culture has already developed work-arounds for it. So if they have needed an accounting package, someone is doing that while waiting for the new software. If they need a leadership training, the folks are doing ‘leading’ in the best way they know how until the training.

What happens when they finally decide to purchase a solution is that the solution enters a system that has people, policies, rules, and initiatives in place that are managing the ’need’  in some way. Sure, it’s not as effective or elegant as our solution, but it has worked – well, the way it’s worked –  until the purchase.

Within the buyer’s system, there is fallout that must be managed prior to them choosing a solution. What happens to the accounting clerk – will he be out of a job? Will he be taught the new software? Will he move to a different department?

As sellers, we forget that: we just see a need, have the right solution, and barrel forward in our sales effort. But the time it takes buyers to figure out how to manage their work-arounds is the length of the sales cycle. Make no mistake: no matter how necessary your solution is, without internal buy-in the buyer will not buy.

How ’bout if you use some of your time during your sales job to help buyers do their necessary change management, and facilitate all of those implicit decisions that sales doesn’t handle.

You can read how to do this in my ebook Buying Facilitation: the new way to sell that influences and expands decisions. www.buyingfacilitation.com Remember: until or unless the buyer is able to ensure that there will not be unmanageable fallout from a buying decision, they will do nothing.

Sales As A Form Of Change Management is a post from: SharonDrewMorgen.com

If it’s not us, not our product, and the need is obvious, what’s going on? Why don’t buyers know they’re supposed to buy?

The problem is the sales model. It’s broken. It treats the ‘need’ or the Identified Problem as if it were an isolated event, instead of recognizing that an Identified Problem is just one piece of a larger problem, and sits in a tangle of ‘stuff’ that holds it in place in the buyer’s environment. What sales can’t manage is the mysterious route the buyer must go through to untangle the internal issues before they can make a decision to buy.

Think about your weight, or your work-out schedule. Do you eat the way you ‘should’? Do you work out as often as you’d like? Why not? Because, well, because. There are a litany of excuses, rationalizations, or reasons you use to explain the oversight. But the explanations hold the lack in place, making it difficult to change without re-thinking the excuses.

And so with our prospects. Their ‘need’ has been there for some time; there are even work-arounds they’ve created that manage the need so it functions well-enough. Indeed: if the buyer believed the ‘need’ was urgent, they would have resolved it already. So although it looks like an ‘urgent need’ to us – given that we know what Excellence can look like with our solution – it’s not so urgent to our buyers. Their managers are leaders – not as good as they’d be with your leadership training, but good enough. Their software works – not as good as it would with your solution, but good enough. It’s not sitting there, waiting for you to show up.

When we enter a prospect’s culture – their ‘system’ if you will – we forget that there are multiple work-arounds that hold the ‘need’ in place daily. And until or unless the buyer is ready, willing, and able, to recognize and manage each person, each regulation, each vendor issue, each departmental problem, that holds the Identified Problem in place, they will do nothing; it’s far more important for them to maintain systems congruency than it is to resolve something that’s working ‘well enough’, if the solution will damage the status quo.

Until or unless buyers know how to manage all of the elements that touch the need so there won’t be internal chaos once a new solution is brought in, they will do nothing. And the Sales Model doesn’t help with that end of the buying decision.

Have a look at my book Buying Facilitation: the new way to sell that influences and expands decisions at www.buyingfacilitation.com. There are 2 sample chapters there that will give you a peak at a model that teaches buyers how to accomplish buy-in to change. They won’t buy until they do it; you might as well help.

Sales Treats A Need As If It Were An Isolated Event is a post from: SharonDrewMorgen.com