As we continue to seek better ways to do the same things that failed before ( look at the numbers below, all industry numbers or from averages of my global clients) I think our industry might be facing extinction.

We continue to ‘understand’ more and ‘push’ harder, follow footprints and nuture. But our close rates remain well below 10% because we are focusing on the wrong end of the buying decision journey.  Can you imagine any other industry where a lower-than-10% success rate is deemed ‘success’? Would you go on a plane with that success rate? Or visit a doc?

THE HARD REALITY

• We close .6758% of our leads if we begin the dialogue by seeking an appointment.
• We close 17% of the prospects we get appointments with – but we lose over 90% of the full spectrum of prospects by seeking appointments as our first outcome.
• When using conventional (i.e. non marketing automation) sales, we close 7% and have closed this number consistently for decades, regardless of the sales model.
• We spend 90% of our time scoring/nurturing leads/names – 93% of whom won’t buy using conventional sales approaches; 25% of  the total would buy if they were facilitated earlier in their buying journey.
• We close 10% of our proposals, wasting 90% of our time.
• We waste 85% of our time attempting to present to prospects who have claimed ‘interest’ but are nowhere near ready to buy.
• 80% of our prospects will buy a solution similar to ours within 2 years of speaking with us – but not from us because they haven’t figured out how to buy/change and get the appropriate buy-in.

The problems causing all of the above statistics are all based on where, how, and why, we enter the buyer’s world. We are

1. entering at the back end of the buying journey,
2. treating ’needs’ as if they were isolated events rather than part of a functioning system,
3. ignoring the behind-the-scenes, political and relationship issues buyers must address before they can buy,
4. acting as if they have already completed their change management piece and are merely choosing the best solution,
5. entering too early with a solution when it takes time for the entire Buying Decision Team to form is the length of the sales cycle; no purchase will happen until all of their input is included in a solution choice.

With a focus on needs assessment and solution placement, we sit helplessly while our buyers are facing confusion along the route of their ever-more-complex buying journeys. With marketing automation keeping us out of the loop until late in the buy cycle, we don’t have the personal ability to influence buying behavior as we once did.

And we have little capability to qualify – regardless of the selling model used. We’re kinda assuming that because it LOOKS like it might be a lead, that it IS a lead. But it’s merely a name. In fact, sales is becoming transactional.

FOCUS ON INFLUENCING THE BUYING JOURNEY, NOT MAKING THE SALE

Buying Facilitation™ can dramatically shift these numbers because we enter differently and at a far earlier place, use different skills, have different goals and outcomes, and get very very different responses and results.

Someone recently asked me why the sales community fights with me, when all that’s necessary is adding a front end to what is already being done. My answer: I have no idea.

Stop fighting me. Unless you love the results your getting and aren’t wasting more than, oh, 15% of your time on deals that won’t close, or don’t mind losing prospects that could become buyers if you managed the entire buying decision journey from the start.

If you were 100 pounds overweight, would you fight a doc that tells you you need to lose weight? You can see that problem and at least believe that losing weight would be a great idea. But when I give you the numbers in the selling industry, you fight and tell me that you want to continue failing. You tell me that those numbers don’t apply to you. Or YOU do it so much better, but your teammates don’t. Or you start counting from your presentation.

WHY CARE ABOUT THE BUYING DECISION JOURNEY?

Why does helping the buying decision journey give you different numbers?

• Because the time it takes the buyer to recognize and manage all of the internal people/policy issues that will shift as a result of a purchase is the length of the buy cycle.
• Because until all of the Buying Decision Team members are on board they don’t even know the full fact pattern of their need.
• Because they will say ‘no’ to an appointment until they have a handle on the internal change management issues and the folks who need to be involved.
• Because unless you are able to use your first call to help prospects set up their Buying Decision Team, you will continue to have 3 or 4 meetings over 6 months rather than get an appointment with the full Buying Decision Team on the first – and possibly only – meeting.
• Because you are pitching, presenting, and proposing the wrong information – or information they do not know they need yet, or information that has not-enough people to understand at an early place in the decision cycle.

So you’ll close much, much quicker if you enter as a decision facilitator. You will find buyers who didn’t think they were ready and help them get ready quickly (and no, it’s not solution-focused). You will find prospects who didn’t know they were prospects, and get rid of those who really aren’t ever going to be buyers… on the first call. You will make the right appointment with the right people and the right folks will show up.

No more time wasting. No more sequenced appointments as the whole team gets on board. No more following bad leads. No more waiting for sales to close, with an inability to forecast.

That’s why you should care about the buying decision journey. That’s why you should add Buying Facilitation™ to the front end of what you are doing now. Otherwise, marketing automation is going to take over your job. And maybe then you’ll end up on the buy side with  your new job, and understand what I’ve been talking about all these years.

Just saying.

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Want to learn Buying Facilitation™? check out these learning products.

• MP3 – audios in which I prospect, cold call, etc.
• Learning Accelerators – learn specific bits of Buying Facilitation™
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Fighting for Failure: why modern sales practices are illogical is a post from: SharonDrewMorgen.com

From what I understand, and I’m open to changing my mind if proven wrong, current technology does a good job influencing, capturing eyeballs, and following people’s on-site behaviors but – here is where the problem lie for me – it then makes faulty  assumptions as to what it all means leading to less-than-effective activity. The problem is that using the data they are collecting (and they are not collecting nearly enough, early enough), there is no way to actually know:

1. what percentage of the Buying Decision Team is represented in the digital footprint;
2. what weight the visitor has on the Buying Decision Team;
3. who else the visitor is looking at;
4. the role that the current provider and/or internal solution will have in providing a solution;
5. how much of the site visit is collecting information to give to their current vendor, include on an RFP,or add on to their current solution or solution specs.

In other words, marketing folks are making faulty assumptions regarding the data they are collecting and passing these assumptions on.

REACHING FAULTY CONCLUSIONS

I recently read a study done about chairs: people sitting in soft, comfy chairs made more personal decisions; people sitting in straight backed, hard chairs, made more ‘rational’ decisions. The specious guess here was that the cause involved comfort. Actually, there is a physiologic cause: when we are ‘back’ from a situation (as you are when sitting upright in a hard, straight-backed chair), we are in our Witness brain and can assess the entire situation without referencing our emotional side. When we are ‘in’ a situation (sitting forward or slumped as you are when sitting in a soft, comfy chair),  we are in Self, and in our emotional side.

That’s a clear case where the people who did the study did not have access to the full range of possible choices and reached a faulty conclusion.

I believe the same thing is happening with our new marketing technology. Who, exactly, is making the guesses as to what is really going on with the site visitor? And what data are they using to make their assumptions? Where is their bias? What are they omitting? What are they not even considering?  Are they using the conventional wisdom in the field – the field that defines that a 7% closing ratio as “success”?

What would marketers need to believe differently to be willing to expand their assumptions or create new possibility, such as influence more eyeballs differently, expand the route of the buying decision journey, enter much earlier, or influence the direction of the decision team, and thereby get higher quality data?

WHY PERPETUATE FAILURE WHEN WITH NEW THINKING YOU CAN HAVE TRUE SUCCESS?

It’s time that the field  recognizes that until or unless it adds new thinking, and learns how to enter and serve the human side of the decisions that have little to do with a solution, need, or vendor choice, it will continue to perpetuate much smaller-than-possible close rates, a far-too-high percentage of push-back situations, and an inability to actually serve the buyer far, far earlier in their journey.

The marketing group is now responsible for quality leads and understanding ‘buying patterns‘. That means they have a greater responsibility to sellers to get the right names in front of them – leads that are truly relevant, and not just folks who are perusing a site or reading content. Or people who are just making their final solution choice.

It is possible for marketing automation to significantly enhance sales closing rates and stop wasting a seller’s time with quantity rather than quality leads. But they would have to make different assumptions and use additional methods to get there. Are they up for it?

It’s time for a real conversation around this. Because the conventional wisdom isn’t wise.

Thoughts?

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Find out more about Buying Facilitation™ digital selling.

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

Marketing Leads: based on faulty assumptions? is a post from: SharonDrewMorgen.com

Where did they go?

They went off-line. They went back to their old vendors and their internal solutions. They decided not to resolve the problem now. A new partner showed up with a fix that kinda resolved the problem. They decide to hire a new staff person with the funds they were going to use to pay for your solution. All or none of the above might be true. In fact, you have no idea where the prospect went.

I’ll tell you where the buyer went: They went to that place where you can’t go, to that private, off-line place that sales doesn’t give you skills for. They made their decisions to buy – or not buy – based on criteria that you were not involved with.

But it’s not your fault.

SALES ONLY MANAGES A SLIVER OF A BUYING DECISION

Sales is a needs assessment and solution placement model. Everything you do in your job, everything you say, every problem you have with prospects, every objection you handle, is based on that one factor. In fact, the model of sales – whether you use Sandler or SPIN or Richardson – is based on finding a need and getting the folks with the need to choose your solution to resolve it. And unfortunately, sales treats an Identified Problem (or need, as you may call it) as if it were an isolated event – rather than the need sitting comfortably within a ‘system’ of relationships and rules, people and policies, vendors and partners, that maintain it daily.

Buyers don’t buy the way you sell – except the small percentage that do. And the sales model merely manages a tiny sliver of a buyer’s buying decision – that very last piece that includes choosing a solution. That’s right: sellers enter far too early in a buying decision cycle, and buyers have to go back – after they’ve already met you – and manage the behind-the-scenes, private, internal stuff on their own. And this stuff (that we can never understand because we don’t ‘live’ there with them) is often unconscious and hard to get to, even for them.

Sales ignores the subjective, idiosyncratic place where buyers go and figure out, amongst themselves, all that they have to figure out. As a seller, you don’t sit at the table when your prospect is at a meeting about next year’s initiatives. Sales doesn’t give you the skills to help your prospect with the new business partner who shows up with a partial solution and cuts you out of the picture. Sales doesn’t help you convince buyers that the tech team cannot resolve the problem in the same way that you do – but they are cheaper, and know the users, so they appear to have a huge value add. Sales will give you the tools to understand the Identified Problem and present your solution effectively, but not manage the fight between your prospect and their Board. So you sit and wait, and hope that the buyer comes back after they’ve said the magic words: I’ll Call You Back.

That’s right. You sit and hope. Because you have no control over it. Because sales doesn’t handle that end of the buying decision. You are out of the loop until they come back. And by then, they might not come back. You lose approximately 90% of your prospects.

THE SALES CYCLE IS DELAYED BECAUSE BUYERS MUST MANAGE CHANGE FIRST

We are now bringing in more prospects than ever. We have no idea of the real potential of each lead generated, but it’s highly likely that we are wasting valuable leads when using conventional sales skills on them. Did they have a real need when they responded on line? Were they just curious? Can they be converted to a closed sale? By using conventional sales models, you will only close the same percentage you closed without doing lead gen, and take more time doing it.

Let’s think about what’s going on inside: If you were overweight and could seriously use a gym, would knowing details about the nearest gym help you decide to work out? Hardly. You would belong to a gym already if you’d figured out that you needed one. To make a different decision than the one you’ve already made (i.e. not join a gym), you’d first have to decide to lose weight or be fit, ask your spouse if s/he minded getting rid of the nightly pasta, wake up at 5:00 instead of 6:30, etc. The seller of the gym membership sees the pot belly and assumes the need and problem and voila! has the solution.

A seller actually has no idea what a solution should look like because only the people inside the system know all the ins-and-outs of what’s going on. And herein lies the problem with sales. It causes unnecessary delays, needless objections, irrelevant price discussions because we are outside providers with unfamiliar solutions, pushing into a ‘closed’ system, and not having an additional tool kit to help buyers navigate their behind-the-scenes decision issues.

The time it takes buyers to come up with their own answers is the length of the sales cycle. They need to do this anyway – they will do this with you or without you, so it might as well be with you.

Frankly – and this is scary but true – buyers don’t have the skills to efficiently figure out how to go about managing the change that a new solution will entail. They can’t end up with department heads not speaking to each other, or a software solution that the users won’t use, or training that is ignored. Bringing in a new solution and ensuring that everyone and everything buys-in to the change, how to use it, ensuring it fits with everything else (all change is a systems problem after all) is an unknown. And so they fumble around and take forever. But the risk of them doing nothing and maintaining their status quo is much smaller than the risk of bringing in the ‘right’ solution and upsetting their policies and relationships. Buyers often do nothing rather than risk creating an internal mess.

DECISION FACILITATION IS THE NEW VALUE ADD

Buyers need your help. By adding a new decision facilitation skill to the front end of sales that leads buyers through the ins-and-outs of their internal issues (much like a GPS system leads drivers without bias or knowledge of content), and delaying the needs assessment and solution placement until the buyer has figured out how to manage the internal change, it’s possible to help buyers maneuver through their off-line buy-in issues – and THEN you can use sales.

Buying Facilitation™ is a decision facilitation model that can be added to the job of sales. By helping buyers get the approval they need, get the boss to free up the budget, have the tech team bring you in to work with them and, in general, manage all of the behind-the-scenes rules and negotiations and politics and change that must take place before buyers can by, the job of sales changes. The sales cycle get cut in half; money objections disappear; competitive issues and differentiation issues disappear; objections disappear. This way, you can actually help buyers buy – you can even be a part of the Buying Decision Team from the first call by helping them figure out their own next steps. But you have to be willing to add a new skill set to sales.

Once you have helped the buyer figure out how to elicit buy-in and manage change involving the internal politics, the management issues, and the partner relationships, and they know how and why and when they are ready to buy and have all of the necessary people on their Buying Decision Team, THEN you can sell!

Why Sales Fail is a post from: SharonDrewMorgen.com

What a waste – not only for sellers, but for buyers.

This doesn’t need to happen. Sales is just an incomplete model that we’ve accepted as the way to place our products. It works only at the product decision end of the equation (vs. Buying Facilitation™, my model that facilitates the internal decisions end of the equation), with no capability to guide buyers through their tangle of stuff’ that needs to get figured out before they can make a buying decision.

This is where prospects go when they say, “I’ll call you back.” They have to make sure all of the people and policies that touch the Identified Problem are in agreement, that old vendor issues and relationships are handled, that historic problems are managed. Unfortunately for us, sales doesn’t help – nor have the skills to help - with this aspect of the seller-buyer equation and buyers need to do this on their own.

Unfortunately for them, buyers don’t initially know the route through all of their decisions either. And we meet them far too early in their decision process (we talk about a solution before they know who it will involve, or what changes they’ll need to make internally to bring in something new), leaving us waiting to close and not knowing what’s going on. We assume, falsely, that the match between their need and our solution means they are buyers. So what, we ask, takes them so long to decide?

So we sit and wait. And 90% of the prospects don’t come back. Not because our product isn’t good, or because our solution doesn’t match their need. It’s because their internal issues haven’t been resolved, and buyers won’t buy until they are. They can’t: they must maintain the integrity of their environment even if it means they don’t resolve their need.

Sales doesn’t offer us the tools to help guide them through the route to all of those decisions: it’s certainly difficult for sellers to understand the buyer’s buy-in issues, management decisions, technology factors. Indeed, because we’re outsiders, we’ll never understand the nuance or relationships or history.

But it’s quite possible to have an understanding of the decision making process – the route that buyers must make through their unique decision criteria – and recalibrate our jobs to be not only solution providers, but neutral navigators – Buying Facilitators if you will – much like a buddy to a sight-impaired friend who helps the friend get where they know they have to be but can’t get to their destination without help.

By focusing on the buying decision end – the behind-the-scenes issues that need to be addressed to insure buy-in from everyone and everything within the buying environment –  of the equation, sales can be closed in months rather than years, weeks rather than months, and sellers can stop wasting so much of their time. And failing so often. Imagine if doctors or baseball players had the same failure rate!

Imagine if we could lead buyers through all of their unconscious decision criteria, help them discover who needs to buy-in to a new solution, and help them build our product into their solution design. Imagine.

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For those wishing to read more about this, take a look at Dirty Little Secrets: why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell and what you can do about it.

Why is a 90% failure rate ok? is a post from: SharonDrewMorgen.com

Transcript:

You are a good sales person. You recognize a need, know how to position your product, and relate with the buyer with great care and respect. So whats going wrong? Why do you only close less than 10% of your prospects?

Its not you, and its not your product. The sales model is broken. It only manages the product placement end of the buying decision cycle. To close more sales, first focus on leading buyers through their mysterious internal issues the people, the policies, the current vendors, the initiatives all of those things that we can never understand and certainly know nothing about, that maintain their status quo. Until or unless the elements that in any way touch an Identified Problem have bought in to any change, or bringing in a new solution, no purchasing decision will get made.

Break the sales cycle into two distinct skill sets: first, help the buyer navigate their buying environment. Once they have achieved buy-in, you can then place your product.

Video produced by CanDoGo. Sharon Drew Morgen is one of the exclusive experts for CanDoGo, a company that delivers concise advice for sales, leadership, personal development, and motivation over the Web.

Video: Why Sales Fail is a post from: SharonDrewMorgen.com

I recently experienced a very clear example of Buying Facilitation™, when i used it to turn a failed buying situation into a purchase.

I tell a shortened version of this story in my new book, Dirty Little Secrets; it bears repeating during this economic confusion when buyers are having difficulty getting to ‘yes’.

I was at a client site running a Buying Facilitation™ training. A part of the training includes real-time calls to clients prospects. In this situation, my client had requested that the team listen to me on a call first, so they could hear what BF actually sounded like real-time. They set up a phone meeting between me and a prospect who had called recently to say “Sorry. We won’t be purchasing your product,” after one year of 3 sales visits and 3 product trials.

These women that I called were the heads of L&D at a well-known university and were expecting my call. They had been told that I was a trainee who wanted to ask some questions to help me learn about the product and the buyer’s environment. They were happy to help.

I called (with everyone listening in), and after some intros and pleasantries, the conversation went like this:

SDM: It must have been so sad for you to have to decline purchasing the Solution when you loved it so much.

L&D: It was! We love your product! We really would have liked to have bought it.

SDM: What stopped you?

L&D: We have this new HR Director who is nearly impossible to work with. We ended up deciding that we’d make our lives easier and not fight with him. As a result, we’ve not fought him when he’s made decisions we’re not happy with, even though we should have an equal say and vote. It’s just not worth the hassle.

SDM: I hear you saying that the relationship issues you are having with a colleague are keeping you from making available possible tools to help your folks achieve a greater level of excellence.

L&D: Oh my. You’re right! Doesn’t sound very mature, does it?

SDM: What would need to happen differently to ensure the two of you could figure out a way forward to make sure your personal issues wouldn’t get in the way of necessary work decisions?

L&D: We’d have to figure out how to a start a dialogue and come to some professional resolution.

About three hours after this conversation, my client got a note from these women and asked to get some of ‘those questions’ (Facilitative Questions) so they could use them on the HR Director. I sent them, and within 3 weeks, the prospects purchased our product.

WHAT HAPPENS WHEN BUYERS SAY ‘NO?’

If these prospects didn’t like the product, they would have said ‘no’ days/weeks after first being introduced to it – not waited for 3 vendor visits and wasted time and manpower on 3 trials over 11 months. Obviously they liked the product, like the vendor, and needed the product. But they didn’t buy because of an internal relationship issue that was out of the realm of the sales model.

Does this happen to you? Do you have great relationships with your prospects who seem to recognize that your product will solve their need? Do you sit and wait for months and months for them to call back, believing you have a sale, and then they never call back, or call back to say ‘No?’

It’s not you. It’s not your solution, or your personality, or your skills, or your client relationship. It’s the sales model. Sales merely deals with the solution-placement end of the buyer’s final decision and has no skills to help the buyer make sense of the internal, idiosyncratic stuff that seems so difficult for them to handle…..those relationship and policy and personality issues that have created the status quo and keep it in place daily, the ones you know nothing about and are not part of their problem or your solution.

As you saw in the story above, until buyers manage their internal decision and relationship issues, they will take no action: the ramifications of change are worse than maintaining the status quo (I write extensively about this in my new book). We’ve always sat and waited impatiently for them to achieve an internal decision, frequently attempting to ‘get in’ during this quiet time, and try to make something happen, when unfortunately it’s out of our control.

But you can maintain some influence and control right from the first conversation (see purchasing a solution is the last thing a buyer does). Doing this does the following:

1. it puts you on the Buying Decision Team immediately;
2. it differentiates you from the competition;
3. it discovers those who cannot buy immediately;
4. it makes it possible to have a bit of control around what’s happening when  you’re not around;
5. it gets rid of all objections (price and otherwise).

How would you know when you’d be willing to add a new skill set to what you’re already doing successfully? And what would you need to understand about Buying Facilitation™ to know if the model would work in your client environment?

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Turning a ‘No’ into a ‘Yes’ is a post from: SharonDrewMorgen.com

You end up wasting a lot of time, being annoyed, and facing far too much rejection. Where do seemingly appropriate prospects go? How can they choose a different vendor after all you’ve done for them? How can they take so long when it’s so obvious what the answer should be? Why do people treat you so badly when you really want to serve them?

It’s a tough job, and you end up being protective of yourself – maybe even a bit defensive, and maybe slightly arrogant – hanging on to what you believe: so much of everything else around you seems to make little sense.

And, it’s not your fault. It’s the fault of sales because sales only manages a fraction of  the decision issues buyers must address before they make a decision to accept or choose a solution. Indeed, sales does not offer the tools to facilitate the off-line, behind-the-scenes decision issues buyers must manage in order to get internal buy-in for change. And with this lack, you are left fighting the results of prospects who are basically incapable of  making efficient decisions because they have so much unknowable stuff to deal with at the start of a decision to find a solution.

‘WE ARE RIGHT’ MENTALITY, REGARDLESS OF SUCCESS

I began thinking of this fact this past week as I found myself embroiled in a Linked-In group discussion, with sales folks adamantly defending several Consultative Sales models. Pitch better! Buyers are stupid! Understand your customer! Be their Trusted Advisor!

Each time I tried to remind these otherwise intelligent people that sales does not address the long-standing argument the prospect is having with her deparment head, or that the prospect team really, really wants to use their regular vendor, or when the tech team comes in and attempts to take over everything. And I ever-s0-gently remind folks that their closing rates are very abysmal given the amount of time they spend. So why are they defending what they do when it obviously fails?

Sales is a very faulty model. And yet sellers buy-in to the failure as if you’re expecting to lose, just like folks going to Las Vegas hope they will walk out winners but knowing the odds are bad.

It is almost a crap shoot.  After all, you have no idea, when you start, which of your prospects will buy, do you? You’d like to think you do, but you do not.

The only answer I have is Buying Facilitation™ since it gives sellers an additional tool kit. And it works, with proven success of hundreds of percentage points over sales in studies from major, global corporations. But to want to learn it would mean some agreement that just maybe, an additional tool kit would offer better results and be worth the time/money/effort to learn.

How would you know that an additional skill set would offer you the possibility of having more success?

What would you need to know about a new skill set to understand if you would be able to recognize a good prospect from a time-waster? That  you could lead buyers through their behind-the-scenes decisions before they are ready to buy, and become part of their Buying Decision Team?

How would you know if it was worth the effort to learn how to help maneuver buyers through their off-line decisions before going down the sales route.

What would you need to believe differently to be willing to give up being right, and be open to adding new possibilities – all of which would include your being a true, true partner rather than having an answer at the start?

If any of you decide that you would be open to learning something that will give you good success at truly helping buyers in a way you  have not been able to before now, please consider learning Buying Facilitation™. I know it might fly in the face of  ‘sales’ and operate in a different area of the buying decision. And I know it will be uncomfortable at first. But you have a choice: Would you rather sell? or have someone buy? They are two different activities. And unless you know how to stop selling and use a different set of skills to be the GPS system for your buyer’s off-line and largely unknowable trip, the arrogance of sales will keep you from being as successful as you deserve to be.

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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.

The Arrogance of Sales is a post from: SharonDrewMorgen.com