There must be a better way to do this, no?

1. if we knew who would be a prospect on the first call, and get rid of those who will never buy, how much time would we save?
2. if most gatekeepers would get us to the right person, how much time would we save?
3. if we can connect with all of the folks who will ultimately be (or are already) on the Buying Decision Team, how many more sales would we close?
4. if there are no more objections of any kind, how much time would we save and how much more money would we make?
5. if buyers could make a buying decision in the time frame that we believe is possible (i.e. those buyers who call up and purchase quickly are good examples of what’s possible for every sale),

how much more business would we close? And why can’t we make these things happen?

THE REASONS YOU ARE NOT GETTING THE RESULTS YOU DESERVE

To begin with, you are beginning at the end of the buyer’s journey – the purchasing decision – and must wait while they catch up. As sellers, you have been trained to find appropriate prospects: you have not been trained to help them begin or traverse their journey through the behind-the-scenes decision path that is change-management/systems based, and has more to do with internal politics and time lines than it does with purchasing a solution or choosing a vendor.

As a result, you have learned ways to manage the fallout you’ve received from attempting to offer a solution at the wrong time. Or from attempting to offer a solution that folks might not know they need, or aren’t ready to concede that they might need. Or know they need but haven’t figured out how to get buy-in.

Pushback, objections, time delays, buyers who seemingly don’t know how or if to buy. Prospects that stop returning calls. Prospects who make promises they don’t keep.

The only reason you aren’t closing more sales, and the reason you end up wasting time with non-buyers and delayed sales cycles,  is not because of your solution. Your solution is fine. So is your care and respect and personality.

You’re wasting your time trying to place a solution before the buyer has lined up the change management issues they must contend with. But sales doesn’t offer you any other tools.

THE BUYING FACILITATION® MODEL WORKS WITH SALES TO MANAGE THE BUYING DECISION.

OK. I’m a hammer looking around for a nail. But it’s the truth. Buying Facilitation® is another model – like sales only different – that you must learn in addition to sales to manage the back end issues buyers must address privately before they can buy.

• Gatekeepers will help you find the right people to talk to rather than put you off.
• You can help buyers put together their entire Buying Decision Team on the first call.
• You will no longer get objections (fallout from the sales model) – price or otherwise.
• You will be differentiated from your competition immediately.
• Your buyers will buy in approximately 1/8 the time (sometimes with very large sales the number drops to 1/4).
• You will know who is a buyer and who is not, on the first call.

It’s not sales. But really – do you want to keep having those super long sales cycles and getting objections? Do you really want pipelines that aren’t converting? Take a look at my site www.newsalesparadigm.com and see what options you have to learn. There is no reason you shouldn’t be doing Buying Facilitation® AND sales, and stop wasting time. The sale model is great to understand need and place solution – but by using it too early in the buyer’s change management process, you’re not helping buyers buy. You deserve better.

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Read about Buying Facilitation® in these books: Buying Facilitation®: the new way to sell that expands and influences decisions and Dirty Little Secrets: why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell and what you can do about it. Or buy the bundle with them both.

Sharon Drew is a contributor to the new Entrepreneurial Selling program by RAIN Group. Registration is now open! Check it out Check it out here!

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

How much time do sales people waste? is a post from: SharonDrewMorgen.com

Your new prospect (The ‘Acme’ Corporation) has a need for your product; you’ve done your research and know this: you either know one of the people in their company who says they are seeking to solve a problem, heard through the grapevine that they are looking for a new vendor, or you’ve actually received an RFP from them. And it’s clear that your product will resolve their issue.

GATEKEEPER

You first seek the right person to introduce yourself and your product. You believe you need to get an appointment to go in and meet this person face-to-face, and introduce your product while showing how it will resolve their business problem.

Your first challenge is to get through the gatekeeper. Your charm is often effective: you’ re respectful and you will let her know you need her (“Can you please help me?”). But in this case, Acme has a receptionist who is not friendly. If you don’t know the name of the person you’re calling, she can’t help you. So you do more research – on line and with colleagues – and get the right name. You call back, and after being put through to the right department, you are met with yet another gatekeeper who doesn’t want to put you through.

“Does Mr. Jones know what this is in reference to?”

“No, Mr. Jones doesn’t know me or my company. But I think he’d be interested in speaking with me since I have a product that he might be able to use to resolve his business problem.”

“Sorry, but I can’t put you through to Mr. Jones without him telling me to give you time. I’ll put you through to his voice mail and you can leave a message. He’ll get back to you if he’s interested.”

VOICE MAIL

Here’s the message you leave:

“Hi Mr. Jones. My name is Kate Anderson. I’m the senior sales consultant at Merriweather. I was speaking with Joe Jones yesterday and he told me of your desire to solve your X problem. We have a product that can manage that for you, from what I understand from Joe, but of course I’d need to know more if there is indeed a chance that my product could help. I’m wondering if you’d be willing to return my call so that I could possibly ask you some questions and determine – with you – if my product would serve your needs. Please call me back at ___________.”

Now you have to wait to hear from him, and you know that most people do not respond to voice mail, especially when they don’t have a clue who you are.

What are your odds of getting a call back? Slim to none: unless Mr. Jones 1. is actually seeking exactly the solution you offer, 2. his current vendor can’t manage his needs, or 3. he’s seeking to compare possible solutions, he won’t speak with you. Why should he? If:

• he’s not aware that he needs your specific solution, he won’t know he needs to speak with you;
• if his current vendor is managing the problem, he won’t know your solution is better/cheaper/quicker;
• if he thinks his problem can be resolved with his current team, he doesn’t need outside support.

In fact, he’ll return the call only if he’s seeking to check out all possible alternatives, and needs to compare price, (the automatic assumption is that the solutions are similar so the price has to be similar or lower).

In other words, if you get a return call you must expect to be treated like a commodity and be ready to defend your price points; if you don’t get a call back, you’ve lost a new prospect that most probably needs you.

Is it the fault of the gatekeeper? Nope. Remembering that a gatekeeper’s job is to let in the folks that will serve her boss, and keep out those that will waste his time, she’s just doing her job.

Is it the fault of your product or your marketing? Nope. That’s all just fine: clear, professional, manages a need.

Is it your fault? Nope. You’re a professional, and truly want to serve.

So what’s the problem?

HOW WILL THE BUYER CHOOSE YOU?

The problem is that the buyer doesn’t know the decisions he needs to make internally to choose you, or to make a decision on whether or not you or your offering could be a part of his solution design and resolve his business problem.

How many times has this happened – that you’ve known you have the right solution for a prospect, known you’re a professional, and then not had the opportunity to get in front of the prospect, or get talked down irreparably on price, or lost to a lesser competitor? Too many times. Obviously if the prospect really knew your product and its value, knew your level of professionalism and care, understood that your product could manage their identified problem, you would have a closed sale.

It’s not you. Not your product. And not even the appropriateness of the solution. It’s about the string of decisions that buyers need to make before they can choose a new product/vendor and ensure that they don’t disrupt their internal systems (people, policies, relationships, etc.). Until or unless buyers address these issues – with you or without you – they will take no action and delay a buying decision.

Until now, the entire field of sales has been based on appropriately placing a product. More recently, the buyer has been incorporated into a needs analysis to ensure that they are getting exactly what they need. But all information gathering, analysis, and consultation, is based on the area directly around the identified need. If that were all there was to it, you’d be closing all of your sales because you do such a good job of this stage. Indeed, the skills that sales espouses are incomplete as they offer limited access into the buyer’s hidden systems that created and maintained the identified problem. And until these are addressed, the buyer-seller gap will remain a product-based push, no matter how well you gather data or analyze the problem.

Let’s take each piece of your approach and see how failure is built in, remembering that your product is most likely a great potential solution but that each person you connect with must first decide to connect with you before you can make the next move.

Gatekeepers:

1. if you are required to give a name to a receptionist, there is no way around this one. Just a company rule; the receptionist is too low level to make her own decisions.
2. the gatekeeper to your identified prospect has a different set of problems. Her job is to let the right people in and keep the wrong people out. And you forget that with this first contact, she IS the primary decision maker. Your job here is to help her decide that you will be the ‘right’ person to serve her boss. Telling her that you have a solution and that you’re a professional doesn’t do the job. You must help her make a decision to choose you by using her own criteria for choice – which you don’t know. How will she know that you will be capable of serving her boss?

Voicemail:

1. voice mails offering data will not help the person decide to call you back unless they are already at a stage in their decision making process that they know what data they want to listen to. And by that time, you’re in a competitive situation.
2. it’s possible to use voice mail to help the prospect recognize their internal criteria and decide to call you back because they recognize a collaborative decision making experience that will aid them in discovering all of their decision criteria right from your message. Ask the prospect how they are currently managing X and how they will be deciding on a new vendor to support their needed solution.

Face visits:

1. prospects need to make systems decisions within the environment that created the identified problem before they choose a product solution. If they are lead through these decisions (and which they can’t always see clearly before they begin to seek a solution) on the phone, they will have the right people at the first face meeting. Otherwise, they will only have the first level decision makers and you’ll have to wait some extended period of time until the others get involved. And there are always others.
2. Dale Carnegie advocated face visits because in 1935, it was the easiest way to connect with a prospect. This is no longer true and actually wastes time. Since buyers don’t make decisions based on information and since the product sale is the second half of a two phase sales process (the buying decision half is Phase 1; the product placement half is Phase 2), wait for your face visit until they have recognized and managed the hidden political, relationship, and policy issues necessary before their solution can be fully designed. Then visit to present your product in a way that addresses the solution they just designed, that must fix the entire scope of the identified problem.

Here are a few ‘givens’ that Buying Facilitation works from:

1. information doesn’t teach someone how to make a decision. All of the years you’ve been pitching, offering product data in one form or another, and gathering information has been at the wrong time in the sales cycle. You are actually slowing down your sale. People need to first make decisions around how their solution design will have to manage a set of their unique internal criteria before they will choose a product or service to solve the problem.
2. having the right product to fit a need does not ensure they will know how to buy it.
3. buyers live within a unique set of internal systems that involve people, rules, politics, initiatives, vendor issues, relationships, historic attitudes, that have created and maintain the status quo. That means, the identified problem is a part of a larger, hidden system that must be managed before change can happen. And this system can’t be understood by any outsider. Any outsider. And understanding the buyer, the problem, or who the decision makers are does not help the buyer address the systems that need to be managed. Only insiders can manage this.
4. until or unless a prospect manages their internal systems issues so that major disruption will not occur when they bring in a fix, they will take no action.
5. the time it takes buyers to come up with their own answers is the length of the sales cycle.
6. sellers should use their time with prospects to help them recognize all of the internal systems issues they need to manage, and then help them create a structure within which they can design a solution that hopefully builds in the seller’s product. Then a seller can gather and offer information.

The Buying Facilitation Method® was developed as Phase 1 of the conventionally accepted sales process, recognizing that you’ve never had the tools within the ‘sales’ model to actually deal with the hidden, historic, and idiosyncratic issues that buyers must manage internally that have kept the identified problem from being resolved until now (why wasn’t it resolved yesterday). The Method includes Facilitative Questions that assist sellers in leading buyers through the tactical and systems decisions (old vendor issues, historic union issues, new relationship management issues from another department, strategic initiatives that are getting badly managed) they need to make before bringing in a new solution. They need to handle this. They’ll do it with you or without you. I would prefer they do it with you and meld you into their solution design.

After all: do you want to sell? Or have someone buy?

Voice Mail, Gatekeepers, And Other Obstructions To Sales Success is a post from: SharonDrewMorgen.com

• it’s taking 30% longer to close a sale than it used to;
• additional decision makers seemingly appear from nowhere;
• internal decision makers whom the prospects seek to include in their purchasing decision are either unfamiliar to the sales team or seemingly not relevant to the identified problem;
• goals aren’t being achieved and targeted prospects are not responding appropriately to our efforts;
• we’re losing business to unknown competitors.

As a result, many of us are rethinking all or some of our normal sales practices:

1. Because of the lengthened close cycle, we’ve been firing perfectly good sales people, and replacing them with clones, hoping that we’ll have better results with different sales people.
2. We’ve stopped doing face-to-face sales training, replacing it with e-learning, thinking that maybe the training process might be the problem.
3. We’re spending a fortune on refining our demographics, to ensure we target the most relevant prospects.
4. We are trying blog’s, brand differentiation, different forms of marketing done through behavioral scientists, psychologists who tell us how our buyer-base makes decisions – believing that if we know this we can find a way to trigger our prospects into buying.

WHAT IS SALES? AND WHAT DOES IT DO?

Sales is geared toward helping place product – either through different pitch mechanisms (such as presentations, ads, marketing, direct mail), different sales styles (SPIN, Sandler, High Probability, Solution Selling, Integrity Selling, and Dale Carnegie to name a few), and different forms of relationship management (Trusted Advisor, Relationship Selling, etc.).

When I remind sellers that their efforts are directed at placing product, some get blustery, saying things like: ‘Well! We will ONLY sell to clients that are appropriate.’ ‘We REALLY care that our product gets placed with people who really need it.’ ‘We are TRUE consultants and spend X time up front making sure our product would be appropriate.’ Call it what you will; everything I just mentioned here has one – and only one – focus: to place product.

I once had a discussion with Philip Kotler, author of Marketing Management, and marketing guru from the Kellogg School, about the inefficiency of the sales model, such as inappropriately long closing cycles, differentiation problems, objection-handling, gatekeepers, etc. “But those are all problems inherent in the model itself. Sellers have had to manage those problems through time.” Precisely.

In other words, the skills inherent in the sales model creates the very problems it works to overcome:

1. objections get created by the sales process itself as sellers attempt to push, offer, and introduce solutions to a buyer who hasn’t fully discerned the full range of their unique buying criteria. Push back results, often around price;
2. closing takes longer than necessary as buyers embark on the confusing task of managing their policy and people issues that are indirectly related to the identified problem. Product information does NOT teach buyers how to make their criteria-based, unique decisions across management lines;
3. gatekeepers reject sellers whom they believe will abuse their boss’s time, and let in the only the ones they know will support the decision process.

Through time, we’ve accepted these inherent problems and built them in to our sales model as ‘givens’. Indeed, we automatically assume that these obstacles are a normal part of handling the sales cycle.

Isn’t there something wrong when we end up having the exact same problems over time? We’ve dealt with closing problems, gatekeepers, and objections throughout the history of sales and nothing has changed; … and no course, no article, no software, no consultant, can manage these problems

WORK-AROUNDS TO MANAGE THE SHORTCOMINGS

Through the years, we have actually devised work-‘rounds:

• make-nice skills to convince prospects we care;
• proclaim our individuality through ads, branding, or promotions;
• get in front of prospects looking/acting/sounding ‘professional’;
• send gifts;
• get GOOD referrals from “people who know people”;
• get to the “C” level people so a directive comes from top down;
• make sure we sound credible, trustworthy, and differentiated;
• spend gobs on money on websites and web portals to create a ‘great’ customer experience that proclaims WE CARE, WE CARE.

We seem to be placing blame on everything other than the originating problem: the sales model itself. For some reason, we have the belief that the sales model is, well, the sales model – comprised of a specific, rather standardized, set of skills that we must perform in order to sell product. Why have we not realized that the inherent problems could be prevented with a different model?

In my humble opinion, the sales model is obsolete.

What needs to happen for us to realize that without a buyer managing their full set of systemic decision factors, our product placement activity is moot?

That the goal of placing product is not a good use of a seller’s time?

And, the ultimate question: when will we realize that no matter what type of selling we’re doing, what approach we’re using, what demographics we are targeting, and how great our sales people/product/brand is, we continue to close basically the same number of sales (from first prospecting call to close) that we’ve always closed (7% from first prospecting call to close). Just slower.

THE HISTORY OF SALES

Let’s go back a bit and look at the facts. Historically, sellers were needed to give buyers data that they couldn’t otherwise get. When our modern sales approach was designed – I believe Dale Carnegie to be the founder of our current model…… even consultative sales is a derivative of Carnegie’s basic model – there was no internet, few magazines, and efficient travel was embryonic.

Without sellers offering ‘features, functions, and benefits’, buyers had no way of fully understanding a product offering. So the main job of the seller became (in addition to finding an appropriate buyer) ensuring that the buyer had all of the information they needed to make an informed decision.

But that has changed. We no longer need to offer data about our product that the internet can ably do for us; we have new forms of competition; we have global partners and prospects; and the internal variables that create our customer’s decisions are hidden from us.

We’ve basically not changed our sales model through time. It’s time to make the sales function do more than sell product; we must start using sales as a vehicle to support the full range of our prospect’s buying decisions – not to place product, but to help them recognize, manage, and align all of the unique systems variables that need to be addressed before they can decide to go through the internal change process necessary for a purchase to happen.

THE SOLUTION: THE MORGEN BUYING FACILITATION METHOD®

I have developed a collaborative decision facilitation model (Buying Facilitation) that supports the discovery and management of the buying decision and addresses all of the elements that buyers need to manage before they decide. Buying Facilitation has very different results from sales, with none of the problems: no objections, sales cycles up to 90% shorter than any sales method, few gatekeeper problems, and targeted decision support etc.

The model doesn’t place product: it teaches buyers how to buy, using their own unique, hidden, historic, systems criteria to support their decision. After all, if they don’t know how to decide to buy you, it doesn’t matter how or what you’re selling.

Here are a few actual case histories using The Buying Facilitation Method® following difficulties with conventional sales:

1. I was working with a tax recovery company who got paid solely from recovered funds. They had a one-two year sales cycle.

SALES PROCESS: contacted prospect. Introduced themselves as the pre-eminent tax recovery company, with the best consultants (true!). Mentioned the percentage possibility of recovering funds and discussed fee structure (only paid when money found, i.e. no direct cost to company). Asked for appointment to discuss possibilities of recovering money in their state and to gather data etc. Got appointments 5% of the time. Visited several times and closed 10% within 24 months – usually 10-12 months.

BUYING FACILITATION PROCESS: contacted prospect and briefly introduced themselves. Asked prospect how they were currently recovering any funds due them and how they would manage relationships with tax folks if they decided to re-open the books. Inappropriate prospects said they would never annoy tax preparers and ended the call kindly. Appropriate prospects said they wanted to find money where possible. No – or maximum one – visit(s). One month close. No follow-up with inappropriate prospects.

2. A major internationally branded consulting firm had a 2 year delay in an agree-upon 8 figure technology solution for a major bank.

SALES PROCESS: Get an introduction to the CTO to get agreement for a meeting to discuss needs. This took several months, but was possible because of the well-known brand. Developed a business case for a software solution. Proposal developed and accepted. Work order delayed because of internal issues. Consulting firm managed to do small jobs, but after two years and budding friendships with the CFO, CTO, and COO, the delay continued. Cost to bank for NOT implementing new software: One Billion Dollars.

BUYING FACILITATION: the technology company had me contact the CFO of the company to help move them forward. It became clear, within 20 minutes of using Buying Facilitation that there was a long-standing unresolved Union problem that no one considered when discussing the technology solution. We resolved it in a few meetings. It could have been resolved years before. The bank was then free to start the software solution.

3. One of my own new sales people was having difficulty ‘getting past’ the gatekeeper.

SALES PROCESS: Mary was making cold calls to find speaking engagements for me. I listened while she was put into voice mail, given the run-around, and in general had great difficulty getting through to the correct person.

BUYING FACILITATION: I made cold calls to exhibit how to work with the gatekeeper. Mary dialed 7 numbers that were mysterious to me (truly cold). The first one I blew – the gatekeeper hung up on me mid question. The other 6 I was given straight to the correct decision maker or his/her assistant, who then gave me an appointment for the next day. I had collaborated with the decision maker (the gatekeeper) to help her decide to make me a part of the solution.

In reality, Buying Facilitation is a wholly different model with a different premise, different skills, and a different outcome. It’s not about selling, it’s about supporting the buyer in recognizing and managing all of the hidden elements that need to be addressed before they can make a buying decision. They need to do this anyway – with you, or without you. And the time it takes them to come up with their own answers is the length of the sales cycle.

The question is, are we ready to change our sales model, and disrupt our status quo, for the possibility of getting the results we seek?

Do you want to sell? Or have someone buy?

Sales Is The Problem: What Is The Solution? is a post from: SharonDrewMorgen.com