But the model is fraught with guesswork and hope, manipulation, bias, and persuasion, white lies and exaggerations – not to mention highly ineffective when the time spent vs sales closed ratio is examined [sellers waste approximately 40 hours a month on sales that never close, with an average close rate of 7%].

Because of the global nature of our staffing patterns, with decision makers in different time zones, it’s taking 30% longer to close sales these days. As a result, the seller’s job of gathering data, understanding needs, pitching and presenting product data, gets mitigated by time and space. And the very nature of the web makes most pitches and presentations moot. In fact, many buyers know more than sellers.

AS IS, SALES IS UNNECESSARY

Indeed, the job of ‘sales’ is unnecessary – so long as it retains its original focus. But what if we could harness the ‘manpower’ and positioning of the person who is the only company representative to walk between the company and the client, and make sales a spiritual practice.

There is a way to have sellers be true spiritual guides and servant leaders, and not only sell more product, and sell more quickly, but also become part of the buyer’s team with commensurate integrity and values. But we’d have to change what we’re now doing.

What would be the difference between what we’re doing now and what sales would have to become in order to have sales be a spiritual practice? To begin with, we’d have to shift our beliefs about our jobs, our ability to collaborate, and our outcomes. Then we’d have to learn the new skills that would create a collaborative dialogue that would truly serve each end of the equation.

First things first. Let’s start by defining ‘spiritual’. To me it means:

• always having a win-win (there is no such thing as win-lose);
• understanding that the whole is greater than the parts;
• understanding that we are all here to serve each other;
• recognizing that there is no right answer;
• believing that no one has an answer for someone else.

Different from sales, which

• sometimes has a ‘win-lose’,
• believes that the parts might be greater than the whole,
• seeks to serve the buyer but ends up serving the seller,
• has the ‘right’ answer in their solution,
• might have the buyer’s ‘answer’.

Let’s change the focus of sales. Instead of making sales about placing a product/solution, let’s give sellers the role of a facilitator. Let’s make the sales job one of a Guide to leads buyers to their best decisions, based on their own criteria. Then the seller becomes a Servant Leader to the buyer, and the buyer gets to make better, quicker, more congruent decisions – and there will be more buyers, less tire-kickers, better differentiation, and no competition, and sales close in 1/8 the time. And it is a true Servant Leader role at the same time.

What would our jobs look like with this new set of beliefs? Let’s begin by making sure we all agree as to what ‘spiritual’ looks like.

Always have a win-win

Having a win-win means both sides get what they need in equal measure.

I realize that sellers tell themselves that by placing product, there is an automatic win-win. But the dialogue is much, much bigger than product placement or problem resolution. The dialogue must include resolving the entire system that created and maintains the status quo. And it is only when this system is repaired, and the buyer knows how to fix the obvious problem while repairing the bits that got it and keep it that way, does the buyer have a true win.

[How did the Identified Problem (IP) show up as it does? How is it kept in place daily? Why hasn’t it been resolved until now? What are the issues that would have to be managed in order to bring in a new/different solution and not create havoc? What sort of decisions would the decision team need to address to consider a new vendor and solution?]

Until now, sales has handled only the solution end of the equation, not the buying decision end. Yet a complete sales process is not so simple as placing a new solution to resolve what looks like a problem.

Buyers can’t make a decision until or unless buyers address the internal systems that not only created but maintain their status quo. All of the time sellers spend before this happens is misplaced, mistimed, and misguided, leading to the win-lose quality of sales: sales becomes a product/solution push into a closed and idiosyncratic system, rather than a collaborative experience between seller and buyer.

Imagine having a product-needs discussion about moving an iceberg and discussing only the iceberg’s tip. That’s what the conventional sales model does, ignoring the entire range of hidden, unique systems issues that created and maintain the policies, relationships, and rules that make up the status quo.

Having a win-win means that not only will the seller supply the product solution, but the buyer will successfully manage all of the necessary internal decisions and create minimal disruption as they adopt a solution.

Internal issues that buyers must address prior to being able to make a purchase: Must the current vendor relationship be shifted somehow? Does one department, or do people, have to relinquish a job function? What about changes in policy? Or people’s egos? What about historic rules that have kept the Identified Problem in place? Or how have departments and job descriptions evolved so that the status quo is relatively functional – and would need to unravel once a proper solution gets brought in? How do they replace the item or skill that they’ve been using until now and the people or policies or habits around that?

Having a win-win means that all of these issues get resolved first so the buyer is free to make a good policy decision. It’s not about product, problem, or need.

The whole is greater than the sum of its parts

There are several pieces to the puzzle here. There is

• the buyer and the system the buyer lives in, including people, policies, job titles, egos, relationships, politics, layers of management, rules, etc.
• the historic issue (the Identified Problem) that needs a solution and still resides relatively comfortably (or they would have changed it already) within the buyer’s system
• the seller and the seller’s product
• the seller’s relationship with the buyer
• the purchase and implementation and follow up.

The sum of all of these parts is the Whole. And each of the parts must work congruently together for there to be a win-win.

Generally in sales, sellers see the IP, recognize their solution can fix it, and go about creating a relationship that appears trustworthy (along with the product data), so the buyer will choose them for the fix. But because the sale is solution based, they are left out of the entire internal decisioning process that the buyer goes through and instead wait for the call to come in.

For the whole to be greater than the sum of its parts, the seller and buyer must work together at both ends of the decision cycle: the first decisions to manage, regulate, and resolve the systems issues that created the problem, keep it in place, and need to change in order to accept a fix, and then the final decisions on product features that meld the seller’s solution into the buyer’s solution design.

We are all here to serve each other

Right now, sellers believe they are meant to serve the buyer through their product placement. And what if that were expanded to serving them by being neutral navigators to their decision. Additionally, imagine the buyer serving the seller. What would all that look like?

By inviting the seller onto the buyer’s decision team, by offering the seller respect, by choosing the seller’s solution, the buyer is serving the seller. By helping the buyer line up their internal decisions and to recognize all of the issues that need to be resolved before any change can happen, and by supplying a fairly priced and supported product, the buyer and seller are serving each other.

And when this occurs, and both recognize the value of the other, price is never an issue. And the sale is made quickly, with no competitive issues.

There is no right answer

Sellers often believe that buyers are idiots for not making speedy decisions, or, worse, for not choosing their product. The solution seems obvious to sellers who have seen the same ‘problem’ so many times. But they have never gone beyond the tip of the iceberg as they don’t have the skills, the tools, or the motive.

It’s necessary for us to expand the definition of a buying decision to include management of the people, policies, relationships, and history – the systems issues – that keep the buyer’s status quo in place and are responsible for the Identified problem. Until now, sales has only concentrated on product placement and the surrounding issues that sellers feel they need to manage to sell. This includes managing gatekeepers, closing techniques, objection handling, for example. What they never realized is that once buyers can figure out the necessary underlying systems decisions, they have nothing to object to, will close themselves, and everyone involved knows what to do (therefore no gatekeeper problems or competition issues).

Working with the buying decision in addition to the product sale eschews having the ‘right answer’ and replaces it with having the ability to support the buying decision.

No one has anyone else’s answer

As per the previous discussion, by adding decision support to the seller’s tool kit, no one is working with answers: everyone is working together to uncover the right questions, and make collaborative decisions that will serve everyone.

THE NEW WAY

Buying Facilitation™ is a collaborative decision making model that sellers use to help buyers recognize, align, and manage all of the internal, and sometimes unconscious, systems issues that need to be addressed before any change is possible. Until now, buyers have fumbled around, doing it themselves: they get to their answers eventually, and the time this takes is the length of the sales cycle.

What Buying Facilitation™ does is codes and sequences the unconscious decision making issues that people filter through on their way to some sort of change or decision. Make no mistake: until they do this, they will take no action. Until you know when or how or if you are ready to move, you will not abruptly purchase a new house, or car, etc. on a whim. When there are others involved, an intricate dance happens in which buy-in occurs before action is taken. And whether someone is purchasing a lipstick or a hammer, a house or a horse, and whether a team is purchasing new software or training, there are unconscious criteria that need to be addressed before any change will take place.

What’s been missing from sales has been the concept of systems. Each buyer lives within a system of rules and roles, policies and relationships that both create and maintain the status quo. As seller’s our tools have helped us help buyers recognize the Identified Problem (IP) and how the seller’s solution could manage the IP. But the buyer has remained on their own, figuring out how to make their decisions. And sellers sit and wait for the call back, occasionally getting on the phone and leaving helpless messages.

Now we have a new model that sits on top of the product decision portion of the sale and leads buyers through their internal sequence of decisions. They need to do this anyway – with a seller or on their own. But now, using Buying Facilitation™, sellers can actually be a part of the process from the first call. And become servant leaders.

No longer do we need to just sell: we can actually serve the buyer buy aiding the unconscious decision process without bias and without manipulation.

Indeed, sales can be a spiritual practice.

For those of you wishing to learn more, please visit www.newsalesparadigm.com or purchase the Buying Facilitation™/Dirty Little Secrets Bundle.

Sales As A Spiritual Practice is a post from: SharonDrewMorgen.com

Do you know which of the opportunities are the top 10 – and are you certain they are the top 10? How are you and your team – VP of sales, sales execs and managers – connecting with the prospects to know what they need to ‘be ready to buy’ ? How do you know, from where you are sitting, at what stage of the buying decision path they are on?

And how do you define ‘opportunity?’

THE FRONT END VS. THE BACK END OF THE BUYING PATH

Sales merely manages the last 10% of the buyer’s journey. It has no capacity to address the private, off-line, and often unconscious (certainly not based on needs or solution choice) aspects of a decision path that are, by definition, idiosyncratic. Sales was designed merely to assess need and place a solution.

Here are a few things buyers must do before they can buy. As I introduce each one, see if you can determine where your buyer is on this path, because until they complete each of these they will not buy, regardless of their needs or how well your solution fits, or how much ‘pain’ they are in.

1. get all of the right people onto the Buying Decision Team (BDT). Each BDT member brings their own criteria for a solution, and the solution requirements will not be stabilized until everyone puts in their 2 cents. Presenting from, or gathering data from, anything less than the whole BDT will result in insufficient data to choose a solution – or pitch – on.
2. get buy-in from everyone who will touch the solution. If a solution is chosen without the requisite buy-in, the system will face massive chaos/disruption.
3. all of the people, policies, historic vendors, old technology, systems issues, must know how they will shift when something new is added. Will they need to outsource staff? Where? When? Who? Who will supervise? Project lead? What happens to their current work load?

Just because we see a problem and have a great solution, doesn’t mean the buyer is ready, willing, and able to buy – otherwise you’d close a lot more sales.

Why are prospects in your pipeline?

What criteria of yours have placed them there?

How accurate are you with your projections? And why aren’t they more accurate?

What’s the difference between someone who will buy and someone who might initially look like a buyer but isn’t? And how do you know the difference?

So long as you place prospects in your pipeline because you believe 1. the buyer is ready, 2. they have the money, 3. they know they need your solution, and/or 4. they like you and are in ‘pain’, you will have a wildly fluctuating success rate.

Here is what you should know before putting a prospect onto the pipeline:

1. that every single one of the Buying Decision Team members is on board, and bought in to making a change and a purchase;
2. that there is a change management/implementation plan – that the seller is a part of – for when the solution will be purchased;
3. that any of the buy-in or change problems are addressed with anyone who will touch the solution;
4. that all existing technology and jobs that will be effected by the solution will be somehow included into the solution purchase so there are no loose ends or mystery.

Just because a seller thinks a buyer is ready doesn’t mean the prospect belongs in the pipeline.

Manage your pipeline by managing the buying decision path. Otherwise, your forecasting is ineffective. Buying Facilitation® will teach you how to manage the buying journey and understand exactly when, who, why, and how the solution will be purchased. Then you can forecast with accuracy.

sd

Fire up your sales folks at your next sales conference, have Sharon Drew give your keynote.

Look at our Learning Accelerators to add some new skills to your sales so you can manage your pipeline effectively.

Learn how buyer’s decide: read two sample chapters of Sharon Drew’s latest book Dirty Little Secrets.

Sharon Drew is a featured speaker at the Search Insider Summit – May 4 – 7 , 2011

Pipeline management: is your forecasting accurate? is a post from: SharonDrewMorgen.com

Do you believe that to close a sale you must ‘get in front of prospects?’  Why? Really. Have you ever asked yourself why? Do you tell yourself that you MUST have that eye contact? That ‘face-to-face’ juice? Do you tell yourself that if you’re not in the field, you’re not selling?

In 1937, Dale Carnegie advocated it. What else are you using from a 1937 playbook?

Untold billions of dollars have been misspent following this industry-wide belief: planes, hotels, time. And? The industry still has a 7% average close rate.

Here is a rule: Don’t use your body as a prospecting tool.

Here is a secret: your sterling personality, your great outfit, your Rolex watch and Prada shoes don’t close an account. Nor does your great insight or knowledge of the buyer, their need, your industry, or your solution. Nor does that great rapport you create over lunch. Otherwise, you would be closing a lot more sales. Amazing how much push-back I get from an industry with such a low success rate.

The problem is that the reason buyers finally choose you is not because you’re smart or well dressed or because they like you. The seller who buyers meet after you is just as smart and well-dressed and adorable. It’s industry standard!

Buyers buy you only when they have put together their entire Buying Decision Team – a process that is far more complex than ‘understanding need’ or having a problem, and is not knowable when the seller meets the buyer - and then, once formed, when the Buying Decision Team has determined that:

1. they can’t fix the problem with a known, internal, or familiar solution;
2. all of the internal factors that need to buy-in to change are ready, willing, and able to bring in something new that will undoubtedly upset the status quo in some way.

SO WHAT WORKS BETTER?

Those of you who are familiar with my work know what I’m going to say: Until or unless a buyer has managed all of their initially mysterious and unknowable off-line, behind-the-scenes issues that have little to do with their problem, and everything to do with a decision to bring in some sort of agreeable solution, they will not buy. They cannot: the risk to relationships, to initiatives, to personnel, to partnerships, is just too great.

For some unknown reason, sales treats an Identified Problem (need) as if it were an isolated event, rather than one small piece in a sea of tangled policy,politics, and relationship issues that make up any system or culture.

Sales does a great job at needs analysis, and asking somewhat relevant questions, but all in service to solution placement – never discovering the real, behind-the-scenes issues that created and maintain the problem. And trying to ‘uncover’ and ‘understand’ these idiosyncratic issues is impossible, not to mention irrelevant, as outsiders just can’t be ‘in’ there to make the necessary changes.

Enter the telephone. It is possible to use the telephone as a very very effective and cheap prospecting tool. With it, you can help buyers begin the process of figuring out how they are going to buy.

WACHOVIA AND SMALL BUSINESS BANKERS

When I was working with Wachovia, the small business bankers went from using the phone to make appointments (they made 10 appointments for every 100 appointment-getting calls, and then followed the 10 for 11 months, and closed 2 for a 2% closing rate that took far, far too long), to asking:

How are you currently adding new banking resource to the ones you’re already using for those time when your current bank can’t give you what you need?

From that first Facilitative Question, approximately 35% of the prospects  invited the bankers to come to meet with them because their bank was regional and couldn’t offer a complete set of resources. Of those, they closed about 15% in 2 months and another percentage over the next 4 months. In other words, from our first contact, we helped buyers figure out how to choose to begin the process of determining if change was needed. And the bankers went from offering product data to actually helping clients determine how to add a new banking resource. And closed a heckof a lot more business in a very short time.

We changed the conversation from a solution-placement activity, to a decision facilitation activity that helped buyers discover how to start getting ready to make changes they would need to make to be excellent.

USE THE PHONE TO ASSIST DISCOVERY

Because buying decisions involve enmassing, and then managing, the entire Buying Decision Team and all of the behind-the-scenes issues that must be involved before they can make the internal shifts necessary to bring in something new without chaos (the activity that all buyers must go through, regardless of the industry or size of the solution), buyers need to do this off-line, and separate from the purchasing process.

The sales model doesn’t handle this.

But Buying Facilitation™ can. Used as a decision facilitation tool to help buyers manage their behind-the-scenes navigation and change management process, it guides buyers through the route they must take anyway. They are going to do this with you or without you. And the time it takes them to uncover their own answers to ensure a seamless change, is the length of the sales cycle.

You do not need your personality or your great clothes to help them achieve this. You can, of course, or you can help them start the process and when they have got many of their answers, and have enmassed the entire Buying Decision Team, THEN you can go visit – and make the sale.

sd

Hear Sharon Drew discuss Buying Facilitation™.

Make the Phone your Best Friend is a post from: SharonDrewMorgen.com

But if it were that easy, buying decisions would get made more often in our favor. We certainly would not lose as many sales as we do. The problem is that the buying decision is so, so much more complex than we can imagine as we stand on the outside looking in.

Sales mysteriously treats an Identified Problem (my word for ‘need’) as if it were an isolated event. But it’s not. There are ramifications to any change, and the ramifications are ones only buyers can see from the inside and we will never be privy to.

WHEN DO BUYERS START FIGURING OUT STUFF?

Buyers don’t start figuring out their behind-the-scenes issues until after we’ve met them, except in cases when buyers call us and buy… in which case they’ve made all of the behind-the-scenes buying decisions before they contacted us and we are just lucky.

We come in at the wrong time, pitching a solution to a small portion of the ultimate Buying Decision Team, and have no tools to help buyers do what they must do first: manage all of the off-line buying decisions that need to happen for them to get buy-in for change.

I have said this over and over: the time it takes buyers to come up with their own answers is the length of the sales cycle. Before they can buy anything they first look into their current teams, partners groups, rules, historic decisions for a simple resolution to a business problem. They come to us by default, and even then end up going back inside (to their old vendors, or the other department heads, or the tech team) to do an internal check on resources before placing an order.

WHAT IS BEHIND THE SCENES?

I’ve fully described the actual steps that happen behind-the-scenes in my new book coming out soon (Dirty Little Secrets: why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell and what to do about it). To think about this, let’s start with this question: How did a buyer’s ‘need’ get there? It didn’t arise overnight, and people and policies inside agreed to allow it to happen. So the ‘need’ got created behind-the-scenes.

Not only that, the system and rules and people and policies have allowed it to remain as it is – or they would have changed it already.

Before a buyer will buy or choose any solution at all, they must first figure out and manage the very idiosyncratic and mysterious ramifications of change. What will a solution change internally? How will the people and policies interact differently if/when they decide to resolve an Identified Problem and bring in something… something different that isn’t already there? Obviously, the sales model doesn’t equip us with the tools to help buyers manage these issues, and we cannot do it for them.

And no solution will be purchased if there is any possibility that the client can resolve their problem on their own.

As we think about sales, and wonder how to close more sales, quicker, we must realize that by merely focusing on the solution-placement area, and we do our ’understanding’ – understanding need, understanding the decision making, understanding the requirements, helping buyers understand our the judiciousness of our offering - we are not helping the buyer do the behind-the-scenes work they must accomplish before making a buying decision. That work is private, idiosyncratic, personal, unique, and not open to outsiders. And, unfortunately, buyers don’t know how to do this work easily because it’s new to them. But we can help – with a different set of skills.

We can help them by being true servant leaders, true trusted advisors and relationship managers, and guide them through their systemic, off-line, buying decision issues. But it’s not sales. In this time of economic uncertainty, add Buying Facilitation™ and differentiate from your competition – and truly help your buyer buy. And, stop selling.

sd

If you’d like me to write a White Paper for you on understanding the decision issues your buyers face, please email me at sharondrew@newsalesparadigm.com.

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. I’ll be doing a webinar on the material close to the launch date, so stay tuned.

Or have a look at my book Buying Facilitation:the new way to sell that inluences 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. Will it help you make a sale? Maybe. Maybe not. But it sure will help you make a client.

Buying Decisions: What Happens Behind-The-Scenes is a post from: SharonDrewMorgen.com

Recently, a CEO of a smallish company – a man familiar with my books - called me to do some work. Given the difficult market, he wanted to use Buying Facilitation™ to differentiate from his competition, and have his existing customers buy more product.

As with everyone, I led him down the buying decision funnel and he figured out 1. how he needed to go about getting buy-in from his managers; 2. how he’d know before we started that he’d have a good chance of getting the results he desired; 3. how he’d recognize the value of any money expenditure.

Through the questions, he realized the managers who would have to be involved with the decisions to bring me in, what he and I would need to do prior to any training to give him the best shot at success, and what he’d walk away with when we were done.

The next day, I had a conference call with two of the senior managers, and they bought in to my program. My prospect then moved forward, and together we designed a program to suit his needs. Then he asked for price. I gave him a price that I thought was fair – the price I was willing to do the work for, for his size company. But in this economy, it was more than he had available in his budget. He asked if I could come down in price. I guess you could call it a price objection.

I thought for a moment, and realized that the price I gave him was the price I felt comfortable with for the use of my time and IP.

“I can understand your problem,” I said. “Why don’t we just take the last coaching piece out, and that will match your price.”

He was silent. “What do you mean? You mean take out the last 8 weeks of coaching?”

“Yes. That’s a lot of work for me, and I love getting paid for the work I do. I think that’s a win-win: you’ll save some money, and I’ll save some time.”

Silence. “Let me think about this and get back to you.”

I WANT TO GET PAID FOR MY VALUE

I thought about the situation that night and sent him an email, saying I’d come up with a great idea. He could go with the lower price, and we’d put a rider in the contract stating that his folks could call me whenever they wanted coaching, and I would bill him for just the hours used, rather than have a full-time retainer. It was a perfect solution: I would get paid for my time, and he wouldn’t have to be out of pocket up front, and possibly his folks would use less hours than the initial amount, thereby saving him money. No price objection, and no unpaid work.

He said, “I’ll get back to you. I’m going to the bank to see how much I can borrow.”

Next day he called: “We’re good to go. Let’s write up the contract.”

“How much should I bill you for?”

“The whole amount.”

“But I gave you a creative way to spend less and still have a win-win,” I said.

“I know. But I want the whole thing. I want everything you’ve got. And I’m going to pay for it.”

PRICE OBJECTIONS AREN’T ABOUT PRICE

Next time you hear your prospects give you price objections, it’s not because of the price. The give price objections because they don’t know the full value proposition that they’d be paying for. And it’s not based on their need, or your features and functions. It’s based on the buying criteria they want to meet internally.

At the end of the day, buyers buy using their own buying patterns, based on their buying criteria. Help them figure out how to decide that you will offer them the value they seek; it may be different from the need they are trying to resolve.

When you enter the buying decision process and start with understanding needs and placing product, before the buyer has figured out how to recognize all of his/her buying criteria and before they have actually bought-into change, the buyer hasn’t determined what you are worth to them yet.

When you name a price too early, they only know to compare it with other similar solutions – not against your intrinsic value. So price objections have much more to do with buyers not understanding how to evaluate their own criteria, and little to do with your worth or price.

Help buyers figure out how their criteria match your value. And then name your price. They’ll go to the bank and get the funds.

sd

If you’d like me to write a White Paper for you on understanding the decision issues your buyers face, please email me at sharondrew@newsalesparadigm.com.

Check out my new book coming out October 1: Dirty Little Secrets: why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell and what to do about it. Read a free chapter. Sign up for presales deals, and announcements. I’ll be doing a webinar on the material close to the launch date, so stay tuned.

Or have a look at my book Buying Facilitation:the new way to sell that inluences 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. Will it help you make a sale? Maybe. Maybe not. But it sure will help you make a client.

Price Objections Aren’t Price Objections 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

Buyers live in a system. It includes people, policies, relationships, company or family politics, personality issues, initiatives, historic vendor relationships, personal biases, fears. And any Identified Problem, or need, that our product can resolve, sits inside that system. And make no mistake: this Identified Problem sits comfortably in the buyer’s culture (their ‘system’).

When they go to resolve this Identified Problem, they are stuck with the work-arounds that the system created for it that not only provide some sort of solution, but also creates sticky tentacles that become firmly rooted in the buyer’s environment. Until or unless these latch on to something else, or get untangled in a way that everyone approves of, no purchase can take place. Managing this creates the delays in buying decisions.

Like in all systems, our buyer’s environments seek homeostasis. It’s a universal law of nature – the retention of balance, regardless of what it takes to do this. When we show up with a solution, no matter how necessary the need, our solution threatens the system. To us it just looks like a need that our solution can fix. To buyers it looks like disruption. Remember, there is some sort of work-around already.

But sales does NOT handle this: in sales, every question, every skill, every professional behavior, is targeted to placing a product. You’ve learned to overcome objections, handle gatekeepers, close better, and wait til they are ready. You gather data – about the problem/need; you listen carefully – about the problem/need; you offer solutions – about the problem/need.

But separate from the Identified Problem/need is the system that holds it in place; if it were so urgent, the buyer would have fixed the need already!

Until buyers figure out how to manage all of those people and policy issues, until they get buy-in from all of the people that are affected by the Identified Problem or the work-arounds the buyer has created to manage the problem prior to finding a  different solution, they will do nothing. And because it’s so unique and idiosynratic, because there is no way for an outsider to understand why some folks are having a fight, or why one department doesn’t work with another, or why the decision team members all have disparate views on a solution, a seller can’t understand what is going on. And they can’t be directly involved with the resolution of those issues.

The dirty little secret is that buyers don’t understand it either, until they are well into their decisioning and untangling.

Sales has never taught you how to become an unbiased coach, and help buyers 1. recognize the full extent and reach of the problem situation and the sorts of tangles it’s created; 2. figure out how to resolve their issues with familiar resources and old vendors; and 3. identify the people and teams that need to buy-in to a new solution to ensure there will be no disruption when the problem is resolved.

By using Buying Facilitation (www.newsalesparadigm.com) we can help prospects figure out how to manage and resolve the systems elements that need to agree to change. It’s not sales, but it influences the sale and facilitates the buying decision. Buyers must do this with us or without us. It might as well be with us. But it is a different skill set.

To learn more about it, read the two free chapters of my ebook Buying Facilitation: the new way to sell that influences and expands decisions

What’s Behind A Buying Decision? 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

This, said by sellers blaming buyers for not behaving as sellers would prefer. Or not responding appropriately to seller’s selling patterns.

Let me reverse the issue: Sellers do not respond appropriately to buyer’s buying patterns! Indeed, have they helped their customers:

• manage the range of internal decisions they need to make as they construct a buying decision?
• discern their criteria for resolving a need that resides within a tangle of other problems?
• identify the criteria for adding a  solution to their status quo in a way that won’t create disruption?
• discover the most efficient route through the breadth of decisions and decision makers, to help them manage their newly-challenged organizational issues with stakeholders, budgets, and personnel issues?

THE SYSTEM BEHIND THE BUYING DECISION

I suspect buyer’s criteria for buying are different from what sellers would like them to be. It’s always been that way (which accounts for sales’ abysmal closing ratios) given sales is based on product placement and need, rather than systems management.

How do I know? Because after 15 years as a very successful sales person, I became a customer and realized what the problem was.

As an entrepreneur of a start-up tech company, my problem was never the ‘need’. The ‘need’ was just the observable factor (think tip of the iceberg) of a conglomeration of internal issues within my system of people, policies, relationships, and initiatives; it was never resolved so simply as finding a solution to one of the elements. There always seemed to be a trickle down factor.

Indeed: there are a few givens that sellers forget when it comes to customers ‘knowing’ how to buy:

1. buyers don’t want to buy anything. They want to resolve a problem. Period.  They will resolve their problem with the most efficacious means, so long as it happens with a minimum level of internal disruption. If it means using a work-around that might fit better into the existent system of people and policies than bringing in a new solution or vendor, that’s the decision. If the status quo – incomplete and problematic as it might be – is better than having to shift initiatives, dislodge jobs, or uproot long standing and collegial vendors, then the status quo is the best resolution. An outside observer, such as a seller, cannot understand the ramifications of a customer’s decision when there is so much more than just the Identified Problem at stake.
2. sales treats an Identified Problem as if it were an isolated event. It forgets that the Identified Problem was created over time, by a series of idiosyncratic decisions and adjoining elements that continue to hold the Identified Problem in place. Invariably, there are a series of problems – long standing personnel issues, problematic initiatives or relationships, new rules being developed but not completed – that circle the Identified Problem like a vine; one piece cannot be resolved without consequences to the rest. Think Pick-up-Sticks. When you played that childhood game, remember how many sticks you had to pick up before you got to the primary one? And remember how difficult it was to avoid moving the sticks because they were all so intertwined? This is what a client’s environment looks like, and the problem you can resolve with your product is that primary stick hidden within the tangle of others that need to be disentangled before they can buy. Remember that, when you think you have THE obvious solution to a buyer’s Identified Problem. The solution you have will only manage one single aspect of a buyer’s Problem Space, and the elements that caused it are so far afield of your solution that even gathering data about the buyer’s ‘problem’ will not elicit the necessary data to help you sell. This fact alone is responsible for the unnecessary doubling of the length of the sales cycle.
3. the job of sales has focused on uncovering need, creating a trusting relationship, and presenting an appropriate solution. It’s ultimately about product placement and need. But imagine if your job included helping buyers manage all of the non-problem-related internal issues they must manage BEFORE they were able to make a decision on the solution. Imagine if the first stage of sales was to teach customers how to manage their internal people/policy/personnel/political decisions, much like figuring out how to safely uncover the lead pick-up stick. They have to do it anyway – with you or without you. They might as well do it with you.

The time it takes buyers to come up with their own answers is the length of the sales cycle.

SALES DOESN’T SUPPORT SYSTEMS MANAGEMENT

Instead of blaming customers for not knowing how to make a buying decision, maybe you can blame the sales profession for not giving you the skills to truly support and manage all of the decision criteria that buyers must address before they choose you.

No matter the industry or the size of the sale, whether it’s on the phone or in person, buyers have to somehow resolve a problem by not upsetting the rest of their status quo, and by managing the adjacent problems simultaneously. And your solution is merely one aspect of the types of decisions necessary.

Buyers must figure out how to solve their entire tangle of issues that have created their imperfect status quo. Your solution may be one of the elements that will address their resolution. But they also may discover that buying your product – or any product – may not be their best solution.

Your choice is to sit back and wait for them to buy – or not – or call and call and call, and lower your price, and make-nice, or add another set of skills to your sales skills. You can use Buying Facilitation to help buyers recognize and manage all of the internal, idiosyncratic, systemic issues they need to address as they resolve their Identified Problems. It’s not sales – it’s a precursor to sales, but a skill you might want to consider in this new economic environment. Again, buyers have to do this anyway. They might as well do it with you. What else do you have to do now anyway?Every sale is now a complex sale due to internal, endemic issues that we (as outsiders) can not understand. Enter the buy-seller relationship as a decision facilitator first. Then you can either accelerate the ultimate decision one way or another, or you can get on the decision team.

Customers know how to buy. They just aren’t making the decisions you want them to make in the way you want them to make them. And, by focusing on product sale and need, you’re not helping them.

Customers Don’t Know How To Buy – Or Do They? 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

Until now, our communication rules have assumed that when we kindly or persuasively offer others good information that could solve problems and achieve successful results, or coach them toward making a much-needed change, or even just pitch a product they sorely need, we can expect a positive reception. Obviously, if our communication partner (called Partner in this article) has a problem and we’ve got the true solution – and we do! We do! – they should take our advice. But they don’t.

We watch our Partners nod their heads in agreement with our clever suggestions, and promise to do something different, but then quickly return to their old less-successful behaviors.

DISCOVERING THE PROBLEM VS. SUPPLYING THE SOLUTION
When we offer our Partners seemingly obvious solutions and expect them to change, we are failing to take into account their need to make comprehensive systems decisions first. Indeed, our Partners need to recognize and manage all aspects of their presenting problem before they can make sense of our suggestions. But it’s not so easy as we think.

Let me make up a silly analogy using an iceberg: we all see the tip; but if an iceberg engineer (I’m obviously making this up) needs to move the iceberg, he can’t until/unless he understands its size, shape, weight, as well as weather conditions, sea conditions, and its course of travel. Until the whole iceberg is measured and a new location is found, the tip ain’t movin’.

There is so much more to influencing choices than we initially recognize.

Of course, our Partner’s presenting problem seems obvious to us, especially when we’ve been in business a while and have seen it all so often. But the full ramifications of the problem – all of the elements that it contains, all of the legs it has to-and-from the rest of the Partner’s environment, all of the beliefs and constructs that maintain the problem – are quite hidden.

And until or unless the client understands and resolves all of the elements that created and maintains the problem, she won’t know how to make a change. She might act differently for a bit when she intellectually understands the reasons to adopt new behaviors. But if the complete set of issues aren’t understood, managed, and accounted for, permanent change will not occur.

INFORMATION DOESN’T HELP PEOPLE CHANGE
Too often, sellers of change focus their drive toward change around rational, proven facts, generally accepted knowledge, or unique data – all of which I am labeling ‘information’. While information is necessary, and will be useful at some point later in the decision cycle, there is no way early on for people to know what to do with it. It’s akin to explaining to the iceberg engineer all of the dynamics of the moving crane before he’s sized up the components of the iceberg, the weather, or the sea.

It’s difficult to understand that accurate information is not enough to warrant change: people just end up resisting.

This problem shows up when buyers take too long to purchase. Or when people don’t heed our advice and continue on doing the same-old, same-old, complaining fervently of an unresolved problem. It seems curious for us to see their problem so clearly, and have a viable solution, and then be ignored, while the Partners continue to muddle along with the same problems.

But a note of caution: it’s not our job to understand or fix our Partner’s problems although we’d sure like to. It’s not our job to know what our Partner needs. The Partner must effectively manage all of the elements within their existent system before change can occur. Once they do this, as part of a facilitation process of painstaking discovery you can lead them through, they can develop all the necessary criteria for designing a unique solution; as support folk, we then just supply it. So much easier than us trying to create a solution based on a small segment of data.

I recently got a call from a young woman in a large recruitment company. She wanted to know how I would train 3000 people.
“What criteria are you using to know if they’ve been successfully trained?”
“We just want a training program. We’re talking with several different groups, and want to know what you can do for us.”
“But all programs don’t offer the same things, and your sales staff would learn different skills from each program.”
“Well, we want you to tell us what’s different about yours so we know and we can compare.”
“But what are you comparing if you don’t know your criteria?”

I then used Facilitative Questions to help her determine her success criteria. Here’s what she came up with:

1. differentiation from the competition;
2. loyalty and trust created from each interaction;
3. a ‘true’ consultative approach in which the seller helps the buyer understand and solve her own business problems;
4. consistent skills among all sales staff;
5. creation of value through each interaction.

Once we discovered the criteria, it became clear that Buying Facilitation would work for her. But until then, she wouldn’t have known how to discern one program from another since ‘sales training’ meant something unique to her that I had no of understanding without making guesses.

SYSTEMS
Let’s digress here to underscore the importance of ‘systems’, which are the elements of the Partner’s company that must be managed before change can take place.

People and groups of people possess unique, internal elements, or ‘systems’: they operate through certain beliefs; hold religious or personal or company values; collaborate with others (family, partners, vendors, colleagues) with whom they have another set of beliefs and values; work/live with rules, politics, and norms; have hopes and dreams, fears and regrets. In business there are often vendor or multinational relationships that alter the fact pattern. Indeed, all of us have very unique mind-sets, compounded when there are several people within the system, such as families or business colleagues. And these elements – which I’m labeling ‘systems’ – cause and create the Partner’s landscape.

People/teams are generally unaware that their problems are a direct result of the mix of these very idiosyncratic systems issues. It’s the system itself, in the precise way it exists, that has created the problem situation.  Indeed, whatever is going on actually looks and feels ‘normal’ cuz that’s the way it’s always been. It’s only when a significant problem crops up that people look beyond the conscious-comfortable status quo.

As outsiders, there is no way we can address, manage, or alter those unique internal issues. We just see the results of the decisions made: there is no appropriate training program in place; the person is overweight and facing serious illness; the employee comes in late every day; 20 people are working from a server that handles 5 people.

A solution looks obvious to us; even when a needs-analysis is done it often looks like our solution would solve the problem (see newsletter #51 – Needs Analysis: who is it for?). But no matter how smart we are as outsiders, no matter how much we can see, no matter how right we are, we are still only seeing the tip of the iceberg.

THE TWO STAGES OF DECISION MAKING
Let’s start with one of my basic premises:

Information does not teach people how to make a new decision.

Since most of us use information transfer as a way to instigate change, let me offer you my rationale for the above statement: unless our Partners address and manage their internal systems issues before seeking a solution, they face the prospect of upsetting any elements that hold the status quo together. In fact, there might be chaos if change is not managed appropriately.

In our iceberg analogy, that means until the engineer understands what he’s got to move where, understands the depth and mass of the ice, and understands the water factors, he faces possible destruction of the iceberg if he tries to move it with only knowledge of the tip.

So there is an up-front set of decisions that need to get made in order to consider doing something new, and a secondary set of decisions to determine an appropriate solution.

In the first stage of decisioning – the choice to make a new decision by managing all internal variables – there are three distinct, sequential phases that all people and teams go through and which must be resolved (consciously or unconsciously) before a final decision can be made. In fact, each of these phases are carried out (consciously or not) in every decision made, whether it’s a simple or a complex decision, or a decision made by an individual, a group, a family, or a company.

1. What’s missing and how did it get missing;
2. How can we fix that with familiar resources;
3. What are the full range of internal variables that need to be recognized and addressed before a new solution can actually be embraced.

1. Where are we? What’s missing? – Recognizing, understanding, and managing the complex issues.

Our Partners must be able to examine the full extent of the elements of the problem and acutely recognize (I mean deeply understand) what’s missing that is creating the problem at hand. Does this sound simple?

How many of us, given all the time in the world to sit down and think, can actually recognize all the elements in play that have gotten us where we are, not to mention what might be missing from our potentially comfortable status quo?

Think of something about yourself that you don’t particularly like: your penchant for procrastinating? Your push to work harder rather than take time with your family? The way you speak to people sometimes or your inability to really listen if you’re distracted? Your forgetfulness?

We all have annoying habits or behaviors that we either try to hide, or wish we could fix. And even when we’ve tried to fix them, they don’t stay fixed. Why? It’s actually difficult from an up-close-and-personal standpoint to fully recognize, understand, or pinpoint all of the elements that have generated and maintained this quirk. It all just ‘is’, and has grown into comfort.

If seeing ourselves clearly is that difficult for us, how can we expect others to have an easier time?

Following this thinking, the main idea here is that only your communication partner – your client, your prospect, your employee – can know the full range of elements she is willing to address, not you. It is faulty for us to think it’s our job to understand (so we can offer our solution?). Our jobs are to help our Partner understand by asking the facilitative questions that will direct them to their own solutions.

2. Fix problems with known resources – Seeking to fix what is already there, or find familiar vendors/sources of change management.

The next piece of the puzzle is that systems try to self-correct. Even when it’s painfully obvious that there is a problem that needs to be solved, the first place that people or teams go to fix it is internal: they end up going back to those same systems that created the problem, hoping for a different outcome.

Of course that’s insanity, but until they at least make the effort, they won’t consider a solution outside of their comfort zone. Our training doesn’t work? Let’s tweak it. I’m overweight? All I have to do is stop eating ice cream every day, and I’ll start today – uh, tomorrow.

One of the problems we have as change agents is that we actually believe people or clients want us to help them change at the moment they come to us to fix their problem. They are only attempting to get ideas to use so they can fix their own problem.

3. Manage all internal variables so no chaos will occur through change – pinpointing the actual ideas/people/initiatives/decisions that would need to buy-in to any changes.

It’s only when people truly understand that they’ll need a solution that’s unfamiliar – possibly uncomfortable, unfamiliar, uncontrollable – that they sit down to truly make sense of all of the issues they need to manage in order to make a change that won’t wreak havoc on their status quo.

Until or unless all of the internal criteria that created and maintain the problem are recognized, and a route is designed in which they can manage an efficient change progression throughout their system, people won’t change. That means having the prospect address relationship, financial, people, historic, branding, belief, and (especially) political issues – whatever they see as elements within the larger system that maintain the current fact pattern. Let me say again, that as an outsider you will never fully understand what is going on. Your job is to support your partners through their own discovery and solution creation.

NEW JOB
The jobs of sellers, coaches and supervisors must now shift to include a decision support model on the front end. The Buying/Decision Facilitation Method is a method that leads people through the components of their decisions so they can recognize the systems elements they need to address and resolve. Our roles are to be neutral navigators who chart the course of discovery.

This will bring the following results:

1. what needs to get changed will be recognized and acknowledged quickly.
2. decisions get made with all elements included and our Partner knows she has all answers for her solution;
3. all decision partners are brought into the problem/solution within a few hours/days of the initial phases of discovery. In that way they create their own solution and have no resistance;
4. the seller/coach/supervisor is seen as a true advisor, and any competition is dispensed with.
5. the relationship between Partner and change agent becomes loyal;
6. pitching and presenting is minimized, as the solution comes from the Partner and the seller/coach just supplies it.

We’ve been trained to have answers, to uncover ‘pain’. But we can share the job with our Partners: they have the detail; we have the overview. Between us, we’ve got the whole picture.

Help your Partner change and have a full set of resources. Be the navigator that supports them. Don’t have the answers, have the questions. Trust your partners to do their own changing. Your job is to serve, and supply the appropriate solution when they discover how to manage their own change.

Influencing Change – A Guide For Sellers, Coaches, And Supervisors is a post from: SharonDrewMorgen.com