An answers for those of you who have asked how this book differs from some of my other books, and then I’ll give you 3 more ’secrets.’

This book is very very different from Sales on the Line, Selling with Integrity and Buying Facilitation™. While those books talk about the buying decision process as being separate from the sales process and introduce some new skills, none of my previous books delve into exactly, EXACTLY what happens behind the scenes. I have thoroughly explained

• how systems maintain dysfunction and don’t want to change – and what they need to do to unlock possibilities (and how you can help);
• how the behind-the-scenes political and relationship issues are a far bigger indicator of purchasing p0ssibilities than need;
• the 10 steps to a buying decision (any kind of decision for that matter), and how to help influence them as an Outsider;
• the three phases that all decisions go through.. proving that buying is NOT an emotional decision but very very rational (even if we don’t agree with their decision);
• the problems closing sales using Sales 2.0 and how to mitigate them;
• the new Buying Facilitation™ model (you might want to get the bundle from my site and buy this book as the companion to the new one - www.buyingfacilitation.com), how it differs from sales, and the new skills and tools to tack on to sales to help influence the buying decision;
• very details Case Study that shows the behind-the-scenes details of a purchasing decision, and how to move a buying decision from a 36 week close to a 12 week close – and be part of the Buying Decision Team.

Now: here are 3 more ‘dirty little secrets’ from my new book. Enjoy. And BUY IT TOMORROW!

11. Information doesn’t teach people how to make a buying decision. Learning details of our solution is the last thing buyers need.

Sales has focused on having the solution to meet the need. As a result, sellers spend time and effort honing the appropriate messages for their pitches, presentations, and marketing. But buyers don’t know what to do with the data that early on in their decision process because they haven’t managed their buying criteria yet.

Now we can help buyers discern all of their decision criteria and buying criteria. When it’s time to pitch or present, we can massage our message to fit with the buying criteria and values.

1. Sales focuses on solution placement and has no skill set to help buyers maneuver through their off-line, internal, behind-the-scenes planning and decision making that must take place before they can buy.

It is impossible for any change to happen (including a purchasing decision) unless a system has identified the elements that need to buy in to the change. Our current sales model has ignored this invisible challenge since its inception. Rather than realize that a piece was missing, it instead builds in assumptions that maintain its status quo, provides work-arounds to manage the fall-out of the onedimensional approach, and accepts low close ratios.

Now we know all of the elements involved in how buyers buy, and can help them manage both ends of their decision making and change management. We can close sales in half the time since we will be severely shortening the buying decision cycle.

6. Until buyers have managed their internal systems, they have limited ability to use the solution information you would like to give them.

We’ve never been taught all of the issues that need to be managed before a buying decision can happen. Our buyers haven’t known that either. As a result we have unwittingly focused on solving their problem, giving them vast amounts of data about our solution, and have not realized that buyers haven’t known what to do with that data until later on in their buying decision process.

Now we can help buyers discover their systems and change management issues, and help them figure out their buying criteria that will match the values of their system.

8. Helping buyers maneuver through their buy-in and systems issues require a different focus and a different skill set from the one sales offers.

The typical sales scenario overlooks the systems issues that must seek homeostasis. Focusing on our solutions, we’ve created the rejections, the objections, the long delays, and the ‘dumb’ decisions. Not to mention the abysmal closing ratio of under 10% (from first prospecting call).

Now we have the skills to enter the buying decision end of the equation without bias and as a decision facilitator. We can help the buyer focus first on finding all of the right people, discovering the historic precedents, changing the rules, and getting buy-in so they can all figure out what needs to happen to achieve excellence.

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Did the book provoke you? Excite you? Anger you! Cool beans! Let the discussion begin!

sd

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

Check out my new book coming out October 15: Dirty Little Secrets: why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell and what to do about it. Read two free chapters. Pre-purchase the book or buy the bundle.

Or consider purchasing the bundle: Dirty Little Secrets plus my last book Buying Facilitation™: the new way to sell that influences and expands decisions. These books were written to be read together, as they offer the full complement of concepts to help you learn and understand Buying Facilitation™ - the new skill set that gives you the ability to lead buyers through their buying decisions.

“Dirty Little Secrets” launches tomorrow: 3 more secrets unveiled is a post from: SharonDrewMorgen.com

Imagine if sellers had the tools to be true spiritual guides and not only sell product, but sell more than ever and become part of the buyer’s team with all of the commensurate integrity and values.

What would be the difference – in skill sets? In outcomes? In beliefs?

To consider sales as a Spiritual Practice, let’s start with my definition of ‘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’, which sometimes believes that the parts might be greater than the whole, in which the seller serves the buyer, has the ‘right’ answer in their solution, and indeed might have the buyer’s ‘answer’, let’s change the equation from sales to facilitating the buying environment.

Let’s also define sellers as Guides (guides that lead buyers to their best decisions based on their own criteria) and discuss what our jobs would look like with this new set of beliefs.

ALWAYS HAVE A WIN-WIN

To have a win-win, both sides would have to get what they needed in equal measure. I realize that sellers tell themselves that by placing product, there is an automatic win-win.

But the dialogue must be much, much bigger than product placement. That’s just the tip of the iceberg. How did the Identified Problem show up that way? 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?

Until or unless all of the internal systems issues are addressed that not only created but maintain the status quo, the buyer can’t decide, and product/service- focused dialogues are misplaced, mistimed, and misguided.

Imagine having a product-needs discussion about moving an iceberg when the entire discussion revolved around just the iceberg’s tip. That’s what the conventional sales model does, and ignores the entire range of systems issues that created and maintain the IP.

Changing the model means the seller will have to take some responsibility to help the buyer manage their off-line, behind-the-scenes decisions.

Is it the current vendor relationship that must be shifted somehow? Does one department have to relinquish a job? 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?

Having a win-win means that all of these issues get resolved so the buyer is freed up to make a good policy decision. It’s not about your product or their problem.

When sellers see a PROBLEM it becomes the focus of all needs analysis, data gathering, data presenting. Sales is actually defined as a way to place a solution, and everything that supports the selling model is based on placing a solution in the right way to the right demographic. And yet sellers still close under 10% of their prospects (and waste 90% of their time).

Imagine if the sales job were to help the buyer make a buying decision based on the system issues that need to be resolved prior to making any changes. Imagine if buyers knew just what and when and how to buy once they achieved buy-in for change. Imagine not having to sell anymore, and closing twice as many sales. Imagine.

sd

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

A lot. But not what you think.

When I began talking about helping buyers buy in 1988, people thought I was a little nuts (and what does that have to do with anything?). I persisted, and finally, about 3 or4 years ago, people began using the phrase as if it had always been around.

But the term is not being defined as I’ve been using it: the definition I’ve been hearing is focused on getting buyers to make a purchase. My definition is a bit different. Well, OK. A lot different.

I’ve always believed that the time it takes buyers to come up with their own answers is the length of the buying decision. Their. Own. Answers.

What does that mean? Well, it doesn’t mean anything about their need – they can’t even fully articulate their need when we first meet them cuz it’s too early in their decision process. It means that buyers live in this tangle of people and policies and initiatives and vendors that actually create AND MAINTAIN their status quo. That’s right: the ‘problem’ that you think you can resolve is part of their system and is happy to be there, thank you very much. Or they would have resolved it already.

So we come in, waving our magic wands, telling them we can fix it. But they mostly don’t want us to. Or at least they don’t come back and buy, even though their need and our solution seem to be a fit. Why?

Because their tangle, their system, their stuff that maintains their need, is a complex system of craziness, and processes, and work-arounds that touch the need, and don’t want to be messed up.

BUYERS MUST MANAGE INTERNAL CHANGE BEFORE CHOOSING A SOLUTION

Before buyers can buy they have to help this tangle agree to change: that’s where they go when they say “I’ll call you back.” And we haven’t had the ability to go there with them. Because sales doesn’t do that: sales is a product/service placement model – not a decision facilitation model. All of the information gathering we do is in service to placing our product to manage their need. We don’t touch the lion’s share of what the buyer must do to be ready to buy.

In fact, the very last thing that a buyer does is make a product purchase. First they must make sure there is buy-in from all of the people and elements that touch the problem, and make sure that there is a behind-the-scenes approach to change. Buyers won’t resolve their problem with our solution until everything in their companies lines up and agrees.

It’s not a buying decision; it’s change management.

That brings me to Buying Facilitation™. Buying Facilitation™ is a decision facilitation model that sellers use to help buyers maneuver through the internal systems issues that they must address so they can get buy-in to change (and bringing in a solution is change) AND THAT OFTEN HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH NEED.

It helps with those meetings our prospects have with their other vendors. Or the new partners who want to resolve the problem in a different way.

Using sales, we cannot influence those off-line meetings. But Buying Facilitation™ helps buyers do that. But it’s NOT SALES.

You know how to sell. You just don’t know how to help buyers buy. Are you ready to do something different?

How would you know that adding a new skill set to what you’re currently doing would give you the results you deserve?

sd

What Is Buying Facilitation®? is a post from: SharonDrewMorgen.com