To understand and influence the buyer’s buying decision process and all of the people, politics and relationships that buyers must manage internally to be ready to make a purchase, it’s necessary for sellers to learn a new language. Not the language of sales, but the language of decision making, the language of systems, and the language of change management.

The sales model disregards the complex issues – both human and corporate - that buyers must handle behind-the-scenes. It’s the tech guy not wanting to outsource, or the management team not wanting training, or the sales and marketing folks who can’t work together. Human issues regarding change, or ego, or relationships. And sales does not facilitate this.

WHAT IS A BUYING DECISION?

The majority of a buying decision takes place before the consideration of a solution or vendor and includes

• collecting an entire Buying Decision Team that includes all of the people and job functions that will touch the potential solution;
• figuring out how to incorporate all of the appropriate systems/people issues so that when bringing in something new, the status quo will be able to maintain itself;
• reviewing current work-arounds and current/favored vendors to ensure there is no possibility that familiar resources can resolve the problem;
• getting the appropriate buy-in from the appropriate people to ensure there is support for change, no sabotage, and internal creativity/leadership;
• the solution/vendor choice;
• agreements and implementation strategies to ensure success.

Until or unless these things happen, a buyer cannot buy. Regardless of their ‘need.’ This is where buyers go when they disappear. You can help them manage this – but  not with the sales model.

THE BOTTOM FUNNEL – DECISION MAKING and SOLUTION CHOICE

The problem, in terms of lost revenue, lost prospects, overlong sales cycles,  and leads that come in at the top funnel but do not ‘come out’ the bottom, is that sales doesn’t offer the capability to enter the complete decision journey: you don’t enter early enough in their buying process. Not to mention, people do not know what to do with solution  information if they haven’t already opened a place for change and you are wasting their time and yours by presenting solution data too early.

At the ‘top of the funnel‘ you’ve collected names. You don’t know if they are leads, or prospects, or buyers. In some instances, they don’t know either. But when you approach them, not only do you have no idea if your solution is really what they need (you are merely assuming and hoping) and will fit in with their status quo, but they most likely have no idea either.

Sometimes you get lucky and the prospect has done all of the work already. But this is merely 5% of the leads you have – the ones who are easy, who are ready to buy. So you are pushing for appointments, doing presentations and pitches, to 95% of the lead population who needs something more from us: help with the off-line end of the buying process.

There is a way to enter the buyer’s buying process earlier, and help them manage their behind-the-scenes issues. But it’s not called ‘sales’ and it’s not solution/need driven.

Buying Facilitation™ is a very different skill, with a different focus, than sales. It’s a decision facilitation model that works alongside of sales and actually helps buyers navigate through the early part of their internal decision journey, much like a GPS system helps drivers navigate their route.

Your choice is to sit and wait for them to accomplish this, or hope that your pushing, or presentation, or product pitch or price reduction will result in a sale. And entering the buying process on the very first call makes the entire process much quicker and far, far easier.

Only 1-6% of sales are now closing. Obviously something is going on that you are not handling or you’d be closing far more.

Learn a new skill set to add to the sales model, and first help buyers manage their buy-in, change management journey. Differentiate yourself. Enter the buying process at the beginning. Buyers have to do this anyway – with you or without you. Rather than sit and wait for them to do it, be the GPS system for the buying process, and help buyers buy.

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To learn more about the Buying Facilitation Method®, here are some learning tools:

• Learning Accelerators
• Guided Study program
• MP3s of Sharon Drew using Buying Facilitation™

The buyer’s buying process vs. the sales model: two divergent roads is a post from: SharonDrewMorgen.com

And you still expect different results?

Do you realize you’d rather suffer with the long sales cycle rather than actually enter the buyer’s journey much earlier and help them navigate through their decision issues and buy effortlessly? And when I suggest there is a way to do that, you don’t want to change?

Do you realize you’d rather think your customer is stupid than understand that their behind-the-scenes decision issues – their budget-sharing, their turf and ego issues, their vendor issues, or manager issues, or mergers, or or or – are keeping them from being able to buy? And that their buying decision and need is separate from your sales activities or outreach? Even separate from their need or your solution?

Do you realize that you spend time trying to ‘get to’ or ‘understand’ or ‘have a relationship with‘ the folks you consider to be ‘The Decision Makers’ rather than realize that the entire Buying Decision Team not only has to be on board (and you’ll never, ever, get to meet or influence the entire team) but whoever touches the solution must add their two cents to the solution choice — and you can never find them, know them, understand them all – before they can buy?

That it’s not about their pain, or need your solution your relationship/kindness/trustworthiness and it is about

• their change management issues
• the buy-in from those who touch the solution
• their need design a path to reduced disruption when adding a new solution
• their policies, politics, and people.

We are using a scissors to cut a lawn, and complaining that it’s not acting like a lawn mower. And complaining loudly. For a long time. And getting paid for the extra time/output for using the scissors.

WHY SHOULD WE CARE ABOUT THE BUYER’S JOURNEY?

My friend Andy Rudin once cheekily said to me something like, Why should I care about the buyer’s journey? And he’s right! Sellers are getting paid to use a scissors. But they’re complaining about their results, and still not willing to buy/use the lawn mower right in front of them. What would you need to believe differently to be willing to consider that seller/buyer problems are change-management problems, not solution choice issues? That the last thing the buyer needs is your solution? That until there is buy-in from all folks who touch the solution they cannot/will not buy? And the sales model merely manages needs assessment and solution placement – not the necessary change management/buy-in issues buyers must first contend with.

Go beyond what is expected of you.
Earn more money.
Close much, much sooner.
Help buyers manage change as part of your solution.
Influence the Buying Decision Team from the first call.

You cannot do this with sales. Are you ready to actually do something about the delays and lost customers? Why haven’t you done so before now? You read my posts, buy my books, and yet aren’t changing your sales model. What would need to happen for you to be willing to add a decision facilitation capability to the front end of your sales model?

If you are ready to learn,  let us help:

Read sample chapters of my two last books – Dirty Little Secrets and Buying Facilitation®: the new way to sell. Then buy them both
Listen to podcasts of a recent interview with Sharon Drew on how buyers buy.
Let our licensees run a Facilitating Buying Decisions workshop for you.
Let Sharon Drew train your company.

But stop complaining, and begin actually helping buyers buy.

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Come to my loft in Austin and learn Buying Facilitation® with me or send a trainer to learn to train your folks. Buying Facilitation® licensing program that includes Facilitating Buying Decisions: July 2-8, Austin TX.

Webinar with Method Frameworks June 15th:
Buy-in: A Radical Approach To Change Management

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. In addition, you will also receive a bonus illustrated booklet.

Buy the MP3′s of Sharon Drew making live phone prospecting and qualifying calls.

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

Selling doesn’t cause buying is a post from: SharonDrewMorgen.com

How many of you know the exact percentage of sales you close? Many companies labor under the misconception that they close 17 or 20% of their leads, but they are counting from those who agreed to an appointment.

But that’s not a real number – unless you believe that the leads who don’t want an appointment will never buy from you. If there are any real prospects in those who won’t take an appointment, then you must start counting from 1.

How many calls do you make to get that appointment? And how many good prospects do you lose because they may have a need but don’t want an appointment? or don’t know they need you and won’t speak?

Only 3% of your leads will make an appointment – usually those who are

• already considering adding your type of solution,
• already down the path of choosing a solution (or helping their own folks do a work-around so they can do their own fix),
• speaking with your competition and are doing comparison shopping.

Prospects won’t want to see you just because you have a great solution unless already seeking a vendor.

DO YOU WANT TO MAKE A SALE, OR AN APPOINTMENT?

Prospecting by attempting to get an appointment gives you a double sale: first you sell the appointment, then the solution. For the record, 3% of cold leads take an appointment, but 40% of all leads could potentially benefit from your solution – and you’re not getting past your request for an appointment. Let’s look at the numbers:

100 prospects - 3 will agree to an appointment. It takes approximately 2-10 calls and emails, and 2-3 months of calling and leaving messages, (not to mention the time lost) before these 3 will agree.

• Of the 3, one quarter will cancel prior to the meeting, leaving 2.75.
• 2.25 will meet with you anywhere from 2-7 times.
• 75% will express real interest and possibly get to pricing, leaving 1.68.
• Of the 1.68, 38% will close, or .64%.

.64% leads out of 100 close when you use our first contact to get an appointment.

How much are you spending to close one sale? And how many extra sales folks do you need to hire just to make up for the wastage?

By starting your relationship with a request to meet around your solution, you are ignoring what’s going on in the buyer system/environment, and what would need to happen for them to consider making a purchase. Buyers have to go through some sort of change management before they can bring in a new solution – they must do this with you or without you and the time it takes them is the length of the sales cycle. They don’t know all this when you call for an appointment.

Remember that buyers:

1. don’t know how to buy without creating major political/relational disruption, and the disruption might be bigger than the problem;
2. don’t know how to get the proper internal buy-in from all the folks who will touch the solution;
3. don’t know if they can fix the problem themselves with their internal folks;
4. are confused about options, choices, possibilities, outcomes, change;
5. seem to be ”good enough for now’ because they have some sort of work-around that manages the problem ‘well-enough’ to be functioning.

FACILITATE EXCELLENCE BEFORE FOCUSING ON SOLUTION PLACEMENT

When your first focus is to be a change agent to facilitate a prospect’s search for Excellence, you will not only be asked to come in for a visit, but they will have the entire Buying Decision Team there to meet with you.

By using Buying Facilitation®, you can begin the call by helping buyers begin to decide how or if a solution such as yours can offer them Excellence. Listen how we approached this with Wachovia small business bankers: Our opening question was:

How are you currently adding new financial resources for those times when your usual bank can’t give you what you need?

Using that question and additional Facilitative Questions, the ‘hit’ rate went from 10% agreement for an appointment (and eventually 2 closed sales after 11 months of follow up), to 37% request for an appointment and 1/2 of those closing within 2 months.

Instead of focusing on getting appointments, start with helping the person you’re speaking with – whomever it is, at whatever level of the company they are in (including gatekeepers) - discover how/if they are seeking Excellence in the area your solution supports. Remember they have other obligations, other training vendors, other training priorities; a whole string of people to buy-in, budget agreement, and a change management model.

Don’t use your body as a prospecitng tool. Start off by helping prospects  manage their change and buying decision issues so they can invite you in. Buying Facilitation® will teach you how to do that, and get the members on the Buying Decision Team together so when you do make your visit, they will all be there waiting for you.

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Learn how to make cold calls to begin the buying decision journey. Read an article on cold calling. Check out my Learning Accelerators.

Buy the MP3′s of Sharon Drew making live phone prospecting and qualifying calls.

Read: Buying Facilitaition®: the new way to sell that influences and expands decisions – read two sample chapters

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

Do you want to make a sale? or an appointment? is a post from: SharonDrewMorgen.com

Before a buyer buys, or a decision gets made, all of the elements that will be changed by the new solution must buy-in. This includes getting the right players on board, managing old vendors, insuring new solutions meld with current ones, managing internal politics, matching strategic needs with initiatives over time, etc. It’s very difficult for sales folks to understand that there is a gap between the need and solution, and the buying decision that must include all of the pieces that touch the solution and might experience change with a new solution.

The time it takes this buy-in to happen is the length of the sales cycle, regardless of the need or the efficacy of the solution. And when something new is forced into the system without systemic buy-in, as sellers do when attempting to place a solution before the buyer has gone down their full buying decision path, the system will resist. Hence, we get long delays and objections when it appears clear that the buyer has a need we can fulfill. And we think there is a buyer when there is none because they cannot get the necessary buy-in to purchase.

SELLING VS BUYING

The sales model is a solution-placement model that ignores the behind-the-scenes, non-need-related issues that must be managed internally before a purchase can occur. We end up sitting and waiting, and pushing, and waiting, and pushing, and hoping until all of these activities take place, and then close the low hanging fruit. And we have no idea where the other prospects go.

Buying Facilitation® has a different outcome and unique skill set: Its job is to lead buyers through their entire decision path to recognize and manage all of the elements that must be handled.  It’s a change management/buy-in model (that uses NO sales techniques or strategies) that actually teaches buyers how to be ready to buy, and folds in the purchase/solution as a part of the decision journey.

Used in front of sales it:

1. closes sales in 1/8 the time;
2. recognizes who is a buyer and who isn’t, on the first call;
3. helps buyers collect the appropriate Buying Decision Team on the first call and has them available for a meeting or conference call soon after the first call (even if it’s a cold call);
4. helps buyers recognize and influence all of the people, policy, vendor, budget, time, relationship, and political issues they must include in so that a purchase can enter the system without disrupting the status quo significantly;
5. gets everyone who will touch the solution on board within 2 calls, and work with their buy-in issues to move the sale forward, or end the sales relationship immediately.

In other words, by the time the ‘sales’ process begins, the full Buying Decision Team is in place, have offered their needs and concerns, know exactly their next steps (and yours), are eager to fit your solution into their status quo, have no objections (money or otherwise) and are ready and able to buy-in to a purchase. All in a collapsed schedule.

With a $50,000,000 solution, working with Buying Facilitation® KPMG turned a 3 year sales cycle into a 4 month sales cycle. IBM was selling a simple software solution: we turned a 6 month sales cycle into a 3 call close. Kaiser went from 110 visits and 18 closed sales to 27 visits and 25 closed sales. In each instance, we were able to not only collapse the sales cycle, but teach the buyer how to make the requisite changes congruently, in accordance with their internal rules. In other situations we got rid of inappropriate prospects on the first call, or enabled folks we didn’t think were prospects to recognize their need for a new solution.

HOW SALES DOESN’T WORK

Using sales or marketing automation, you are finding people with a possible need, but merely putting great data in their reach – and assuming that the data will  influence a buying decision. But:

1. your data doesn’t necessarily reach the right people;
2. your data might not address the full range of solution issues (and that you can not know about as an outsider);
3. your solution might run counter to how their current vendor is managing things;
4. your solution might not fit comfortably with their current solution and they haven’t yet decided to get rid of it;
5. the Buying Decision Team hasn’t been formed yet and until it is they can’t buy (Hint: buyers aren’t aware of who needs to be on this team until well into the purchasing discussion);
6. we are pushing our solution against a ‘system’ that has maintained homeostasis for some time and would be disrupted if something new entered (The system is sacrosanct: until buyers figure out how to make sure the system is not adversely affected if they were to buy something, they will take no action.);
7. the appropriate buyer but can’t get the requisite buy-in to make a purchase (hence the 80% of your prospects who will buy within 2 years, but not from you.).

Buying Facilitation® – which employs a very unique skill set – has been used to run meetings, help “C” level people set strategy, negotiate, manage, supervise, and coach. It can be used to design scripts for telemarketers, or upfront as part of a software tool for change management. It is a decision facilitation model based on systems thinking, servant leadership, change management, and the ability to serve others. I call it a GPS system to lead folks through their decision making criteria. I’ve also developed a new form of contact sheet for marketing automation, to truly follow the buying decision path and offer the right data at the right time.

Learn Buying Facilitation® through an in-house training or a self-guided study. You can start with my 2 latest books: Dirty Little Secrets: why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell and what you can do about it; and/or Buying Facilitation®: the new way to sell that influences and expands decisions. But stop selling. Add Buying Facilitation® to your great sales skills.

Would you rather sell? Or have someone buy?

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Webinar with Method Frameworks June 15th:
Buy-in: A Radical Approach To Change Management

3-Day Public Training in Austin  June 14-16 Syllabus | Registration

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

The results of using Buying Facilitation® is a post from: SharonDrewMorgen.com

I recently asked 15 colleagues to define what a good contact sheet should reveal. I got 15 different answers. So what’s correct? Here is my take away:

1. it’s obviously subjective. Different companies seek different data points. How do they choose? How do they know they aren’t annoying/rebuffing/ignoring good leads? Are they calibrating the data so they understand the type/amount of wastage?
2. the pulled data does not offer true buy-cycle data, merely good guesses.

When I trial a few contact sheets to test different types – and try to trick the questions to reveal nothing -  I realize that the sheets are asking for specious data. How does one company decide to ask for number of employees, and another ask for the company revenue? And since the close numbers are so low, what difference does it make?

I can easily fill out a form for a webinar from home, and not use my company data. I can easily use a different account – say, a gmail account – to sign up for anything I want and no one will know who I am or be able to reach me. I can sign up for my ‘boss,’ who, say, might use the conference room and my computer, to listen to the webinar with 10 others, and no one will know. I can sign up for myself, and just be comparing the new material with my vendor’s, so I can pass the data on to them and have no intention of buying anything (even though I look and act like a real prospect) and block all the rest of the incoming emails.

WHO IS FALLING OUT OF THE SYSTEM?

As a result of the debatable usefulness of the data collected, sellers have no idea who they are following, nurturing, or trying to make an appointment with. Or who/what they should be spending money on. They are ignoring great leads and nurturing some who will never close. And they don’t know the difference, so they call and nurture whoever comes up on their ‘lead scoring’ – another activity based on guesswork (or they’d be closing more sales, no?).

Here are the numbers that you may not be tracking: from first name, when attempting to get an appointment, you are closing .6758% of the collected names. From 100 names that you call approximately 15 times over 3 months (obviously there is nothing better to do), 97.5% don’t want an appointment. From the 2.5% who take an appointment, 17% will close at some point. That’s when I hear folks say, “I close 17%.’ Geesh. Anyone can close 17% from first appointment. Why aren’t you closing 17% from the total?

How many of the 97.5% that didn’t want an appointment were real prospects? You have no idea – and yet they fell out of the system.

It’s possible to determine if the Buying Decision Team is already on board, or not formed yet. It’s possible to determine if the visitor is seeking other solutions, or comparing price with your competition. I would deem this valuable data.

But current contact sheets are not set up for this sort of data collection, because they are attempting to place a solution to the ‘right’ sort of buyer and lowering the odds by placing leads in demographic categories and then guessing.

WHAT WOULD BE THE RIGHT DATA

What if the idea was to collect data on the behind-the-scenes activities that buyers were managing, and entering there? In other words, entering earlier in the buying path rather than at the tail end. If your realtor could help you from the moment you and your family started considering you might want to move, would you have more data, and a better relationship, than when they just come to you saying they want a 3 bedroom house?

Here is the killer question: how many good leads – real buyers –  are you losing because you aren’t capturing the right data? And what would the right data capture look like?

I’ve developed a new contact sheet that has a decision facilitation basis that really – really – leads buyers to the exact data they need at the exact right time (based on the decision path, not the type of buyer they might be) and simply helps buyers manage their entire decision path – offline as well as on line, change management as well as solution choice. It’s different from what you’re using now. But simple to use. And easy to replace your current contact sheet.

Yes, it’s different from what you’ve been using for the past 3 years. Ask yourself: Do you want to influence leads

• at the point where you can offer them your solution data, and hope they’ll use it
• or at the point where they are making decisions based on their human, political, and company criteria, and be there at the right time and place with the right data for each stage of the buying path?

Call me to discuss my newest solution. Unless you really like the results you’re getting and are convinced nothing is falling out of the bottom.

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To read more about the offline buying decision path, read The Buyer’s Decision Path: why it’s important to sellers;

Why aren’t our prospects buying: the problem sales can’t solve;

Helping buyers choose the right Buying Decision Team: a case study.

There are many ways to learn Buying Facilitation®:

• 3-Day Public Training in Austin  June 8-10 Syllabus | Registration
• Buying Facilitation® corporate training
• Guided Study program for individuals or teams
• Learning Accelerators

Contact sheets: are they gathering the right data? is a post from: SharonDrewMorgen.com

1.proposal managers are responding to literally hundreds of unqualified RFPs annually with no capability of determining what a qualified prospect would look like… and therefore spending a whole chunk of time unnecessarily;

2. they experience communication issues between the sales folks, knowledge management folks, and the proposal folks;

3. they have trouble being differentiated, as so many of the other proposals end up looking similar (ie. the solutions are similar);

4. RFP initiators don’t know what Change Management/implementation issues they will face once the solution is chosen and therefore usually do not add a Change Management request into the RFP;

5. sometimes there is an intermediary/consultant hired to manage the RFP process and this person doesn’t have the right answers – and isn’t asking good-enough questions to go back to their client to check.

So, net net, it ends up being a crap-shoot.

QUALIFY, CONTROL, IMPLEMENT

The major problems can be resolved if the entire proposal management process were managed differently.

1. it’s necessary to be willing to say ‘no’ to unqualified prospects and concentrate on the ones that have at least a 50% chance of closing. That means that the sales folks have to find a way to say ‘no’ without harming the existing or future relationship. Not to mention that it’s necessary to know how to qualify.

2. it’s vital that RFP initiators understand what the change management process will look like before, during and after an implementation, so they can prepare for it and choose a vendor/solution who will manage this aspect well. With a good solution and a poor change management process, the company loses.

Proposals should have a way to include up-front questions that will help the RFP initiators to determine how the new solution would cause potential change issues, and then have a section within the proposal that will help them manage these. This will also differentiate one proposal from another.

3. RFP initiators don’t always know how to choose one vendor over another as the solutions and proposals might look similar. If the proposal includes a change management appendix, plus a way to ensure the full Buying Decision Team is in agreement as to solution/change criteria, they will be instantly differentiated.

4. there must be clear communication and shared criteria between the sales folks, the proposal folks,and the knowledge management folks. In the proposal, it’s possible to add a questionnaire in the appendix to ensure everyone is on board.

Qvidian has a fantastic proposal management suite (Sant Suite – and I met the brilliant Tom Sant who developed this beloved material.). The best route forward, to organize and replicate shared knowledge throughout an organization, is to use the Suite.

I’m developing a package to add to the Suite that will manage the above issues. Ultimately, you want your proposals group:

1. to spend the most time on the qualified RFPs that have the best chance of closing;
2. how to determine if it’ s judicious to ignore, or send a ‘NO THANKS package [see below for contents*]‘ to those RFPs you’ve decided not to respond to (with a low chance of winning) but want to offer something to maintain/develop the relationship;
3. to help everyone in the process communicate to ensure that the knowledge, solution data, and placement are all in agreement with company standard, and that all are tracking wins and losses to determine how future proposals will be handled;
4. to communicate with the RFP initiator, and ensure that the change management piece is somehow managed – either within the proposal or as an appendix;
5. to help the RFP initiators know their selection criteria, and choose you;
6. to help build a culture change between the RFP group and the sales folks.

Not all of these capabilities are available with current proposal management software. But I’ve got some new questionnaires and appendix items.

I’ve developed a *NO THANKS package for those times that the RFP is not qualified and you want to keep them happy anyway, that includes:

1. change management guide for users, technology, managers, Buying Decision Team;
2. questionnaire to get everyone on board with same vendor-choice criteria.

Let’s chat, if you want to add some new capability to your Sant Suite, or for your proposal team. I can discuss the Sant Suite with you and show you why/how it’s so vital to be an important part of your proposal writing, and how to add a few front and back bits to qualify and differentiate.

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Hear Sharon Drew discuss Buying Facilitation® as interviewed by Qvidian.

See power points of  presentations at the Connect11 Conference.

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

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

Proposal Management: the missing qualification piece 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.

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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

At the moment, you’ve got a lot of names, leads, and prospects. But depending on your sales model – just sales folks, or using marketing automation, lead scoring, and telesales people to choose the best prospects to hand over to sales – you are closing between 1-7% of all names/leads.

For ’total sales performance‘, let’s add in a skill set to help buyers navigate through the back-end, behind-the-scenes decisions they must make before they can buy. Because with all of the technology in the world, with all of the prospects in the world, and with all of the Sales 1.0 and Sales 2.0 capability, we are still losing a large number of prospects. And neither sales nor marketing automation address the backend issues buyers must manage offline.

Someone recently said to me: “You’re still flogging that Buying Facilitation™ stuff?” My response: “Sure. You still flogging that sales stuff?”

SALES, ALONE, ONLY MANAGES 10% OF THE BUYING DECISION

I see Buying Facilitation™ as addressing the buyer’s private and internal journey, like a 1-2 punch. First, help the buyer manage the back-end of their buying decision – those people, relationship, political, strategic, and historic issues they must manage before they can buy - then, do the sales.

Just as you wouldn’t buy a house until your family got together to figure out their criteria for moving, for a new house, and until the bank said you could borrow money and the realtor told you your house would be relatively easy to sell, so a buyer absolutely cannot purchase anything until all of the Buying Decision Team agrees and adds their two cents.

Until or unless you address the front-end of the buyer’s decision criteria and internal change issues that have nothing to do with need or solution or vendor choice a prospect will not make a purchase. I often remind people of the magic 80% number: the number of prospects who will buy a solution like yours within 2 years (and leave behind a trail of dead sales people) but from a different vendor.

Why don’t they buy it from you? Why aren’t they buying sooner? Because they cannot. Because the sales model only manages the needs assessment and solution placement and does nothing to help them manage the mystery of the buying decision journey. Because there would be too much fallout. Because people would quit, or relationships severely compromised, or companies and strategic partnerships would be harmed.

Total sales performance is not just focused on the solution placement end of the buying decision. Add Buying Facilitation™ to the front end, and change your close rate to 40%.

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To learn more about Buying Facilitation™, read sample chapters from my two most recent books (Buying Facilitation™: the new way to sell that influences and expands decisions and Dirty Little Secrets: why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell and what you can do about it) on www.buyingfacilitation.com

To read about tactical things you can do to help buyers buy more, quicker, and without objections or time delays, read Buying Facilitation™: the new way to sell that expands and influences decisions.

Or listen to Sharon Drew make prospecting calls: MP3

Total Sales Performance: Buying Facilitation® plus Sales is a post from: SharonDrewMorgen.com

The glaring issue is the concentration on the top of the funnel vs. the bottom of the funnel. The sales industry has been running around screaming “But how do I close these leads?” And the marketing automation industry does not seem to be listening. They just keep giving us more and more technology to capture and push better and better data – and then we spend bazillions of dollars to implement the technology, go through internal turmoil as we re-organize teams to use the technology  and find ways to close sales, and then only close 1-6% of the names we elicit!

We are wasting over 90% of the leads we capture from technology!!

WHAT IS MARKETING AUTOMATION FOR

Don’t get me wrong. Marketing automation is great – fabulous, brilliant – at the top of the funnel. We get a bunch of email addresses and some names.

But these are Names. That’s it. Names. They may or may not be leads. They may or may not be prospects. Names.

In the old days, we used to buy lists, or make cold calls. And we closed 7% of our sales –  abysmal, but certainly more than we’re closing with marketing automation (companies claim to be closing 20%, but they track from an appointment or connect… which assumes the 90%+ folks who don’t respond never needed your solution).

Where is the technology to help us follow and influence the behind-the-scenes, private, idiosyncratic decisions and considerations buyers must address before they can buy?

I failed to find tech partners to add decision facilitation technology to marketing automation.  Every company I called –  Marketo, Eloqua, Manticore, Leadformix, Pardot - agree they have no way to manage the names they collect, other than do lead scoring, lead nurturing, or handing them over to a telemarketing group.

One industry leader - Carlos Hidalgo – won’t even entertain the notion that there is something trackable and supportable at the internal behind-the-scenes, pre-sale portion of the buying journey. In an email to me he wrote: ”I do not see buyer following an approach where they get all of the internal items checked-off before engaging a vendor or a sales process.” He knows neither the full set of systems issues prospects must address before considering a new solution (which are codifiable and can be influenced to bring in prospects who didn’t think they were ready), nor the full set of private internal issues they must manage after a potential vendor is engaged (where we lose our sales) and before they actually buy.

POSSIBILITIES NOT BEING OFFERED

It’s possible to actually support and influence every activity that buyers must go through off-line as they work through the necessary internal buy-in, relationships, and change management issues necessary for them to make a purchase.

In my latest book – Dirty Little Secrets: why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell and what you can do about it – I lay out a systems thinking list of non-need related  ’to-dos’ that buyers must address – like putting together a Buying Decision Team, or addressing potential change management issues, or getting agreement, needs, and ideas from everyone who will touch the solution.

• Imagine if your technology could enter the buying decision earlier.
• Imagine if while you were collecting names, you were turning them into leads.
• Imagine if you began offering your prospects service before you contacted them.
• Imagine if when you made contact, they already had their full Buying Decision Team on board and a whole team were ready to meet you.
• Imagine if you closed 30% of YOUR ENTIRE POPULATION OF LEADS rather than just the 1% that end up falling out the bottom.

Marketing automation is capable of far more. Its vision - mirroring the short-sighted, solution-focused sales model – is just too limited. And you and  your prospects are suffering the consequences.

By thinking beyond the sales model into the change management model that occurs prior to buyers being able to buy, your digital selling vendors can develop a way to enter and manage the behind-the-scenes buying journey earlier so the leads you get are already qualifed. Call them and yell. Or call me and we’ll discuss it.

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Read some of my articles in my ‘digital selling‘ group. See what’s possible. I bet between us we can enhance the industry to ensure that you close a lot more sales.

Great Leads, No Business: the problem with marketing automation is a post from: SharonDrewMorgen.com

But are they leads? Or are they just names?

How do you know the difference between what name is worth spending time one and one that’s not?

How much is it costing you to follow every lead in some way – either to qualify, score, or call for an appointment? What is it costing you for each sale?

What is your percentage that you’re closing – from the first moment the lead comes in until it is closed (and no fudging here – no counting from the appointment)?

What is the difference between your close rate using the leads you’re currently getting, and using the sales skills you’ve used until now?

Have I got your attention?

GOOGLE GROUP DISCUSSION ON NEW THINKING

Using a Google Group, I’m going to be offering a private Monday series to cover:

• what needs to happen to close more of the leads coming in through Marketing Automation ,
• how to close leads without appointments – or knowing when to make the appointment,
• knowing the difference between a good lead and a bad lead (on the first contact),
• redefining lead scoring,
• choosing the range of sales professionals you need.

The series is free, but you must sign up for it here. The good news is that this is going to be original thinking (mine and yours), and we’re going to figure it out together. Obviously, the Buying Facilitation Method® will be at the heart of my thinking: giving sales the tools to help buyers manage the private, internal, behind-the-scenes stuff they need to handle to get the buy-in to purchase a solution.

I’ll talk about how your buyers are going through their off-line thinking in relation to your marketing automation, what’s going on when they connect and when they make a buying decision, and where you go when you lose them. And you can chime in, ask questions of me and the group, and together we can come up with some new ideas to help close more of the names that are coming through the door.

But note: this will be for out-of-the-box thinking, not the sales and marketing stuff we know and use every day. We need some new answers – maybe even some new questions - because what we’re doing isn’t working well at the bottom of the funnel. We’re bringing in the names and not closing them.

Go to the Google group (see sign up link above)  then pose or answer a question, or make a comment, or offer some learning you might want to offer us all. I’ll take all of the ideas, questions, confusions, etc. that you are discussing together, and write an article/post for next Monday from them. And the following week, I’ll put it all up as a blog post on my www.sharondrewmorgen.com blog.

I’ll write weekly until I run out of steam. The more input from you, the longer we’ll go.

Let’s have some fun, and figure out a really important problem that’s costing us a lot. We should be closing a lot more sales than we are. Let’s do it.

sharon drew

Please join me from 12:00 to 1:00 EST at St. Meyer & Hubbard Webinar called Would you rather SELL or have someone BUY? No, really.

For those wishing to learn more about Buying Facilitation™, I recommend my latest book, to be found at www.dirtylittlesecretsbook.com where you can read 2 sample chapters.

Closing Leads: the challenge of marketing automation is a post from: SharonDrewMorgen.com

ON YOUR FIRST CONTACT, DO YOU KNOW WHO WILL CLOSE? WHY NOT?

It’s possible to know at least 50% of the time (90% by the second contact) if a buyer will close. Do you know why you don’t know this? I’m going to take a wild guess here: it’s because when you assume a need that your solution fits, and all of your communications are focused on placing your solution, you aren’t helping the buyer address the behind-the-scenes decision issue they must manage before they can buy. You are focusing on content, needs assessment, and info sharing/gathering, ignoring the non-needs-related buying decision issues that buyers must handle before they can buy.

How is that working for you? Is there really a direct parallel between what appears to be a need and a fit, and a sale? No? So why do you continue on that path?

And, while we’re on the topic of leads and closing, what’s the difference between leads that come in through marketing automation, and those that come in directly to sales folks? How does lead differ from the other? Are you providing different data – is your solution different? Is there a need different? Are their buying criteria different? Do you know the answers to these questions?

In each sales effort, you provide a different buying experience in the way content is driven. But net-net, until or unless buyers recognize and manage all of the internal decision elements they must address, and get the appropriate buy-in, it doesn’t matter how they come in or what sort of sales method you’re using. So long as you focus merely on providing content, or addressing ‘needs’, you will always, always have buyers ‘fall out the bottom’ because they are not going to buy according to your plan. Not to mention that you have no way of walking them through their own decision path.

BUYERS CAN’T BUY UNTIL THEY HAVE BUY-IN, REGARDLESS OF YOUR SOLUTION

Buyers buy using their own criteria. They buy when they get agreement from the right people. They buy when they cannot resolve their issue on their own. Buyers buy when they cannot get their old vendor to resolve their problem. They buy when their business partners are willing to share the cost. They buy when two teams finally speak, or when they agree to share budget.

Do they know any of this when they start looking at your site data, or talking to you directly? Probably not – otherwise they’d just call and give you an order. But they know some of it, and you can use Buying Facilitation™ to help them figure out the rest.

We lose prospects when we merely focus on providing a solution (oh, and the ‘understanding needs’ part that goes along with this). We lose prospects when we ignore their internal, unknowable stuff that has nothing to do with their need or our solution. We lose prospects coming through ‘the funnel’ when they are just seeking data for some unknown purpose and we have no way of helping them with their buying decision issues so they never meant to go further than a bit of data gathering (i.e. they haven’t fallen, they just got what they needed and left).

Of course, you need to sell, gather data about their needs, discuss your solution — but not, not, until the buyer manages the off-line stuff. And you enter with your content and assumptions far too early. And the marketing automation/sales enablement funnels do not handle what really needs to happen for a buyer to buy.

There is no way to know who will fall out the bottom, or why, so long as you focus on content and solution and ignore the capability/need of helping buyers when they are  making those behind-the-scenes decisions, or when there is a conversation with the old vendor. So long as you continue to base your sales activity on placing solution, you will have a very high percentage of your prospects fall out the bottom, whether they fall out of the marketing automation/sales enablement funnel, or the sales process you are engaged in.

Marketing automation/sales enablement has merely replicated the failed sales model. Why would you expect different results (Remember what Einstein said about this?)?

Change the top of the funnel. Begin your sales processes by enabling the change management issues before discussing need or solution. It would be adding a new focus to the current sales/content/solution model, but then you won’t have leads falling out the bottom.

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Learn more about this: Dirty Little Secrets: why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell and what you can do about it.

Learn how to formulate Facilitative Questions and help buyers make their decisions:

• Guided Study
• Learning Accelerators
• MP3

Are leads ‘falling out the bottom?’ is a post from: SharonDrewMorgen.com

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

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

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

REACHING FAULTY CONCLUSIONS

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thoughts?

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Find out more about Buying Facilitation™ digital selling.

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

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

Enter Brian Carroll. He’s InTouch – literally. That’s the name of his company.

Brian will help you get leads. He’ll either make appointments for you, qualify leads, nurture your prospects (hats off to Jim Cecil here, founder of Nurture Marketing and the Drip System), plan events to get you leads – you name it, Brian is InTouch with getting you leads in the B2B market.

Here’s what Brian’s site says:

How Do We Work With Your Leads?

• Get in – Identify the right people in the right companies
• Stay in – Establish a memorable dialog
• Qualify – Ask the right questions
• Nurture – Stay engaged with relevant content and timely conversations until they’re ready to convert
• Optimize – Leverage the value of your leads and inquiries to generate more revenue and ROI

and

What Kind Of Results Will Your Company See?

• A continuous pipeline of qualified sales opportunities.
• Increased knowledge of who the most viable prospects are in your market.
• Focus on the key decision makers in each of your target organizations.
• Improved sales team effectiveness (more targeted selling time).
• More predictable revenue growth.

Brian hasn’t learned Buying Facilitation™ yet – although he’s en route and reading two of my books –  believing that he can better serve his clients in the above ways once he adds the behind-the-scenes decision management into his skill set. But even using conventional sales, Brian is a winner.

Take a look at Brian’s book: Lead Generation for the Complex Sale.

Brian is a committed professional, who takes his job as being an industry leader quite seriously. If you are seeking someone to help you get the right leads in the B2B marketplace, Brian’s the person. He’s a very nice man also.

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Listen to Sharon Drew Morgen speak on MaestroConference on Oct. 14.

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.

Or have a look at my book Buying Facilitation: the new way to sell that influences 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.

Brian Carroll Starts With A Lead is a post from: SharonDrewMorgen.com