I wonder how true this is now. Or if these are the most appropriate benchmark needs of a seller. Let’s go through each of them:

1. When will a prospect buy?

People buy only when their entire decision team figures out how to bring in something new while ensuring that the status quo (the people, policies, initiatives, partners, rules, relationships, etc.) won’t be severely affected by the new solution coming in. It’s got absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with their need – they’ve done without trying to ‘fix’ the problem this long, why do they need to hurry up and potentially risk some sort of fallout? We are the ones who want them to hurry up. We notice a ‘problem’ and we have the perfect ‘solution’ of course, and think that there is obviously a need for an immediate resolution.

If you broke your leg, would you wait to get it fixed? I suspect not. You’d see the problem, feel the pain,and get it fixed immediately.

Rule: if your buyer had real ‘pain’ or a real ‘need’ they would have fixed their problem already. Finding the perfect solution is not their first concern: managing their environment in a way that will comfortably adopt to a more efficient business solution is.

I have one more comment about time. The time it takes for prospects to discover, and manage, all of their off-line decision criteria is the length of the buying cycle. When left of their own, they take quite a bit of time figuring this out, and they will never buy if they might irreparably harm something/someone. Using Buying Facilitation™ you can help them speed up their process by a factor of about 8. They will do this with you or without you. Your choice to wait, or be a neutral navigator.

2. Who are the decision makers?

Who cares? And what will you do with that data?

Let’s say that I know that in matters of money, you are ‘the decision maker’ in your family. First of all, that’s a specious phrase because everyone has a part in the decision, even if it’s not direct. Would you make a decision that harmed anyone in your family even it they don’t sign the check? If your daughter was allergic, would you bring home a cat? If your son was a year away from graduating, would you consider moving to the perfect house in a different state?

Next: even if you know EXACTLY who the decision makers are, what can you do about it? Call them – and go around your connection? Send them a gift? An email? And what if you can actually speak with them – what will you do? Try to convince them that your solution is the best? Get them to LIKE you so that they choose you over others? Discuss price?

First of all, no one on the Buying Decision Team can not know all of their decision criteria until they are just about at the point of choosing a solution, because the entire process is idiosyncratic and a mystery (to them certainly. For you – forget about it). When you were thinking of buying a house,was there any way you could have known all of the different types of decisions/choices you’d need to make along the path toward a solution? Of course not. So knowing who their decision makers are is pointless.

I once had a secretary who was very very protective of my time (that’s her job, after all). She was relentless: if she thought it was important for me to spend my time with someone, she’d stand there until I took the call or made sure I returned it in a short time span. If she thought the person would be a waste of my time, she’d hide the message slip. Sometimes I wouldn’t find it for weeks. Even though I yelled about it, she didn’t stop doing it. She used to cross her arms and glare at me: “I don’t care WHAT you are supposed to do with him. I don’t trust him. He’s rude, demanding, and disrespectful. You shouldn’t be in business with him.” So who, exactly, was the decision maker here? Not me, obviously.

3. How much money will I get?

If your buyers know exactly how to buy, and you help them manage their off-line process so they can meet and figure out their own buying criteria (that most likely has absolutely nothing to do with a need), they will have no issue with whatever you charge. I never, ever, get asked price. It’s only when buyers can’t tell the difference between two things and they both look equal that price becomes an issue.

All of your problems with buyers come from the sales cycle, which doesn’t give you the skills to do much more than discover needs/pain, and offer solutions. It’s time to facilitate a buyer’s criteria-based, off-line decision making. But the sales model won’t get you there.

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Who are the decision makers? is a post from: SharonDrewMorgen.com

But is it a certainty that the economy is turning around? What do I actually think about the next years? Frankly, I don’t think this country is out of the woods just yet. There are too many variables that haven’t turned around.

The whole world has been going through an economic downturn and I haven’t noticed any really positive changes. As Americans, how can we come out of an international downturn when we are all so interdependent in the world? We owe China gazillions of dollars, but with our new expenditures it doesn’t seem like we’re going to be paying them back any time soon. Many people are out of work; jobs are being reconfigured to be outsourced or mechanized. We aren’t exporting as much as we should be, or investing in our own people.

Yet…. yet. I can’t shake the belief in people. Let me begin by sharing my excitement that there are now more women in the workplace than men! I’ve heard several numbers, but it seems that about 53% of the workforce are women (men’s jobs being easier to mechanize or outsource and women’s jobs being people/service-based). So it seems that at least one person in a family may be employed. Speaking of women, I just read of a state in India that gave disaster survivors houses and put them in the name of the women (seems the women are more stable)! As a result the men are drinking less and doing more around the house because they are fearful that their wives will throw them out!

In America, we are a land of innovators. We know how to work hard, how to make an honest living. Sure, there will always be those few who make it harder on the rest of us. But there are more of the good guys than the bad. We care about each other and extend a hand to neighbors not doing so well. Indeed, we seem to be coming together – collaborating if you will – in new ways as each of us are in some ways touched by the problems we are all facing.

As business folks, I think we’ve got a few years of down, or stagnant, ROI. We’ve got decisions to make: do we use this time to re-invent ourselves, take new risks, write new books, find new partners? Do we hunker down and wait?

There are no easy answers. But I trust us. We are a country of Everyman/Everywoman. We are from all over the world, with every sort of opportunity – and we’re smart. I hope that we all will find our answers over the next year….answers for our families, our companies, ourselves. It’s time to change, to grow: the old isn’t working, and we have no idea yet what the new is, so we might as well create it. I trust us. I believe that the best of us will emerge once the skunky stuff is removed.

And I’m so proud to be an American, regardless of the success of my company. Happy New Year, everyone. Let’s all have a really New Year.

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Happy New Year: what’s in store this year? is a post from: SharonDrewMorgen.com

When I was young, I had to work myself through college. For two years I was a live in maid. One year I did dishes for my dorm (got up at 5:30 a.m…. impressed?) and was a secretary. One year I had a State car and did public opinion polls. I could really tell you some great stories about that!

I did whatever it took. And when I was a single mom with a small child,  I worked an extra job as a waitress the nights that my son was with his dad. When I became a social worker, I loved helping people. As an entrepreneur, I loved the stature, the people, and the creativity. As a writer and thinker and trainer, I love using my brain.

I certainly was not always in love with my jobs, and sometimes they broke my spirit and my back. I”ve been totally on my own since 17, so I’ve had to support myself – and luckily I was usually able to find employment, and didn’t spend too much time going hungry. Every job has given me what I”ve needed at the time. Sometimes enough money to feed my kid; sometimes ego fulfillment; sometimes creativity.

I’d like to think that at this point in history we are creating work environments for people so they can flower and be treated with respect, even in menial positions. I’m sad that their are still sweat shop jobs that destroy people’s spirits. I hope this changes.

I”ve appreciated every job I”ve ever had, and am now also very appreciative of the day off so I can free up my heart and brain for a day and get some juice… so I can pick up the gauntlet again on Tuesday morning.

Jobs are blessings. I sure look forward to a time when we have low unemployment again so everyone can be blessed.

Enjoy your day off.

sd

Labor Day: What Do We Work For? 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.

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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

“How can they start earning money if they won’t get their training for several months? And what skills will you offer them, given they will now be learning Buying Facilitation™ after they’ve already begun selling the conventional way?”

My prospect gave me very short, almost unintelligible responses. Finally, he admitted that the COO called him in as my contract come over his desk, saying that if they were going to spend ‘that kind of money’ on sales training, they had better have a team in place that was worth it and had earned it. Joe was both angry and embarrassed: he had thought he was the decision maker, given it was his own budget, etc. and “Frank” hadn’t exhibited any interest in sales training before this.

For me, what appeared to be a ‘closed’ sale, had just become a money objection from a “C” level executive who had no idea who I was, what I was offering, or how to put a value on it.

Joe and I put our heads together, and decided to have Frank call me to discuss it. We believed that if I could lead Frank through the Buying Facilitation™ Method system, he’d be able to decide for himself.

I knew I’d have to handle both the money objections and the phone objections, as Frank believed that no business could be handled on the phone. I also had to walk an interesting line in re Joe: indeed, Frank was stepping on Joe’s toes and superseding Joe’s authority as a seasoned VP of Sales.

Here is what happened. Here is the call, and I’m including commentary for those times during the call when I had decisions to make. To help you follow along the Buying Facilitation™ Method, the questions are, for the most part, Facilitative Questions, and the summaries are Presumptive Summaries.

THE CALL

As per arrangement, Frank called. His voice was tough, crisp, and in charge.

“I understand you’ve been speaking with Joe about doing some training. I’m OK with that [If he were “OK with that” we wouldn’t be having this conversation.]. He’s got his own budget, but with so many new folks, it’ll have to wait until they prove themselves. And if you want to have a discussion with me about it, you’ll have to come here to visit us (a three hour drive each way). It would probably be a good idea for us to meet anyway. I’m curious to meet someone who charges that much for a training program.”

“Gosh, I hate to drive. Hmmmm. How ‘bout if we meet halfway – we’ll each drive one and one half hours,” I said.

“You want ME to drive??”

“Oh. You hate to drive also. Hmm. I have an idea. Since neither of us want to drive, how ‘bout if we spend a few moments on the phone, and see where we stand. We might end up hating each other and there won’t be any need for either of us to drive.”

“Sounds reasonable,” said Frank.

SDM: I hear you are having thoughts about my prices.

F: Well, they are higher than I’ve ever heard of for sales training. But of course, if we end up getting fair value for it, it would have been worth it.

SDM: Given you don’t know who I am, what I’ve developed, what your folks would learn, what it is about the system that is worth more than conventional training, or how to know upfront if you’d get value from it, you must be uncomfortable.

F: Not uncomfortable, exactly, because I trust Joe’s decision making [He obviously didn’t trust Joe enough!]. But you’re correct. I’m not happy spending that kind of money for something I believe I can get cheaper. [Good for him. He’s put his cards on the table. Shows a certain level of trust.]

SDM: So how would you know that Buying Facilitation™ – the new paradigm selling model I’ve developed and will be teaching Joe’s folks – offers a new set of skills that would actually give you the type of ROI that you’re seeking?

F: I wouldn’t. I’d just have to take Joe’s word for it. [I recognized that he didn’t offer to read or learn anything. That gave me an interesting dilemma: he was leaving me no opening, wasn’t taking Joe’s word, and didn’t offer any opening to change his opinion.]

SDM: I wonder if there is a way that you could get to learn enough about Buying Facilitation™ to give you comfort, get you to recognize its value, and see if it’s the sort of model that would make it possible to get your numbers up to where you want them to be. What would need to happen for us to figure out a way for you to get comfortable here?

F: I suppose I should know something about the Model. Is there something you can send me so I can learn about it? [Ah. An opening.] Obviously if Joe is willing to use his entire training budget to bring this in, it must have value and it would probably be good for me to learn about it. What else would you suggest I do? [I must take care to continue helping his decision making process. If I pitch now, I’ve lost the beginnings of the trust he’s offering because he still doesn’t know how to choose me; giving him information here will be moot.]

SDM: I can send you some essays, and Joe has a copy of my ebook you can read. I hope you enjoy them. I understand that before we move forward, you’d have to figure out what my value is. [I’ve moved the conversation from ‘trusting Joe’ to the real issue: why would he be willing to pay a lot for something he perceived he could get cheaper?] How would you know that my program is worth what I’m charging?

F: I probably wouldn’t know until after the program.

SDM: And then it becomes like a Bungee jump – you won’t know if it’s going to work until after you’ve jumped. And then it’s too late.

We all laughed.

SDM: So, what would you need to understand about Buying Facilitation™ that would help you understand that it would give your people a new set of tools to double their numbers, as you’ve required?

F: You’re saying that it’s a different model from sales? That’s interesting. [I hadn’t told him that, but my Facilitative Question implied it.] I guess if we kept using the same selling model we’d keep getting the same results. Different from sales. Hm. And I’ll be able understand the Model from what I’m going to read? [Although I was absolutely dying to give a pitch somewhere in here, Frank never asked me to explain anything. All of his learning criteria were based on reading something, not hearing something.]

SDM: Correct. And it seems that prior to moving forward, you would like to understand the Model, who I am, and what the material will do for you. [I was pushing a bit here so I could name his apparent criteria for him, since he just gave me a bit of leverage.]

F: You’re right. But I bet Joe did his homework already, and has this under control?[His level of trust was now pretty high for both me and Joe. But he evaded my question again, so I had to let him off the hook to stay in rapport.]

SDM: I think we all hope you’re right.

We all laughed again.

SDM: What would need to happen for you to get comfortable enough for us to move forward in the time frame that best suits your company given the revenue increases you’re seeking for next year?

F: Tell you what. I’ll read whatever you send me. If it’s as good as I assume it must be for Joe to go out on a limb like this, given that he’s had to do some hard thinking to figure out how to meet the objectives I’ve given him, I’ll give Joe a tacit agreement to move forward when he thinks it would suit him best. [It seems I’ve proven myself, and the money objection is gone.] But I’d like to call you with questions if you don’t mind. And, when we’re ready to sign the contract, let’s do it over lunch – my treat – and we’ll drive up and meet you half way.

Joe and I burst out laughing. After a moment Frank starting laughing too.

F: I suppose you just used the model on me, right?? You haven’t sold me a thing – no pitch, no presentation. You just helped me decide how to choose you. And I’m hoping this is what you’re going to teach my folks. Not only did I not want to sign the contract when I began, but I didn’t believe it was possible to use the phone for anything more than getting an appointment. This conversation will also get me to reconsider my predisposition to using the phone only for making appointments. Thanks, Sharon Drew. I’m excited. And I’ll even pay for lunch when we meet.

MONEY OBJECTIONS

Objections happen only when someone’s criteria are being pushed; money objections occur when folks don’t understand value. And telling them what the value is by pitching, handling objections, or presenting, doesn’t help.

When two things appear equal, the only differential is money. When value is understood, money is not the criteria.

In this conversation, I had to deal with several things: 1. Frank’s fear of spending ‘that kind of money’ on something he understood to cost a lot less, over-rode his trust in a senior executive; 2. because Frank couldn’t say that he didn’t trust Joe, he used the excuse of working with a ‘proven’ team and moved the training forward several months – and we know what would happen then, given they’d be using the same sales skills they used when they weren’t getting the success he wanted; 3. he hated doing business on the phone; 4. he had no idea who I was, and was so confident in his understanding of the necessary criteria (i.e. ‘sales training’ cost X) that had no criteria around figuring out why I might be worth it.

If you go back to the conversation, you’ll note that I never made a pitch, that I kept going back into the issues and making Frank make his own decisions that would lead him to figuring out for himself how to choose me and my material. And although I never made a pitch, the way I worded my Presumptive Summaries and my Facilitative Questions led him to understand what I was selling, and my value as a Partner.

Also, it was a very ‘pushy’ dialogue. The conversation might appear at first glance to be soft, but indeed it was very controlled and relentless: I kept leading him into making the decisions he needed to make.

At no point did I defend my price or change it – we never had to get into that. Note that if I started pitching product, and defended price, the conversation wouldn’t have gotten very far. Price wasn’t the issue: it was his discomfort not knowing how to spend ‘that sort of money’ for something that was new to him.

I just lead Frank to all of the decisions he’d need to make to justify my price to himself. He had to recognize his own criteria – which he never really shared – and make a quick, internal, judgment call as to whether or not it was being met. I had no way of knowing if he successfully did this except by hearing how he eventually accepted my agreements with Joe. It was all hidden from me, and even if I understood what was going on for him, it wouldn’t have mattered. HE needed to understand, and make some sense of it all. And he did.

Once he found a route through, he could go back to trusting Joe’s decision. All I did was to facilitate his decision. I didn’t sell a thing.

BUYING FACILITATION®

In terms of the parts of Buying Facilitation™ that I used, I did a lot of Presumptive Summaries that showed Frank his unspoken beliefs, and then led him to the decisions he had to make to trust me and Joe. And most importantly, I taught him how to decide what ‘value’ he might get, even though he had no content to work from.

I operated out of the following assumptions:

• that any COO wants what’s best for his/her company;
• that Frank would have preferred to trust his VP, all else being equal;
• that money is an objection only when a product seems the same as other products in the same category and there is no means to differentiate;
• that if I could get Frank to figure out for himself how he needed to figure it out, he’d make the best decision (and telling him what I thought he needed to know to figure it out wouldn’t get either of us very far); that no matter where it went, I had to work with it: it wasn’t about my product, my price, or my delivery.
• Frank was smart. He figured it out. I didn’t pitch, present or propose. I didn’t have to handle objections or prove my value. I used the phone to help him make a six figure decision and didn’t have to meet him in person. All I did was lead him through his own decision criteria to his own best decision.

That is our new job as sellers: help our buyers make their own best decisions, using their own criteria, and use our Facilitative Questions to help them position our product as their own solution. It’s ethical, based on win-win, truly supportive of a collaborative Partnership, and uses no manipulation or influencing strategies. Ultimately, it trusts that the Buyer will come up with his/her own best answers, and if me and my product fit into the Buyer’s solution, I’ll be chosen.

Would you rather sell? Or have someone buy.

Money Objections: It Is Never About The Money is a post from: SharonDrewMorgen.com