Where do they go?

Industry lore believes that 80% of your prospects will purchase a solution similar to yours within two years of your relationship with them – but not from you (and they leave behind a trail of dead sales people in the meantime). Why aren’t those 80% buying from you now?

WHEN DO BUYERS BUY – AND WHAT TAKES THEM SO LONG?

Buyers don’t buy because they can’t buy. The ramifications of a purchase

• made at the wrong time,
• involving an insufficient number of stakeholders,
• with only a fraction of the ultimate Buying Decision Team on board,
• with no clear idea of how the status quo will be effected,
• without all of those who touch the solution in agreement,

are too big to risk disruption if not managed prior to the purchase.

The status quo has worked well-enough until now, and your solution would be disruptive if the above issues weren’t in agreement with change.

• Buyers buy when their entire Buying Decision Team is on board and has offered their voice and buying criteria, and has bought-in to managing whatever change a new solution will demand.
• Buyers buy when the folks who touch the solution know how the changes will effect their people and policies, relationships and internal politics.
• Buyers buy when they know their current, beloved vendors cannot meet their needs and the new solution will fit somehow with the existing technology or systems.
• Buyers buy when everyone involved decides it’s time to resolve a business problem.

They don’t buy because they are in love with your solution.

Until or unless buyers are able to recognize and manage all of the change management issues they will face when bringing in a new solution, they will do nothing.

And the sales model – regardless of the way you sell – does nothing to help buyers navigate their internal, private, and very confusing journey towards buy-in.

The problem with sales is that it treats an Identified Problem (or need) as if it were an isolated event. It’s not. The ‘need’ sits within a system that has not only created it, but holds it in place daily. Attempting to resolve this ‘need’ without managing the change issues involved in a solution would cause disruption that the status quo will not tolerate. And here is where you lose your prospects.

A PURCHASE IS A CHANGE MANAGEMENT PROBLEM

We recognize needs, do needs assessment, and place solutions. But sales does not help buyers manage the non-solution, back-end issues they must address at the back-end.

It’s here we lose our sales. A purchase is a change management problem, after all. And until or unless buyers manage their change issues and ensure that the people and policies, relationships and internal politics, are ready, willing and able to change, they will do nothing. And that’s when they show up two years later as buyers – it has taken them that long to manage the internal buy-in.

The sales model only manages the last 10% that buyers do: choose a vendor and a solution. And the push back we get is because we are pushing a solution into a currently balanced system that will fight to maintain homeostasis.

Add Buying Facilitation® to the front end of your sales process, and you will start at the beginning of the buyer’s journey. It’s a different skill set – more like being a GPS system or navigation model that is systems based. But you’re either going to sit and wait for buyers to do this, or use new skills to enter the buying journey earlier.

Until now, you’ve been losing prospects to their buy-in issues. But you no longer need to. Avoid time delays in the buying decision. Help buyers choose you in 1/8 the time – really – and be automatically differentiated. Help your buyers understand how to manage their change – on the first call - and turn ‘names’ into real prospects, and avoid wasting time following folks who will never buy.

Would you rather sell? Or have someone buy.

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Learn more about Buying Facilitation® either via http://buyingfaciliation.com or by reading samples of my two latest books: Buying Facilitation®: the new way to sell that expands and influences thinking and Dirty Little Secrets: why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell and what you can do about it.

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

Why Aren’t Our Prospects Buying: the problem sales can’t solve is a post from: SharonDrewMorgen.com

I’m here to tell you that cold calling can be one of the most effective ways to meet new prospects and close sales. And it’s a whole lotta fun.

I know, I know. Most sellers eschew cold calling, preferring instead to network, get referrals, golf, meet face-to-face or make friends through facebook and twitter.

Did you ever ask yourself why you don’t like cold calling?

Think historically: Dale Carnegie, in How to win friends and influence people published in 1937, told us to meet prospects in person (and his choices then were….. were what?). You can think about trying to ‘get through’ the gatekeeper. You can think about trying to gather information or pitch product with no ability to understand or share personal expressions on a phone.

So let’s say you do your networking, getting referrals, golfing, face-to-face meets and tweeting. What does it give you? Well, it gives you a connection, but it doesn’t necessarily help you close more deals: buyers still need to do their part to manage their behind-the-scenes systems (change management) issues and get buy-in at all levels, or nothing will happen whether they need you or like you.

The bigger problem than meeting someone who might buy is how to help buyers manage those off-line issues, because until they do, your sterling personalities are immaterial: If you start your conversations by shifting from making a sale to helping manage the internal buy-in issues, you can use the phone effectively AND make a sale in at least half the time.

WHY ARE WE CONNECTING?

Let’s begin with the question: Why are we attempting to make contact?

If you begin by trying to understand need, push product, or influence with your personal charm, then I agree; cold calling sucks.

But when you begin as a true consultant to help buyers manage the change of a buying journey, cold calling is wonderful. Buying Facilitation® is a change management/decision facilitation model I”ve been teaching globally for decades that employs a totally different skill set than sales, and helps buyers understand and manage the off-line portion of the buying decision. And then your sales skills are necessary. First manage change, then place the solution. Different way to think, right?

Given the space we’ve got on a blog post, I’ll give you a simple example.

I read about California Closets in the late 1990s and wanted to have them deliver Buying Facilitation® throughout their franchises. I did some research, and found what I later discovered to be a ‘bad’ number – but at the moment I called, it turned out to be a lucky error. A man answered:

SDM: Hi. My name is Sharon Drew Morgen, and I’m an author and developer of a new selling model. This is a sales call. Is this a good time to speak?

EL: No. It’s terrible. But I’ll give you 5 minutes.

SDM: I can call back. It’s only a sales call and I don’t want to disturb you. We didn’t have an appointment.

EL: Let’s start now and we can finish later. I already like your style. How can I help you?

SDM: Thanks. And at any point you want to end, we can stop and pick it up at another time. I was wondering how you are currently adding new sales skills to the ones you’re currently training your sales people and designers.

EL: Are you using the model you’re teaching? Because if you are, I’m buying. I’ve been looking for a new model for 2 years, and from what I’m hearing, I’m happy. How ‘bout if I get the heads of Sales and Training on a call next week, and think about doing training, or training our trainers at the end of January. Call me in a week at this number: XXXXX. Nice job.

And he hung up. We’ve been working together since then. And this was a cold call. Of course, I did get a bit lucky. But if I had used conventional sales techniques, or twitter or facebook, these folks would not have been my clients – even if I had managed to get in front of them.

DON’T USE YOUR BODY AS A PROSPECTING TOOL

When I understand that my job is to be in a ‘We Space’ (the conversation was all about him) and truly serve by helping  prospects discover how to move toward excellence, it doesn’t matter if I’m in person or on the phone, because there is no manipulation or personal persuasion tactics. Also, the focus of the entire call at this early stage is about the internal issues they need to manage (that a seller can never be a part of) within their system. It’s not about their need, or our solution. Sales does that way too early.

In the Buying Facilitation® model, every interaction, every comment, is based on helping buyers traverse their off-line buy-in issues. I understand that my solution can only be purchased AFTER buyers have managed the needed buy-in. And the telephone is a very handy tool. Of course, once the buyer manages their off-line decision issues internally, and their decision team discovers it’s ready to change and add a new solution, it will need to know more about our solution. THEN we can go visit them, and the entire Buying Decision Team will be there, with us on it. Try it. You might like it :)

So focusing on each cold call as if it were a puzzle, and you are the puzzle master who is not in front of the puzzle, but whispering in the ear of the person doing the puzzle, you can have fun. You won’t have to try to get an appointment, you’ll save travel time and funds, you’ll find a whole lot more prospects, and when you do go to the client site, it will be to sign the contract.

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Learn Buying Facilitation® on your own with our Guided Study program, or with a training program from us.

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

Cold Calling Works – and it’s fun! is a post from: SharonDrewMorgen.com

These numbers are far lower than they need to be: so long as your primary focus is on making a sale and you focus on needs assessment and solution choice (factors which are the buyer’s final considerations), and ignore the change management issues buyers must handle before they choose a solution, you are delaying a close by a factor of 8.

By using a different focus and changing your ‘first contact’ criteria, you can enter your prospect’s world and get onto the Buying Decision Team much earlier. And close more/quicker. But it requires a new skill to add to your sales model.

WHAT ISN’T WORKING WITH CURRENT APPROACHES

Here are some numbers my clients have given me over 20+ years:

When using a non-marketing-automation selling model (any form of needs-based consultative selling), and your first contact is to make an appointment as your first outcome, you close 2% from first call (with no idea who might be a prospect, you must start counting your ‘close rates’  from this first call – not from your appointment). It might show up as 15% if you track from first appointment.

When you go through lead scoring and lead nurturing, and then attempt to make an appointment, you are closing much less than 1%. And when counting from first appointment, the close rate shows up as 17% — real, only if the names ignored by lead scoring had no probability.

As a rule of thumb, any time you begin your sale with an attempt to get an appointment, you are being rejected by approximately 90 – 97% of perfectly good prospects.   

At least 50% of the people you are calling are viable prospects. Easily half of  these can close. Are you closing at least 25% of all of your raw leads? These folks are going to buy something similar to your solution within 2 years – but not from you. If you employ a change management model from the first call rather than attempt to get an appointment, you will close more, help put together – and become part of - the Buying Decision Team on your first call,  and making you invaluable immediately.

Note: until or unless the entire Buying Decision Team is on board, buyers will not have the full fact pattern to understand what a solution must include, regardless of what their need or ‘pain’ looks like to us. And generally, buyers do not know all of the Team members until they are close to the end, thereby delaying a purchase.

If you first connect using a qualification process that includes change management criteria, you can turn around a lead from ‘potential interest’ to ‘qualified prospect’ within 10 minutes, and reduce the sales cycle by 50% regardless of the size of the solution.

HAVING A NEED DOES NOT MAKE SOMEONE A BUYER

When you attempt to Qualify using need, purchasing capability, or timing,  or use a Trusted Advisor approach, you are omitting all of those people who

1. don’t know know exactly what they need yet and are not quite ready for solution data,
2. have not managed the off-line change and are not ready to buy – but are indeed buyers and know they have a need,
3. are doing their due diligence, but have assigned others to do on-line research for them and don’t seem to be relevant leads,
4. have not the full solution criteria because they are still getting their Buying Decision Team members on board.

The last thing buyers need is solution information, and they need very little of this on the first contact. Until or unless they get feedback on all who touch the solution, and then know how to move forward with change and solution adoption in a way that will create few ripples in their system, prospects cannot buy – separate from their need.

Personally, you may not care about the private, back-end buying journey. But by collapsing the buyer’s journey between first thought and purchase, by helping them get ALL Buying Decision Team members on board early to define the solution and change processes, and get the right policies in place quickly, you can find more prospects, close a lot more sales (400-800% higher close rate over sales alone) and waste a lot less time – not to mention forecast more efficiently.

THE BUYING FACILITATION METHOD® CHANGES THE NUMBERS

With a cold call and a good list, using the Buying Facilitation Method®, my clients close 35% from first call – often without an appointment, and always at least 50% quicker.

Buying Facilitation® facilitates the behind-the-scenes change management issues necessary prior to a purchase, puts you onto the Buying Decision Team immediately (first call) , and teaches the buyer how to recognize and manage their internal systems  issues up front. The model works in any situation in which back-end decisions get made:

• Periodic upsell  for new solutions
• Client recovery to re-engage with lapsed customer relationships
• Prospecting, telepromoting/telemarketing, and follow up from marketing automation
• Managing negotiations
• Pipeline reviews/management
• Qualifying – for proposal management, sales, marketing, pre-lead scoring

How are you currently adding new capability to your X?

At what point would you and your decision team be seeking to add something new to what you’re already doing successfully?

Let’s add Buying Facilitation® to every sales process – as a front end to marketing automation, or a new skill for sales folks - and close in half the time, manage our pipeline in a timely way, find the right buyers immediately and get rid of the time wasters immediately. And start the process from the very first contact.

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Call me. I can discuss self-directed learning, or site sales training, or the development of custom playbooks and sales scripts. We can also design front-end technology to enter the buying decision journey earlier. To help you learn:

• Dirty Little Secrets: why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell and what you can do about it.
• Buying Facilitation®: the new way to sell that expands and influences decisions.
• MP3
• Learning accelerators

First Contact: What to Do, Why, and How to Get Better Results is a post from: SharonDrewMorgen.com

Until or unless the entire Buying Decision Team is in place, the buyer will not know how to hear you: until everyone who touches a solution has had their voice heard, and adds their choice criteria to possible solutions, a buyer doesn’t know what they need to buy.

Let’s say you and your Partner have a brief, rushed chat as you leave for work, about the possibility of moving. When you return for dinner, you tell your Partner you’ve got a surprise: You’ve bought a great house on the way home from work and you’re moving next week!

You would probably have a massive fight: there are too many private, behind-the-scenes decisions that must be made to manage each person’s criteria, feelings, future plans. Bigger house/smaller house. Leave the city/move to country. Move to a different state/different country. Near one kid’s school district/near someone’s work. Will your house sell easily? Do you need to call the bank and get a loan/financing if you don’t sell your house first? When to put your house on the market?

Let’s say instead of coming home with a new house, you called a friend and said you might move, and the friend called me since I’m a realtor. I call you up the next day to tell you about this fabulous house.

Do you want to hear about the house? Why not? You’re not ready: you won’t have made all of the decisions you’ll need to make to have the relevant choice criteria to even consider the house. It’s too early.

SELLING VS. BUYING

There is a difference between your solution and what a buyer needs/wants to buy/is able to buy; between your selling patterns and a buyer’s buying patterns. And buyers will only buy according to their buying patterns. If you use selling patterns, you are merely selling to those folks whose buying patterns are the same as your selling patterns.

Think of the telemarketing industry of a decade ago. Their solutions were fine. It was their selling patterns people objected to.

Until or unless buyers have all of their choice criteria ready, they won’t know how to hear you; won’t know the details to listen for; won’t know how your solution would fit. It’s like offering house details before they’ve decided to move. And they won’t use your criteria to make their choices.

When you contact a prospect, if you’re attempting to gather data about their ‘needs’ before the entire Buying Decision Team is on board, you are only hearing one set of possible buying criteria, from one person who may or may not be on the Buying Decision Team, and who probably doesn’t know the full set of criteria. It’s a waste of your time and theirs – hence, a tiny fraction will speak to you, and a smaller fraction of possible buyers will give you an appointment.

When you call just to make an appointment, you are getting rid of a minimum of 90% of your list because they don’t want, or aren’t ready for, or see no need for (whether they need your solution or not) a new solution. And those that will agree to see you are already in the market, so you enter in a competitive situation.

You are wasting over 50% of prospects by trying to get an appointment before they have determined their buying criteria. And at this point in their buying path, you can’t help them choose to see you, or decide to purchase, using the sales process.

YOU CAN HELP BUYERS BUY: BUY NOT WITH YOUR SOLUTION

The last thing buyers do is choose a solution. My latest book Dirty Little Secrets: why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell and what you can do about it explains all of the off-line decision issues buyers must address before they have the full set of criteria to know what solution to choose.

Instead of calling them to ‘understand need’, call them to help them navigate their buying decision journey. Instead of trying to get an appointment, use your connection to help them figure out what Excellence would look like for them. And once you’ve helped them put together the full Buying Decision Team, then the whole team will be eagerly waiting to meet you.

Buying Facilitation® will give you a skill set to start your conversations differently and facilitate the buying decision journey. Use Buying Facilitation® first, and then they will be happy to meet with you.

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Sharon Drew is a contributor to the new Entrepreneurial Selling program by RAIN Group. Check out the free video series leading up to the program.

To learn more about Buying Facilitation®, read Dirty Little Secrets: why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell and what you can do about it, or hear Sharon Drew use the model with prospects.

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

Wait until the Buying Decision Team is in place to visit or pitch is a post from: SharonDrewMorgen.com

But what, exactly, can you be in control of? You are in control of the details about your solution, and how it’s used in a particular setting, and the data you seek from prospects. You certainly have control over how you enter, and maintain, the relationship. But that is the sum total of what you’re in control of.

Obviously it’s easy to spot a need that matches your solution. But the number of buyers who buy is much, much lower than those you’re following, or those who really have a need that your solution will support.

In fact, most of your time is spent selling to folks who won’t buy. And then when the phone rings with a closed sale, it’s a surprise: you have no idea which of those to whom you are selling will be buyers. In fact, all your prospects seem like buyers. But they’re not. And you don’t know the difference until – well, until they don’t buy.

So it’s obviously not a direct match: need does not equal purchase; time selling doesn’t equal a closed sale. And therefore, ultimately, you are out of control of the actual buy.

SELLING DOESN’T CAUSE BUYING

Buyers don’t know what issues they must confront in order to get the appropriate buy-in to make a purchase. There is so much more going on behind the scenes than you can ever be aware of or have control over, and almost none of it is needs-related, thereby leaving you out of control when it comes to when, or how, or why, or if, a prospect will buy.

Until or unless the prospect (or lead) gets the appropriate buy-in to bring in a new solution, they will do nothing. And this buy-in is based on the change management issues the buyer must handle behind-the-scenes:

• if there is not buy-in from everyone who touches the solution, there will be no purchase;
• if there is not a way to meld the new solution with whatever is there now, there will be no purchase;
• if the regular vendor is not in some way ‘managed’, they will not buy;
• if there are turf battles, personality battles, or internal politics involved with trying to resolve a problem, no solution will be purchased.

Because the sales model is solution-placement focused, sellers mistakenly believe that with a need/solution match, there will be a sale. But that’s of course not true 90% of the time. In fact, that belief puts sellers out of control: a buying decision is not made via the sales process. And you should care because you are wasting so much time, and losing so much commission by focusing on the ‘pain’ and the ‘need’ and not focusing first on influencing the complete buying decision path from the beginning. Of course you must sell when it’s the right time; but by that time the buyer has already made the majority of the necessary decisions.

WE CLOSE THE LOW HANGING FRUIT

As long as sellers focus on placing a solution rather than facilitating the decision path that buyers go through as they attempt to bring all of the right people on board and manage change in a way that doesn’t leave behind chaos, you will merely close the low hanging fruit.

If you want real control, facilitate the buying decision path from the beginning: from where they are and an idea for something better, to figuring out what to do with the current situation and workarounds, to what needs to change; from how to use what they are using now to adding something new and fitting the old and new together; from needing a solution to getting the relevant buy-in.

Buying Facilitation® is the model I’ve created to accomplish this: it’s a change management/decision facilitation model (not a selling model) that leads buyers through their entire buying decision journey from the first idea, through to the inclusion of the full Buying Decision Team and getting their buy-in. In conjunction with sales, it truly facilitates the buyer’s decision journey.

If you want real control, lead buyers through their back-end change management issues before you start selling. They have to do this anyway – with you or without you. By helping them navigate, and using the very proscribed model I’ve developed specifically for this purpose, you are fully in control.  I’m not suggesting you stop selling; I’m suggesting you help buyers manage their decision path first.

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Buying Facilitation® licensing program: July 1-7, Austin TX.

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

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

Sellers can’t control the buyer’s decision journey 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

• to get rid of unworkable leads before handing them over to the sales team;
• to help leads bring together the entire BDT even from a one-way communication;
• to know exactly where prospects are on their buying path. But not using the current thinking.

CURRENT LEAD SCORING IS INSUFFICIENT

Here are a few questions for those of you using marketing automation and lead scoring:

• Do you know how viewed data is being used by your site visitors?
• Do you know which stage of the buying decision path they are on?
• Do you know which member of the Buying Decision Team has viewed/signed up on your site – and what percentage of the solution-choice vote they represent?
• Do you know who else will learn about your data – from a 3rd or 4th source – and what exactly is being transferred? Is it the right message?
• Do you know if all of the folks who will touch the solution are on board to purchase your solution?
• Do you know if the person you’re scoring, or nurturing, or calling for an appointment is the right person, or has the capability to buy or transfer your data to the right people?

And, drum roll, here is the big one: How much money/time/resource are you wasting by focusing on inappropriate leads – and potentially missing the right ones?

You don’t know?? How many of these questions do you not have answers to? Why not?

I’m here to tell that it’s possible. But not using the current marketing automation -> data collection -> lead scoring -> nurturing -> selling model as it is currently being used.

THE WRONG POINT IN THE BUY CYCLE

We use marketing automation, and collect/score data at the wrong point (the last, solution choice, segment) on the buying decision path. As a result, we are collecting insufficient data to sell and qualify with, not scoring leads properly, have too many inappropriate leads in our pipeline, and are not differentiating ourselves from our buyers.

The sales and marketing models merely focus on the last 10% of the buying decision – and by that point, most of the internal decisions that actually bias the solution choice have already been made.

ENTER EARLIER

Think about this differently by considering the questions buyers must have answers to before they can choose a solution:

• Are all of the Buying Decision Team members on board?
• Is everyone who touches the solution in agreement?
• What criteria will be used to choose one solution over another?
• How will you choose a new solution/provider over a familiar resources?

Until or unless all of the above questions are managed, no buying decision will be made.

As you think about adding some new capability to your current processes (and, btw, I’ve developed a very simple  process to add to your current marketing automation processes to manage, follow, and influence, the back-end), here are some questions to ask yourselves:

What do you need to be doing differently to enter the buyer’s path in their private decision-making places? How can you help buyers manage their internal change issues to free them up for purchasing your solution? What can you do to help buyers get their full Buying Decision Team on board and ready to buy?  How can you qualify appropriately and only spend time on those who are going to close?

Until you manage all of the above, you will be wasting a lot of time and resource, and losing prospects who would buy if they knew how.

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Let’s talk about my simple marketing automation solution that tells you where the buyer is on their buy cycle, and offers and collects the right data so they can be both served and sold to. sharondrew@newsalesparadigm.com

Read more about how buyers buy. Here are two sample chapters from Dirty Little Secrets: why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell and what you can do about it. Or just buy the book on amazon. com

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

Deliver the Right Content at the Right Stage of the Buy-Path 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.

sd

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

As we continue to seek better ways to do the same things that failed before ( look at the numbers below, all industry numbers or from averages of my global clients) I think our industry might be facing extinction.

We continue to ‘understand’ more and ‘push’ harder, follow footprints and nuture. But our close rates remain well below 10% because we are focusing on the wrong end of the buying decision journey.  Can you imagine any other industry where a lower-than-10% success rate is deemed ‘success’? Would you go on a plane with that success rate? Or visit a doc?

THE HARD REALITY

• We close .6758% of our leads if we begin the dialogue by seeking an appointment.
• We close 17% of the prospects we get appointments with – but we lose over 90% of the full spectrum of prospects by seeking appointments as our first outcome.
• When using conventional (i.e. non marketing automation) sales, we close 7% and have closed this number consistently for decades, regardless of the sales model.
• We spend 90% of our time scoring/nurturing leads/names – 93% of whom won’t buy using conventional sales approaches; 25% of  the total would buy if they were facilitated earlier in their buying journey.
• We close 10% of our proposals, wasting 90% of our time.
• We waste 85% of our time attempting to present to prospects who have claimed ‘interest’ but are nowhere near ready to buy.
• 80% of our prospects will buy a solution similar to ours within 2 years of speaking with us – but not from us because they haven’t figured out how to buy/change and get the appropriate buy-in.

The problems causing all of the above statistics are all based on where, how, and why, we enter the buyer’s world. We are

1. entering at the back end of the buying journey,
2. treating ’needs’ as if they were isolated events rather than part of a functioning system,
3. ignoring the behind-the-scenes, political and relationship issues buyers must address before they can buy,
4. acting as if they have already completed their change management piece and are merely choosing the best solution,
5. entering too early with a solution when it takes time for the entire Buying Decision Team to form is the length of the sales cycle; no purchase will happen until all of their input is included in a solution choice.

With a focus on needs assessment and solution placement, we sit helplessly while our buyers are facing confusion along the route of their ever-more-complex buying journeys. With marketing automation keeping us out of the loop until late in the buy cycle, we don’t have the personal ability to influence buying behavior as we once did.

And we have little capability to qualify – regardless of the selling model used. We’re kinda assuming that because it LOOKS like it might be a lead, that it IS a lead. But it’s merely a name. In fact, sales is becoming transactional.

FOCUS ON INFLUENCING THE BUYING JOURNEY, NOT MAKING THE SALE

Buying Facilitation™ can dramatically shift these numbers because we enter differently and at a far earlier place, use different skills, have different goals and outcomes, and get very very different responses and results.

Someone recently asked me why the sales community fights with me, when all that’s necessary is adding a front end to what is already being done. My answer: I have no idea.

Stop fighting me. Unless you love the results your getting and aren’t wasting more than, oh, 15% of your time on deals that won’t close, or don’t mind losing prospects that could become buyers if you managed the entire buying decision journey from the start.

If you were 100 pounds overweight, would you fight a doc that tells you you need to lose weight? You can see that problem and at least believe that losing weight would be a great idea. But when I give you the numbers in the selling industry, you fight and tell me that you want to continue failing. You tell me that those numbers don’t apply to you. Or YOU do it so much better, but your teammates don’t. Or you start counting from your presentation.

WHY CARE ABOUT THE BUYING DECISION JOURNEY?

Why does helping the buying decision journey give you different numbers?

• Because the time it takes the buyer to recognize and manage all of the internal people/policy issues that will shift as a result of a purchase is the length of the buy cycle.
• Because until all of the Buying Decision Team members are on board they don’t even know the full fact pattern of their need.
• Because they will say ‘no’ to an appointment until they have a handle on the internal change management issues and the folks who need to be involved.
• Because unless you are able to use your first call to help prospects set up their Buying Decision Team, you will continue to have 3 or 4 meetings over 6 months rather than get an appointment with the full Buying Decision Team on the first – and possibly only – meeting.
• Because you are pitching, presenting, and proposing the wrong information – or information they do not know they need yet, or information that has not-enough people to understand at an early place in the decision cycle.

So you’ll close much, much quicker if you enter as a decision facilitator. You will find buyers who didn’t think they were ready and help them get ready quickly (and no, it’s not solution-focused). You will find prospects who didn’t know they were prospects, and get rid of those who really aren’t ever going to be buyers… on the first call. You will make the right appointment with the right people and the right folks will show up.

No more time wasting. No more sequenced appointments as the whole team gets on board. No more following bad leads. No more waiting for sales to close, with an inability to forecast.

That’s why you should care about the buying decision journey. That’s why you should add Buying Facilitation™ to the front end of what you are doing now. Otherwise, marketing automation is going to take over your job. And maybe then you’ll end up on the buy side with  your new job, and understand what I’ve been talking about all these years.

Just saying.

sd

Want to learn Buying Facilitation™? check out these learning products.

• MP3 – audios in which I prospect, cold call, etc.
• Learning Accelerators – learn specific bits of Buying Facilitation™
• Guided Study – learn the entire Buying Facilitation Method®

Learn Buying Facilitation™ | Implement Buying Facilitation™ | License Buying Facilitation™

Fighting for Failure: why modern sales practices are illogical 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%.

sd

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

During the course of your considerations, you find an interesting webinar about the subject. You attend, and find the material somewhat relevant. You copy the PowerPoint presentations in case you decide to bring some parts to the current Buying Decision Team members at your next meeting.

And then the deluge begins. You begin to get emails, calls, invitations, testimonials, about the potential vendor. Sales folks are calling you to ‘make an appointment’ which you are absolutely not ready for.

A lot of attention. Annoying – their ’push’ doesn’t stop. You’re almost sorry you went on that webinar.

WHERE ARE YOU ON THE BUYING DECISION TEAM?

You take a few of the powerpoints -you’ve begun deleting the emails from the company - and bring them to the 2 other folks you’re discussing the widget purchase with. They also have had the same experience: they went on line, attended different webinars, and they, too, are getting deluged with information and calls and requests for appointments.

But it’s not yet been determined who needs to be on the Buying Decision Team, what the internal change process will look like if they buy the widget and have to replace the one they have now, or how to manage the fight that the head of training is having with the head of HR. Not to mention you really like your current vendor.

So you put the vendors on ‘hold’ for a few months while you figure out the folks who need to be included, how to manage the relationship issues, and figure out the change issues involved. And what to do with the existing widget and the staff that maintains it.

You finally have a meeting that includes the heads of training and HR. You spend a couple of weeks figuring out how to work together, as you each have very very divergent views as to how to move forward. Once you have a quasi plan, then you must figure out who else needs to be on the Buying Decision Team, as per who will be touching the solution and be affected by it. You all agree on another 4 people – the heads of technology, internal consulting, and the 2 other department heads.

You all sit down for a meeting (months after you attended the webinar) and discover that everyone has a different set of criteria around what a solution should include, making the widget choices quite different from the initial guesses. And you end up actually being able to use part of the widget you have, with just some added capability.

You contact your current vendor to see if they can upgrade the widget. They think they can as they are working on an upgrade. Can you wait? You go back to the team and they agree to wait a few months. Eventually, maybe 7 months after the first webinar, they purchase the new solution from their current vendor.

DOES LEAD SCORING HIGHLIGHT REAL PROSPECTS?

As the seller of widgets, what does lead scoring give you? And how many real prospects are you ignoring because they don’t fit in to your ‘made up’ criteria for your ‘sweet spot.’ And, how could you have trained your telemarketing/telesales folks to help leads recognize all of the steps s/he’ll need to take in order to go through the back-end decisions – few of which have anything to do with your solution.

From first call (or email), you are closing around 1% of the leads you have – and many of the other 99% are real prospects. Just because you choose criteria for who a potential prospect might be does not make that criteria the right criteria for buyers. And sending them constant data – before they even have their full criteria for their solution (and of course, lead scoring does not tell you this) – will turn off more prospects than it encourages.

Given the lead scoring process you’re currently using, you’re operating in the dark here. You could add some direction to your current technology: current technology doesn’t help the buyer manage their buying decision journey.

Adding Buying Facilitation™ to the front end of your marketing automation process, or to your telemarketing and telesales efforts, and adding some decision criteria to your lead scoring, will help you get rid of those names that will not become leads, and help those potential leads quickly walk through their buying decision journey with you by their side.

Would you rather sell? or have someone buy. They are two different activities. And you are managing only one of them.

sd

For a tactical understanding of Buying Facilitation™, read two sample chapters of Buying Facilitation™: the new way to sell that influences and expands decisions.

For a strategic understanding of Buying Facilitation™, read two sample chapters of Dirty Little Secrets: why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell and what you can do about it.

Get your questions answered: go to  ’What is Buying Facilitation™‘ and contact Sharon Drew Morgen with questions.

Lead Scoring Misses the Point is a post from: SharonDrewMorgen.com

PROBLEMS SELLING A BANKING SOLUTION

Bankers therefore encounter a few problems when selling: if solutions seem the same, how does a prospect choose one over the other? or why should a person change banks?

Then there is the matter of the sales process bankers use: the focus is on getting an appointment – not on getting a sale. The overriding industry belief is that it is only with an appointment that a sale can be made, forgetting that a focus on getting an appointment is making a double sale, the first sale being the appointment, which is declined by over 90% of good leads before you even get to discuss needs or solutions.

The problem is that because the lead believes they are already taken care of, they don’t need to see you (whether they might need you or not).  Not only do you leave behind a huge majority of people who might buy from you, but you are wasting humongous amounts of time. You end up meeting only a fraction of the people on the Buying Decision Team, and may need further meetings (wasting a whole lotta time) IF the original group you met with are able to convince others to meet with you again.

Read some of my earlier posts on the problems involved with seeking appointments first.

Your next major hurdle is your focus on getting strangers to change bankers and banks. Given they can’t differentiate you, and don’t want an appointment, you only have a fraction of your available prospect universe to work with. When you finally get interest, you’re attempting to get someone to get rid of the person they’ve been using for X amount of time. What you are saying, effectively, is:

Hi Mr. Jones. So nice to meet you. Say, I’d love to find out what your needs are, and what your current banking relationship is like, so I can figure out where the holes in the service are so I can get you to leave them and choose me instead. Now. That’s right. I’d like you to do it now – or once I get you to like me better than the person you’ve been banking with for the past 5 years even though you think our solutions are similar and you’re happy with them.

Really?

WHAT NEEDS TO CHANGE

Using Buying Facilitation™, it’s possible to start the conversations by entering as a decision facilitator rather than a Trusted Advisor or Relationship Manager or whatever nicey nicey term you’re using so a stranger will think you care and aren’t just trying to sell something.

Your conversation would begin by you helping the prospect ‘look around’ their environment and see what the difference is between where they are at, and where they need to be,  and see if they can figure out how to get to Excellence with their current resources (Yes, including their current banker. They will go to him/her first anyway.)

And, btw, give up the need to ‘understand’ your prospect at the beginning of your relationship: you will never, ever, understand what is ‘going on’ for them, in re the internal politics of changing bankers, as an outsider! Of course, when it’s time to place the proper solution you will need to understand everything. That comes later. Your first job is to lead them much like a GPS system knows how to get you to your destination without understanding the nature of your journey.

A couple of Facilitative Questions to use midway down the Buying Facilitation™ funnel might be:

• What is stopping you from achieving the full range of banking support you might need over time?
• How would you and your Buying Decision Team know when/if it were time to add new banking services to the ones you are currently using?

It is only when, or if, their current banking relationship has something missing – something they hadn’t noticed until you taught them how to look around (by facilitating a journey of discovery – read Dirty Little Secrets: why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell and what you can do about it to understand this discovery) – and gotten buy-in from all of the people – ALL of the people – that will touch a solution, that they can consider changing providers.

Stop attempting to sell. Stop pushing solution. Your solution is viable. You first need to help buyers recognize and manage all of the back-end decisions they must address on their way to Excellence. Then you’ll be a true Trusted Advisor and Relationship Manager. It’s  not about your solution: it’s about when or how or if they buy.

sd

For those wishing to design a Buying Facilitation™ training for your team, please contact Sharon Drew at: sharondrew@newsalesparadigm.com

Selling for the banking industry 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.

SD

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

You hate to cold call, right?  Dale Carnegie taught us (in 1937) that we have to get in front of people to make a sale. In those days, there was no other way.

Yet we’re still listening to him, believing that getting in front of prospects will give us an edge – forgetting, of course, that everyone else is just as smart and friendly and oh-so-charming.

We put huge budgets aside for travel; the telephone is looked at disdainfully, as merely an appointment getting vehicle, not as the rapport builder and communication tool that it can be.

And even with the massive failure rate we have, we still focus every interaction on The Sale. We forget that if buyers can’t figure out how to manage those off-line decisions that take place in their workplaces, it doesn’t matter what we’ve got or what they need.

Enter the telephone. Yes, even cold calling.

We can get massive amounts of business done on the phone. IMHO the phone is a greatly underutilized business tool. We’re so busy using it to make appointments that we forget that it’s actually a vehicle of two-way communication, and a decision facilitation tool.

Using the phone during the course of buying decisions, I’ve decreased one year closing times down to 3 calls – and no meetings. I’ve helped clients sell multimillion dollar deals on the phone, bringing a 3 year sales cycle down to 4 months, with no meetings until month 2. I’m not saying you shouldn’t have meetings; I’m just saying don’t use your body as a prospecting tool.

I love the phone. In my twenty years of working for myself, I have only met one customer before signing a contract, and that was because they lived here in Austin.

Just some food for thought. Have a listen/look to my short video on this. There are 24 of these short videos on YouTube.

Just think about it a bit.

Sharon Drew

Currently I am holding a contest, The 10 Steps of a Sales Cycle, for a free signed copy of Dirty Little Secrets. Join now for your chance to win.

For those of you wishing to learn Buying Facilitation™ with me, I’ve just scheduled a public training [pdf] for May 19-21. I occasionally put these up on the site for those folks wanting to learn the whole model, with me teaching it. Unfortunately, I don’t actively solicit attendees, as there are only spots for a maximum of 18. If you have interest, and want to know more, either look on my other site under ‘events’ or call me at 512 457 0246

Phones Are An Underutilized Business Tool is a post from: SharonDrewMorgen.com

Below are 12 To-Dos, including the 10 steps of a sales cycle as I see them. They are out of order, and two of them (at least – probably three) are unnecessary. Please put them in the order you think they should be in, name the 2 or 3 that are unnecessary, and submit.

The first person to have the steps in the order that I believe is accurate as per Buying Facilitation® and how to help buyers navigate their behind-the-scenes decision and change issues, will get a free book, Dirty Little Secrets: why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell and what you can do about it. The winner will be announced April 26. Please submit your answers in comment section of this post on sharondrewmorgen.com. And if you want, we can have an interactive webinar about this afterwards. Let me know if you’d like to and we’ll set it up.

Note: for those who plan to use my books to get the correct order, I’ve changed some of the activities and wording so they don’t directly match other lists.

• Develop marketing materials to professionally represent your solution either on-line or in person.
• Make an appointment to get in front of the prospect
• Help the prospect choose the members of the Buying Decision Team.
• Help the gatekeeper discover who your best point of contact would be.
• Facilitate prospect’s discovery of what sorts of strategic issues they must manage to get folks on board with potential change.
• Lead prospects/buyers through tactical issues they must manage before they can choose a solution.
• Follow up to see if there is anything you can do to help the prospect/buyer decide to purchase.
• Lead prospects/buyers through the systems issues they must consider in order to determine how any proposed change will disrupt their status quo.
• Use Facilitative Questions to get into rapport and have them begin to examine how or if or why they would consider changing their status quo.
• Discuss/present your solution and show the prospect/buyer how it would fit with their need/problem.
• Discuss how your solution fits with the internal issues that they must manage.
• Manage objections and differentiate yourself from the competition.

I look forward to discussing your responses. I’m bound and determined to get us all adding new skills to the sales model, and hope this is one way we can all start thinking differently. I look forward to your thoughts. And thanks for playing with me :)

sd

Want to see the results of this contest? Check it out here.

Contest: the 10 Steps of a Sales Cycle is a post from: SharonDrewMorgen.com