What has finally become obvious (and I’d like to think that I had something to do with it being so obvious) is the yawning gap between the Implicit buying decisions buyers must make on their own, and the Explicit ones that sellers play such a large part in helping them make.

The Explicit decisions include everything to do with fixing the need (I call it an Identified Problem – certainly not ‘pain’ cuz they would have fixed it already if it were ‘pain’): making sure the issues are resolved and work far more efficient, possibly even Excellently; that the decision makers are happy and make sure the solution fits well and is affordable with minimum risk; that the sellers are available before, during, and after to manage the implementation, the fit, and making the buyers comfortable with their choices. Once the Explicit decisions are made, the solution is purchased.

But if that were all it took,  we’d be closing a helluva lot more sales than we’re closing. The problem is the Implicit decisions.

What happens when the guy in the next department doesn’t want to collaborate – and you share one tech team and budget? What happens when there is no precedent for bringing in an external vendor? How does it get managed when the Senior Manager wants a solution and has the budget for it, but the team doesn’t want anyone to come in. What about when the current vendor has been around for a decade, works in every department with great professionalism, and everyone wants this vendor to just design something new rather than bring in a new vendor? And what about the work-around that’s been managing the Problem Space until they choose a better solution – does Fred in Accounting get fired because the boss is bringing in a new accounting package?

Buyers have managed these decisions on their own while we wait. There is really no way that an outsider – even a smart one – can understand all of the unconscious, historic, hidden, mysterious, and highly personal decisions that need to get handled before buy-in can occur. Sales has had no model to help buyers manage these implicit decisions. One of the ‘dirty little secrets’ that I talk about in my upcoming book (The Dirty Little Secret: why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell and what to do about it) is that the buyers have no idea how they are going to handle these decision issues either, if for no other reason than they don’t know what they are going to find when the start picking up the rocks. In other words, sales enters the buying decision cycle far too early.

One of the problems is that because the buyers don’t know the exact route they need to take, and sellers can’t know these personal and idiosyncratic systems issues, no one really knows how to manage the Implicit decisions. I’ve coded the system behind how decisions get made in systems (cultures, environments) and can lead folks down their decision cycle generically so they can pick up the pieces they need to address along the way and bring in the right people. Very often, they can figure this out immediately with me, rather than taking one month or one year, and deciding to bring together their buying decision team for a phone meeting (or whatever) within a week of our first conversation. And we do this consistently, time after time, in every industry or size of sale.

Buyers have to go down this route anyway, and goodness knows we sit and wait for them while they figure it out. This fact alone is the cause of the huge delay in the sales cycle.

I’m  not competing with sales; I’m adding a new piece – a front end, if you will – to the typical sales model. It’s not about gathering data. It’s not about understanding the buyer’s needs. It’s not about ‘being there’ when they are ready (Buying Facilitation teaches them how to be ready). It’s  not about becoming a trusted advisor or a relationship manager.

It’s about being a decision facilitator and taking a leadership role to help buyers walk through the Implicit stages of their buying decision process BEFORE they are ready to answer questions about their Explicit needs.

Let’s start using a two pronged approach to sales: first help buyers walk through their unconscious Implicit decisions; then they can walk with us through their conscious Explicit decisions. Because by not doing this we’re losing a lot of sales, spending too long in the sales cycle, causing objections (yes, we cause our own objections) and NOT serving our buyers.

So, do me a favor: start thinking of sales as a two-phased process, and the sales models we’ve been using for decades handle the Explicit decisions. And Buying Facilitation(R) – which is NOT SALES but a decision facilitation model that handles buy-in – can handle the Implicit. After all, would you rather sell? or have someone buy? They are two different activities.

I’ve been teaching this stuff for over 20 years, and we have had quite extraordinary results (remember that it’s NOT SALES) with many global corporations in every industry.

For more, go to www.newsalesparadigm.com

Buying Decisions: The Implicit Vs. The Explicit is a post from: SharonDrewMorgen.com

The sales model was designed for a different time in history, when there were fewer decision makers and products could be easily described in a magazine ad. With the advent of the web, global business practices, and the ability to communicate ideas across distances, there has been a sea change in not only what we can create and deliver, but also in the process buyers must go through prior to being able to make a purchase. The sales model itself hasn’t kept up in important ways.

Let’s take a hard look at what sales is, and how it must shift to keep up with our global economy.

WHAT IS SALES NOW?

1. The sales model merely manages the needs assessment and solution placement end of the buyer’s decision path.

PROBLEM: The majority of the buying decision path occurs off line (buyers must know how to manage the change, get the right people to buy in, address the implementation issues, etc.) so we are merely catching the low hanging fruit – there when they are ready to buy.

IMPLICATIONS: We aren’t entering the buyer’s decision journey early enough to become part of the Buying Decision Team (i.e. helping navigate through decision issues and collapsing the sales cycle); we sit and wait while they do their internal change management, with no direct skills to enter that area of the buyer’s decision journey.

SOLUTION: Start your conversation by helping facilitate change right from the beginning and save the needs assessment/solution discussion until the prospect sees a path through to change (all can be done on the first call); take the role of a buying facilitator and decision facilitator; help the prospect become a buyer (or not) immediately.

2. Sales treats a ‘need’ or ‘problem” as if it were an isolated event rather than recognizing that a ‘need’ sits within a system: a set of rules and relationships that maintain the status quo (including their ‘pain’) daily. Until this entire system agrees to, and is made ready for, something new, no solution can be purchased.

PROBLEM: We end up focusing on one small aspect within a sea of issues, and then pushing/waiting/pushing/waiting until they get to the point they’re ready to buy, or missing ways to support the necessary change management issues.

IMPLICATIONS: We end up presenting possibly the wrong data, too early, to the wrong people, and waste our time following around folks who don’t buy.

SOLUTION: Buying is a change management problem. We can facilitate this with an additional skill set to help them facilitate change – right from the first call.

3. Sales focuses on understanding needs and placing solutions, but until or unless all of the people who need to be on the Buying Decision Team are on board, and until all of the change management issues are managed, buyers can’t make a purchase.

PROBLEM: We are entering too early, offering data they don’t know what to do with yet.

IMPLICATIONS: The time it takes buyers to come up with their own answers is the length of the sales cycle. We end up following prospects who cannot close (and don’t know that until they don’t close) and don’t have a different skill set to open up prospects who didn’t know they need to buy, but are buyers. Plus we can shorten our sales cycles by at least half.

SOLUTION: With Buying Facilitation®  (a change management model that works alongside of sales) we can lead buyers through the decision steps, help them discern who must be on the Buying Decision Team, and become a member: we become neutral navigators rather than solution-placers.

4. We have assumed that if we can find a need, and our solution fits, that we have a sale. But if it were true, we’d be closing more, and sooner.

PROBLEM: Sales methods such as ‘objection handling’ ‘closing’ ‘getting past gatekeepers’, manage the fallout when buyers don’t buy according to the seller’s time frame. The problem is not a solution choice problem, but a buying decision/change management issue, and needs a different (i.e. non-sales) skill to manage that end of the path.

IMPLICATIONS: Because we don’t know who is a buyer until, well, until they buy, we waste over 90% of our time (and our company’s time) chasing prospects who don’t buy. And we can’t tell the difference until it’s too late.

SOLUTION: Using Buying Facilitation® you enter at the beginning of the path, and help buyers develop a pathway to handle the people, policies, relationship, and change issues necessary before they can buy. Once everyone is on board, and there is a path to a successful implementation, and everyone who will touch the solution is on board, THEN use sales – with no objections or delays.

Sales is vital. It manages the solution choice end of the buying path. It uncovers and supports needs. But it has no direct tools to do change management. We need to do more than sell. I believe the time has come to add a new skill to sales, and use Buying Facilitation® as part of your sales skills to truly help buyers buy. It is possible to eliminate objections, price issues, and closing issues, while greatly speeding up the sales cycle. Would you rather sell? or have someone buy?

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See more posts from other exceptional bloggers at their website.

Read samples of “Buying Facilitation: the new way to sell that influences and expands decisions”(PDF) and “Dirty Little Secrets: why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell and what you can do about it.” (PDF)

Listen to Sharon Drew discuss Buying Facilitation®.

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

Does the sales model do what we need it to do? is a post from: SharonDrewMorgen.com

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

To help you understand how foreign systems are to outsiders, here’s a personal story from a trip to India that made me realize I’d never understand another system as an outsider…. and what I needed to focus on instead of trying to manipulate or make sense of a situation that I wanted to effect change over, but was foreign to me.

In this funny story I was so confounded by my inability to understand another culture that I ended up having a spiritual experience.

INDIA HAS NO SYSTEMS

I was on a speaking tour through India titled Spirituality in Business. India is a wonderous place that teaches you how to be authentic: there is no other way to be, since the only system they live with (outside of the strict rules of relationships) is chaos. And with my systems-thinking Asperger brain, that makes me horribly uncomfortable.

So I was going nuts. Absolutely bonkers. Nothing worked as I thought it should. Nothing was where it was supposed to be. No one did the job they were supposed to be doing. There were no rules, far as I could tell. I had no idea what to do, how to fit in or act. I was living in a state of confusion that hurt – every moment of every day.

I decided that the best route would be either murder or suicide. I didn’t much care which, so long as there was death involved.

I made such a fuss that the organizer of the speaking tour got me the name/number of a travel agent who would get me to HHDL (the Dalai Lama) in Dharamsala in North West India. One of the things to note about India is that your plane/train/bus will be late – or early, who knows – but whenever it does show up it will be yesterday’s transport, or tomorrow’s, and you’ll have to wait til, til who knows when. People wait for days. Calmly.

Anyway, I took the number and went to a nearby village to stand on line (with the goats and chickens, babies and arguing adults) to use the phone – a make-shift deal tied around a tree. It was probably the only phone for miles.

When it was my turn, I contacted Mr. Singh. “Ah, Miss Morgen. Yes. I have your plans to Dharamsala. Please hold while I get your file.” As I waited, watching some children play with a dog, I began smelling smoke. I looked around and saw nothing burning, until I looked down: the phone cord was dangling off of the tree, and on fire. That’s right. And that’s not even possible.

Obviously, I wasn’t going anywhere. No phone, no transport, no way out, no understanding, no choices. Typical of every moment in India: total confusion, all the time.

I sat down on a nearby rock, rolled my eyes upward, defeated: “OK. I’ll stay.”

ONE STEP . AND THEN ANOTHER.

What had to be true for me to remain in India and not commit Death of some kind? I had to learn how to take one step at a time, put one foot in front of the other, have no expectations, and live totally in the present without needing anyone else to behave in any particular way and without needing to understand anything. One step. I’m OK. One step. I’m OK.  One step. I’m OK. The anger, fear, rage, confusion slipped away; each moment was just fine.

After a day of taking very small, slow steps, I realized that not only was I (and folks around me) still alive, but that I felt free: I realized that much of my life had been based on assumptions of what I wanted to happen – what I expected, and what I thought I could influence, and the frustrations and annoyance when I didn’t get what I expected.

I took this lesson back to my life and job as a seller. I realized it’s not possible to understand a buyer’s systems. Sure, I understand the facts about a need and how it fits with my solution, but my ability to understand ends there.

What are the systems in your client’s environment? They must navigate their daily routines, decisions, jobs, relationships so that work gets done and excellence accomplished. But you don’t understand their system. So, what has to be true for you to help prospects traverse their systems and consider purchasing something?

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Read Dirty Little Secrets: why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell and what you can do about it. Read two free sample chapters.

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

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

We can never understand a buyer’s buying environment is a post from: SharonDrewMorgen.com

And you still expect different results?

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

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

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

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

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

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

WHY SHOULD WE CARE ABOUT THE BUYER’S JOURNEY?

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

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

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

If you are ready to learn,  let us help:

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

But stop complaining, and begin actually helping buyers buy.

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

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

Consider purchasing the bundle: Dirty Little Secrets plus my last book Buying Facilitation®: the new way to sell that influences and expands decisions. These books were written to be read together, as they offer the full complement of concepts to help you learn and understand Buying Facilitation® – the new skill set that gives you the ability to lead buyers through their buying decisions. In addition, you will also receive a bonus illustrated booklet.

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

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

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

In other words, when choices are made that go against what the world deems rational,  they are, by definition, irrational. So if we get accepted to Harvard, for example, and choose to go to Podunk, we are being irrational.

HOW WE DECIDE

As a person who thinks in systems (I have Asperger’s), I’m here to tell you that decisions do not get made based on information but on beliefs – personal, idiosyncratic values that we each uniquely hold dear: what may seem rational to one person is not rational to another. And  it’s all subjective regardless of what end you sit on.

If you have good data that the new software you’re being asked to use will be superior to what you’ve been using, the rational decision would be to accept/adopt the material. Yet you have a fear that when using the new technology your job will change, you won’t be competent at your job, you’ll suffer some diminished deference from your colleagues, and you won’t be able to ever get as competent as you are now with the existing software. Those internal voices – the fears and the resistances, the avoidance and the confusion – are what determine your decision, not the ‘rationality’ of the potential solution.

Your ability and willingness to change – to buy, to learn, to choose – is directly proportional to your skills at examining and shifting our criteria. You weight/re-weight your beliefs regularly. So if I asked you if you wanted to learn to kill someone, you’d probably say ‘no.’ But if you knew that someone were going to come into your home to harm your family members, you might re-weight your beliefs about knowing how to kill.

When you assume you understand what a ‘rational’ decision should be, and notice someone making what you deem an irrational decision, you have no ability (as an outsider) to understand what might be appropriate for that person, at that moment, living as they are living, with the people, policies, relationships, emotions, and history of their lives.

SALES TREATS NEEDS AS IF ISOLATED EVENTS

When there are others including in decision making – a team, for example - the range of decision criteria gets complex. And buyer’s decision paths are no different from any other decision path: the time it takes the person or team to recognize and manage the full extent of their decision criteria, and come up with a way to enable the appropriate buy-in from the appropriate people at the right time, is the length of the buy/decision cycle.

The first phase that buyers address as they start their buying decision journey involves lining up their internal criteria, the players, the old vendors, and understand relevant systems issues that have maintained their status quo.

The need we can resolve with our solution  actually sits in a tangled web of gooey systems issues that not only created their problem, but maintain it every day, and until or unless there is appropriate buy-in for systemic change, the problem will remain as it is: the need is thrown under the bus if a solution will severely disrupt the system.

In fact, buyers buy solutions with personal criteria that usually has nothing to do with a need or a solution. People buy homes with personal criteria that usually has nothing to do with the details of any specific house; software often gets purchased only when the tech team is willing to work with the marketing team – none of which is directly related to a specific solution.

So what’s rational?

There is an assumption that with the right data, at the right time, offered in the right way, to address the right solution, the person receiving the data will accept it. But that doesn’t happen as often as we would like. As a result, we often judge the person ”stupid” or irrational. But what is happening is not information-based.

As you move toward making new decisions, or helping buyers manage their buy-in cycle, start off with helping them manage their decision criteria, rather than beginning with the last thing they do (choose the solution). Buying Facilitation® is a decision facilitation model that actually teaches buyers how to walk through and reweight their decision criteria. Help them discover their own ‘rationality’ so they can buy. They must do this anyway – with you or without you: it might as well be with you.

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My newest book: Dirty Little Secrets: why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell and what you can do about it is about how decisions get made. While seemingly about the buying decision path the book is usable for any people involved in decision making  and it breaks down the root all decisions take. Read two sample chapters free.

Listen to  Sharon Drew’s podcast series called Making Change Work.

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

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

Behaviors aren’t rational 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

Buyers live in a ‘system’ that maintains their Identified Problem (or ‘pain’)  over time, creating work-arounds that become part of the system and, well, comfortable. Indeed, if the buyer really needed to make a change, they would have done so already. It’s only when a group of dedicated, internal  change agents are willing to push the river, that a purchase is even considered.

Before buyers can buy, there must be buy-in to the proposed change, a plan that minimizes disruption, and a way to foster agreement between the people, policies and relationships that touch a new solution. A buying decision is far more complex than just fixing a problem.

I’ve developed Buying Facilitation® – a decision navigation model that is an add-on to sales and helps buyers bring together the right people and issues - to enable agreement and ensure change procedures are  in place to make a purchase. Here are a few Buying Facilitation® skills to use with sales:

9 STEPS

Help the gatekeeper discover who your best point of contact would be.

Don’t try to ‘get through’ the gatekeeper. She knows the best person to connect you with. And don’t attempt to ‘go to the top.’  The top person usually delegates to the appropriate people. Ask for the CEO’s assistant, and she’ll get you to the right people. Question: who is in control of the conversation – you? or the Gatekeeper?

Use Facilitative Questions to get into rapport and have buyers begin to examine how/if/why they would consider changing their status quo.

Until or unless prospects determine to make a change and get all appropriate folks on board to buy-in to change and ensure there is minimal disruption, it doesn’t matter whether

• you can see their need,
• your solution is perfect,
• they think they need you/your solution,
• they love your solution, price, personality, etc.

IT’S NOT ABOUT YOU. Do you need to be working out more? It’s not about the gym.

Here is a Facilitative Question I use to start conversations: How would you know if it were time to add new sales skills to the ones you’re already offering your sales folks? This question helps them think about necessary steps and new choices they must consider.

Remember: discussing solutions and needs assessment are irrelevant at this early stage. Facilitative Questions help the BUYER see the whole picture of what is going on strategically and tactically. Until or unless they know how to manage their system first, they will take no action. This is where buyers go when you’re sitting and waiting.

Lead prospects/buyers through the systems issues they must consider in order to determine how any proposed change will disrupt their status quo.

Facilitative Questions and Presumptive Summaries are used to help buyers look at their status quo with an unbiased eye. No matter what their ‘need’ or ‘problem’  if they don’t think they can change in a way that maintains systems congruence, they will do nothing. Remember: the buyer’s environment/culture/system has lived with the Identified Problem until now, and can continue to do so. If they had known how to resolve it differently, they would have.

Facilitate prospect’s discovery of what sorts of strategic issues they must manage to get folks on board with potential change.

There are 3 levels of decisions necessary: systems, strategic, and tactical. Addressing them in this order is optimal  although it’s usually an iterative process.

Lead prospects/buyers through tactical issues they must manage before they can choose a solution.

Once they determine that

1. their system would be willing to shift to add something/change/resolve something,
2. their rules, relationships, people, are willing to change,
3. they know how to shift congruently to minimize disruption,

they will then be willing to bring in a new solution. Until or unless their status quo is reconfigured in a way that the insiders are willing to support, they will do nothing: the risk to their functioning is too high. Hence the longer-than-necessary sales cycle.

Buyers must do this with you or without you – so it might as well be with you.

Help the prospect choose the members of the Buying Decision Team.

Help buyers recognize the right people to include. Usually they don’t know who it will be until way down the road, much like you don’t know all the trials you’ll face before you start a move.

Discuss how your solution fits with the internal issues that they must manage.

This step is about melding your solution with the entire range of issues they have to manage internally, including the people, policies, and relationships.

Discuss/present your solution and show the prospect/buyer how it would fit with their need/problem.

Once they do all of the above and get appropriate buy-in to manage change, they will know how and when to buy, and you can discuss needs/solutions according to their buy-in issues.

Follow up to see if there is anything you can do to help the prospect/buyer decide to purchase.

This is part of a good sales job, of course.

SALES TACTICS THAT ARE NO LONGER NECESSARY

Make an appointment to get in front of the prospect

This is a hold-over from another era. Until buyers put together their decision team and figure out how to change without disruption, your bright shiny face and the efficacy of your solution is irrelevant. You can do all of the above without meeting a client. And then, when you get there, the entire Buying Decision Team will be there and you wouldn’t have wasted any time/visits.

Manage objections and differentiate yourself from the competition.

The sales model creates objections because it pushes data/solution info against a ‘closed system.’ When you hear an objection, it’s merely the system defending itself against change and nothing whatsoever about your solution. Once you teach the system how to manage buy-in without disruption, there are no objections.

80% of your prospects will buy within 2 years – but not from you. The time it takes them to manage the buying decision to ensure there will be no disruption is the length of the sales cycle. You can either sit and wait for them to do it, or you can learn Buying Facilitation® and become the GPS system to help them navigate. Would you rather sell? or help someone buy?

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Wanting to learn more? Dirty Little Secrets: why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell and what to do about it. Check out the site for more details.

Or consider purchasing the bundle: Dirty Little Secrets plus my last book Buying Facilitation®: the new way to sell that influences and expands decisions. In addition, you will also receive a bonus illustrated booklet.

9 Sales Steps that Influence a Buying Decision is a post from: SharonDrewMorgen.com

They split the sales team into an Inside Sales group that makes appointments, and Corporate and Field Sales teams to close them. The structure, as well as the compensation, promotes failure: Inside Sales is paid per appointment (with a tendency to push for an appointment with whomever they speak with, regardless of their appropriateness); the other sales functions are paid based on how many they close.

It’s a perfect storm: inappropriate leads are given to sellers who spend gobs of time pushing a solution to whomever ends up agreeing to an appointment (who may not be appropriate buyers, and certainly don’t represent all those who might buy), and get a very low percentage of closed sales. So the company hires more and more Inside Sales reps to get appointments, hoping that a higher percent of the appointment will result.

DO YOU WANT TO MAKE A SALE OR AN APPOINTMENT?

My clients came to me complaining of a very low close rate. It never occured to them that just maybe there is a problem with their selling model; they manage the problem by adding sales reps. They believe success is at their fingertips by playing the numbers game!

There is a very large elephant in the room here: Before a buyer can buy they must manage the behind-the-scenes change management issues that address the disruption, the people, the relationships, the rules, that must be handled behind-the-scenes to get the buy-in necessary to bring in a new solution in. Sales enters at the point of  ‘need’… but that’s the tail end of the buyer’s buying decision path.

Our continued fascination with making an appointment as a precursor to making a sale is based on the belief that a buyer will buy based on the strength of the presentation. And although we get extremely low closing rates, we continue to do it and often throw more sellers at the problem, doing the same activity. That’s the definition of insanity!

Imagine if it’s possible to discover leads/prospects who can be made ready to buy without making an appointment!

Imagine if it’s possible to close the buying decision path gap in a fraction of the time and closing 5x more sales without introducing your solution – or pitching, presenting, or creating a proposal.

START WITH A DIFFERENT SET OF ASSUMPTIONS

Once you begin with the assumption that buyers just need to understand your solution and how it would benefit them, you’re a solution looking for a problem. Then your sales folks are order takers, or tele-sales reps, or consultants running around looking busy. But all sales – regardless of the industry - close between 2-7%. Where do the rest go? And why are you pitching, wasting time, or making appointments with, folks who will never buy?

You end up hiring more and more sales folks to close fewer and fewer sales… especially these days when Buying Decision Teams are more diverse in geography and function.

Right now you are paying your sales folks to find the low-hanging fruit: buyers who most probably would have found you and bought from you anyway.

Let’s compensate our sales folks for helping buyers navigate through the entire buying decision path and help buyers where they need the most help to solve a problem – managing the buy-in of all who will touch the solution - something sales does not do at the moment, as it remains focused on needs assessment and solution placement.

Once you add Buying Facilitation® to your seller’s skill set, you will be able to close much more business. Because now you’re spending far, far too much time following prospects who will never close and paying your sales people for the wasted effort.

I’ve heard sellers tell me that they didn’t need to learn BF because they earn 6 figures doing what they are doing badly. Imagine if you compensated your sales folks on an expectation that they close 40% of their leads. It’s very possible – my clients do that easily. Then, there would be no reason to hire more folks just to get the numbers you’re trying to get. And you would have a much higher ROI.

Stop compensating your sales folks on meager expectations. Stop having your sales folks set up appointments first. Start with the very first ‘Hello’ and teach them how to buy. Would you rather sell? Or have someone buy?

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Buy Dirty Little Secrets: why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell and what you can do about it and learn the difference between selling and managing the buying path.

Listen to Sharon Drew make prospecting calls on this MP3.

Compensating our sales folks is a post from: SharonDrewMorgen.com

When I began using the terms in the 80s my meaning described a change management process to lead buyers through their non-solution/non-need-related, behind-the-scenes internal and political issues that enable all who touch the solution to buy-in. Lately I’ve noticed the terms applied to the sales end of the buying decision – that 10% of the buyer’s journey that manages the  pre-solution choice  behaviors, including  solution/vendor choice, time/money issues. In other words, sales.

But let’s stop a moment: We don’t buy this way.

HOW DO WE BUY?

Here’s is a case study to offer an example of how we actually buy.

Pretend you are the VP of Client Services of a $15 Million company, considering upgrading your website; you don’t like the job your internal tech folks have done. What needs to happen for you to get a site you need? Get your own guys to work better/smarter? Bring in a new vendor to fix the one you have? Let’s look at the actions you must take prior to moving forward.

1. start a conversation with a colleague/friend to discuss ideas about the status quo.
2. if the idea has merit, see if there is interest from the VPs of Sales and Marketing as they’d need to share budget with you.
3. go on line and do some research to: look at several possible solutions, see how your competition is managing it, and call colleagues for vendor possibilities.
4. talk with the internal Tech guys to discuss your displeasure and see what they’re willing to do differently, closer in line with what you’ve learned.
5. have a meeting with VPs or Sales and Marketing to get the lay of the land, share some new ideas, gather their thoughts, discuss options to move forward with their support. This is the foundation of the Buying Decision Team (BDT).
6. contact a few local vendors to ask them to give you a presentation so you can better understand what they do and what’s possible.
7. attend vendor presentations that focus on strength of design, strength of technical and programming skills.
8. meet with the BDT to discuss your take-aways from the vendor presentations. Everyone wants to do more research. Sales and Marketing  folks not talking with each other, and each want to take this in different directions.
9. meet with CFO who manages the technology department. She wants to keep all work inhouse.
10. meet to discuss with Sales, Marketing. Invite Technology folks, but they don’t come. Sales and Marketing must learn how to get along as they have a similar focus and don’t like the work the Tech team does.
11. decisions must be made as per changing mind of the CFO. Group decides to look at vendors again and gather different sorts of data to offer proof to CFO.
12. same vendors come in to do a presentation to you, Sales, Marketing. Tech folks refuse to come.
13. group decides to use vendors rather then tech team, but must find a way to get buy-in from CFO.
14. group writes a paper to convince CFO to use outside supplier. Head of Sales is chosen to get Tech folks on board.
15. meeting set up with Tech VP, CFO, heads of Sales, Internal Consulting, Project Management, HR (to manage any outsourcing) Marketing, and you – the complete Buying Decision Team. All decide to use the Tech team to do the programming; vendor to do the design. You all decide to take a look at the vendors again to see who would be most capable of collaborating as well as designing, as they’d need to hand over, and work with, the tech folks.
16. vendor meeting #3. The vendors with the slide about collaboration was chosen (that buying criteria was not even discussed with the vendors during earlier conversations or needs-assessment conversations).

This is a very very simplistic decision path during a year’s worth of meetings: there are only ‘people’ variables, and not any policies, internal politics, initiatives, etc.

SALES FOCUSES ON NEEDS AND SOLUTION PLACEMENT

In this situation, the sales model would have the potential vendors gather, and assume that the ‘need’ was for web design, rather than collaboration skills AND web design. And, the assumption would be that the entire Buying Decision Team – not fully formed until near the end – is already on board.

In this instance, you’d become involved in steps 6,7. You’d give a great presentation, recognize a need, get along well with your contact, and assume you were ‘in.’ When you didn’t hear back for a while, you’d start calling. And when you got your second presentation appointment, you’d assume you were in. And the rest is history.

If you were using Buying Facilitation® all of this would have been avoided for both you and your prospect. As the vendor, you would have helped the buyer recognize the problem lie with the CFO on the first call, helped design the make up of the full Buying Decision Team, and not gone in to do a presentation until there was agreement to have a vendor do some/all of the work. You’d go in only when the VPs of Sales, Marketing, Tech, and the CFO were present in the room. And it all would have taken a month or two.

If you want to learn how to do this, start by reading Dirty Little Secrets. Then get the Guided Study program and begin learning Buying Facilitation®. Or call me and we’ll discuss training.

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Start the journey to help sellers get the skills they need to manage both ends of the buying decision journey – the off-line political and relational buy-in as well as the solution choice. Read Dirty Little Secrets: why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell and what you can do about it.

Listen to insights and illustrative examples regarding: what change is and why its fundamentally the same regardless of industry or organization type, what systems are and their role in the change management process.

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

How do you buy? Steps in a buying decision is a post from: SharonDrewMorgen.com

This one person starts with with no buy-in and no buddies, and cannot initially know the full description of the problem/need or ramifications of the possible change. And certainly will not have the complete descriptors with which to choose a solution until much later in the cycle when all appropriate voices are brought in and the change management issues are recognized by everyone who will touch the final solution.

Before that person gets from here to there, there are many steps along the way, starting with putting together some personal thoughts through research, through discussions, to private think time. Then come a few friends and colleagues who lend a brain and an ear – friends who also want Excellence and are willing to put in time, put their jobs on the line, and be willing to stand up to resistance and the status quo to get something new brought into the environment.

That’s where the buy-cycle starts. There are actually 13 unique steps from the first thought to a purchase.

STARTING SALES TOO EARLY

Sellers show up early in the cycle, discussing needs, money, value and ‘deep understanding’ – the buyer’s last 2 steps. But the early portion of the journey – the 11 behind-the-scenes, private, idiosyncratic, and highly personal steps that buyers and their Buying Decision Teams must take along their path to purchase – is not handled by sales.

There is so much more we can do to help buyers maneuver from the first idea through their decision path.

Are we willing to add new skills, new technology, to what we’re doing now, both in marketing automation, inside sales, outside sales, telemarketing, and nurture marketing? Are we willing to add new skills that are not sales skills, nor influencing skills, nor negotiating skills? Are we willing to help manage the change? If we aren’t willing, we will continue to close a fraction of what we can be closing as we sit and wait to close the low hanging fruit.

All sales activities – marketing automation included – are needs assessment/solution placement focused. The underlying belief is that once we understand the buyer’s needs, or know their friends, or play golf with them, or network with them, or know who the decision makers are, we will know what, when, how, if to place a solution.

Yet only 7% of buyers buy through normal sales channels, and less than 1% through marketing automation channels. And – here is the kicker – 80% of our prospects (whom we followed and called and contacted and nurtured) will buy our solution from a different vendor within 2 years of speaking with us.

In other words, even though there is a need, and it appears that our solution matches, something is stopping the buy-cycle.

WHAT IS A BUY-CYCLE

A buy-cycle is an entire set of change management and buy-in issues that buyers must manage internally, behind-the-scenes, to get agreement from people and policies in order to make a purchase.

The buy-cycle starts with an idea, and ends when the entire Buying Decision Team is on board (no mean feat) and everything that will touch a new solution knows how to manage the change that the new thing will create.

The buy-cycle is 90% complete by the time the buyer is considering one solution over another. Until then, buyers must get all of the right people to agree (hah), make sure technology will not crash, ensure people can work together, change job descriptions, bring in outsourced folks to help with implementations, ensure the new works with the old….

The buy-cycle does not start with a seller understanding needs and matching a solution. That’s the last thing that happens. Note: the fact that a seller can recognize a need means it has been there for a while … and nothing has been done about it. So the system it lives in is willing to maintain the problem.

Here are a few thoughts that are important to remember:

• If the buyer needed to fix their problem they would have done so already.
• The time it takes buyers to come up with their own answers and figure out their internal change management issues is the length of the sales cycle, independent of their need.
• A seller (the outsider) will never, ever, ever ‘understand’ the political, relational, personal, or historic issues that buyers must manage. It’s necessary to understand the full need, however, and that can occur once the entire Buying Decision Team is in place.
• Information does not teach a buyer how to buy. They must manage their internal, off-line, systems issues.
• The system is sacrosanct: buyers will maintain the integrity of their system at all costs, regardless of their need or the efficacy of your solution.
• Something new threatens the integrity of the existing system.

If you are selling technology, the buy-cycle must include buy-in from whoever will use it, plus a set up for the change implementation, plus a relationship with outsourcing groups, plus a way to ensure the new will meld with the old, plus some sort of project leading component.

If you are selling training, the buy-cycle will include buy-in from those who will take the training, internal trainers, matching the new program with the existing material, change of materials/software to match the new skills, plus buy-in from, and a working relationship with, the internal training department with a knowledge of maintaining the new learning over time.

For small, inexpensive solutions, possibly one person has to discover how the new solution would disrupt the system and figure out how to re-arrange, or shift technology, etc.

The buy-cycle is not about our solution. It’s about the buyer making sure that at each step there is agreement and change management and buy-in to ensure all of the right people are on board and willing to allow an addition to the status quo. The reason we lose sales is not because of our solution, but because the Buying Decision Team hasn’t figured out how to bring in change without disruption.

Ask yourself this, and answer honestly: do you really, really want to begin selling at the beginning of the buy-cycle? I can teach you the skills and give you the technology for this to happen. But you’d have to add something to what you’re doing – i.e. change.

How would you recognize, upfront, who would need to be included in a decision to change? How would you know that Buying Facilitation® will give you the results you deserve BEFORE you begin the change? What would you need to do differently to get the buy-in you’d need?

I can help. I can offer you Facilitative Questions to share with teammates to help them decide. Or you can listen to podcasts and watch webinars that I gave to explain Buying Facilitation®.

For those of you who recognize a problem, and want help navigating through the entire change management journey to get buy-in to add new skills to your sales and marketing, contact me. I can help you walk through the entire route with a minimum of disruption.

I just need to speak with one person with a hope for something better.

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Listen to these podcasts;

watch these webinars;

read this book – 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®

Where does the buy-cycle start? is a post from: SharonDrewMorgen.com

I believe we are currently paying our sales folks to waste 90% of their time. They are spending time  pushing solution information to the wrong people at the wrong time, and have no idea who will actually close until, well, until they don’t.

With its focus on placing solutions, the current sales model (including marketing automation) has no way to manage the natural resistance of groups while they figure out their pre-purchase change management strategies. Sellers merely catch the low hanging fruit and the sales model does not faciliate the buyer’s complete – and confusing - decision path.

If we were paying sellers according to what  they SHOULD be closing they’d be earning a fraction of what they are earning. In reality, we can  close twice as much business with half the sales force.

EXTENDING EXPECTATION: SELLERS SHOULD BE CLOSING MORE

Unfortunately, we start off by assuming that if we find folks who COULD buy our solution, and have a recognized NEED, that they are prospects. If this were true, we’d be closing a helluva lot more sales.

Sellers spend 90% of their time attempting to close sales that will never close. The sales model doesn’t offer a skill set to help buyers with the part that keeps them from buying: they must manage their confusing, political change management issues along their decision path. And yet the field resists learning Buying Facilitation®:  As someone recently said to me: Why should I bother learning how to help buyers manage their change issues when I already make a good salary closing the paltry sum I’m closing?

According to Forrester, 80% of our prospects buy a solution similar to ours (or ours) within 2 years of having contact with a sales rep. What does this tell us? The time it takes buyers to get their ducks in a row to get internal agreement to buy is the length of the sales cycle. We must add a skill set to help facilitate the buy-in journey and actually teach buyers how to find their ducks and get them quacking.

EXPAND THE SALES JOB TO ENCOMPASS THE ENTIRE DECISION PATH

Our prospects aren’t buyers. Typical closing rates are  less than 10%  (7% in conventional sales; less than 1% from marketing automation; 2% in banking and insurance). When we close,  we are merely showing up around the time the buyer shows up with their checkbook and have already done their behind-the-scenes work.

The statistical average of closing a sale by following each prospect with an apparent need (15 calls over 9 months) is greater than what we’re actually closing. By containing our sales activities to the solution choice, we fail to close all those who will buy once they get their internal buy-in.

A seller’s performance and pay is currently dependent on whether or not a buyer is ready, willing, and able to buy AT THE TIME THE SELLER IS FOLLOWING THEM.  Using the sales model, we have no idea who is going to buy at the start of the  sales journey.

Apparently, companies assume

• there is no way to tell who will buy,
• it’s not possible to enter the private world buyers live in to  enable them to manage, their decision path more quickly,
• buyers are stupid or they’d buy more/better/faster,
• it’s not a sellers fault if prospects they have been following (and are most probably in the pipeline) don’t buy.

Why not assume that the performance of the sales folks is poor because of  the sales model itself. By merely addressing the last 10% of  the buyer’s decision, and with no skills that would  faciliate the entire buying journey, starting with the buy-in, change management, political issues buyers must manage before they can buy, we are not making it easy for buyers (who need a solution to manage merely a portion of their internal problems). Indeed, adding Buying Facilitation® to the front end of sales skills mitigates the buy-in issues by adding facilitation skills.

BUYING FACILITATION® FACILITATES THE BUYING DECISION JOURNEY

Imagine if the sales job was to first enter the behind-the-scenes buying decision path and help buyers navigate through all of the non-needs-related decisions they must make and buy-in they must get (focusing on internal relationships, politics, strategies, etc) en route to choosing a solution. Then they would collapse the time it takes for buy-in to happen by half, and triple the number of folks who buy.

Imagine if sellers were paid only on closed sales (rather than spending over 90% of their activity on chasing leads/prospects who will never close) with an assumption that it’s possible to close 5x what they are currently closing?

Imagine if sellers started a conversation by helping manage buy-in. They’d know, from first call, exactly who would close and only spend time on buyers.

Sellers can increase their performance by at least a factor of 5. Knowing this, would you still keep paying them the same base salary? or continue hiring more sales folks to get the sales you need?

Is it worth a test to trial Buying Facilitation® to a pilot group and see the difference? Call me and we’ll discuss options. Then you can pay your sellers what they are really worth — a lot.

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Start the journey to help sellers get the skills they need to manage both ends of the buying decision journey – the off-line political and relational buy-in as well as the solution choice. Read Dirty Little Secrets; get an MP3 to hear Sharon Drew using the model; contact us to learn about training your sales folks.

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

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

What are we paying our sales folks to do? 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.

sd

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

It’s been fascinating to me that the major players in the field  insist they ‘know’ the buyer’s decision path. In a recent interview with Jesse Noyes, Steve Woods made this comment:

Once you understand the data in context, you’re going to guide them through the overall buying process, which means more then sending them an email. It’s getting a Twitter message in front of them, getting a Facebook message in front of them, getting a targeted ad in front of them, getting social context involving their peers in front of them. (Underlining mine)

Let’s take this one piece at a time.

CURRENT LEAD/DEMAND GEN TECHNOLOGY DOESN’T FOLLOW BUY PATH

First of all, the way lead gen and marketing automation are currently set up, they are not guiding buyers through their ‘overall buying process,‘ merely the possible solution choice considerations at the tail end of the ‘buy path’.

Think about choosing a car. Does your ‘overall buying process’ begin with which car to choose? Or does it include conversations with your spouse, your decision to buy a new car now, or your changing needs? Think about moving. Is your ‘overall buying process’ about which house to choose?

Of course not. There is so much going on behind-the-scenes that enters the buyer’s decision making – people, relationships, feelings, vendors, timing, policies – that current marketing and selling vehicles don’t address that there is no way to follow a ‘buyer’s path’ with current automation tools, other than the solution-choice segment.

Remember that buyers are merely seeking to resolve a problem – they aren’t necessarily seeking to buy a solution. Until buyers make some basic decisions, engage the people who will touch the solution, recognize they cannot resolve the problem internally, and get appropriate buy-in for a purchase, we can do nothing but address what we see when they show up. We have absolutely no idea what is going on, or why, or what else might be needed except what we’re guessing. Indeed, when we send data we are merely making our best guesses.

On a conversation with one of the  heads of the two leading marketing automation companies, I asked:

• Do you know how the ‘buyer’ (and it’s not a buyer, is it? It’s merely a name.) you’re following is weighted on the Buying Decision Team?
• Do you know how many members of the Buying Decision Team are engaged (If they are not all on board, there will be no purchase)?
• Do you know what they are doing with the data you are sending them?
• Do you know at which stage of the buying decision path the person is on?
• Do you know who/what you are in competition with?

His answer: ‘There is no way to know any of that.’ Of course not – not with the model they currently use. So how, said I, are you guiding them through their ‘overall buying process’? [NOTE: I have developed a contact sheet that actually does follow and enroll leads through each of their buy-in stages. I'm looking for additional trial sites. Contact me: Sharondrew@newsalesparadigm.com]

PUTTING ‘IN FRONT OF’ DOESN’T MEAN THEY NEED THAT DATA, OR WILL READ IT

Next. They are sending WHAT to WHOM? Without knowing which stage of the internal change management and buy-in process buyers are in, or what they are doing with the data, or what they need the data for, or what types of data they need,  or who else might need data on their Buying Decision Team, you’re going to follow them on Facebook? Really? If they were looking at your site for some comparative data you’re going to follow them on Facebook? That’s all you have time to do? If they were just using your data to write a paper for school, you’re going to Tweet them? Really?

And what makes you think that because they looked around your site or took a webinar that they need the data you’ve chosen to send? or that they might be prospects?

The current marketing automation capability knows nothing of this. It’s certainly possible to influence and facilitate the entire buyer’s journey, but not the way marketing automation is collecting or scoring data.

Until or unless you get to the point where you can actually know exactly where the buyer is in their entire decision path (90% of which is not solution-related or needs-driven), marketing automation activity is not measuring true performance. It’s actually only monitoring the last bit of activity and ignoring the places where there is certainly a way to influence a purchase.

Why not help from the beginning stages – from the initial idea through to the complete Buying Decision Team agreement. I can do this. Can you? Because until you do, your performance is merely a fraction of what it could be – and so is your revenue.

sd

I’m seeking partners to do an A/B test on my new lead gen material. Contact me to discuss possibilities for trial. sharondrew@newsalesparadigm.com

Read:  Dirty Little Secrets: why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell and what to do about it.

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

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

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

Marketing automation follows a small segment of the buying decision path 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.

sd

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