My client was a visionary. He knew Buying Facilitation® would differentiate them, and give them higher closing ratios and shorter sales cycles. We were able to enlist the appropriate Buying Decision Team members, get the necessary buy in and create the change management container before we started. But in the end, one of the “C” level people – not ‘directly’ on the Buying Decision Team – was the decider. He was the one who had most to lose by changing.

CSO AS UNCHECKED LEADER

The CSO was quite a despot. Somewhat smart, but certainly ruled the roost in a very mainstream way, and with such seeming passion (turned out to be fear) that folks just did his bidding, regardless of whether he was doing the best thing for the company. And since there was no time for anyone to check, his ideas were just accepted. To the company’s detriment, it turns out.

Constantly in self-imposed motion, this man gave the go-ahead to do my training but never read my book  Dirty Little Secrets to get an understanding of what I’d be teaching and the implications for  the organization.

Turned out that the CSO was quite a negative player. He routinely called people late at night and wielded his power through tantrums and denigration. Folks were afraid of him and did his bidding, never questioining the efficacy of his decisions.

FUNNY NUMBERS THAT EVERYONE BELIEVED

As part of my training, I spend quite a bit of time with sales managers to deeply understand how they sell, and their numbers. But this group didn’t have real numbers. They claimed to close 17% of their sales but I couldn’t figure out where this number came from. Finally I spoke with enough of the sales managers to put together a picture, and it wasn’t pretty.

Actually, their sales process made it difficult for them to succeed. They:

• spent 3 months (and appx 15 calls each, and over 90% of their time) getting 97.5%  ‘no’s’ and 2.5% appointments (that mostly led nowhere) to present product data,
• pushed extremely hard to close, with a huge discount at the end of the quarter, which was industry knowledge so  buyers waited to get the best deal,
• were fired if they didn’t make their numbers.

They counted their close rate  from the time they got their first appointment. Of course, that presupposes that none of the first 97.5% of the leads/names would have purchased, because if any of those could have been buyers, then you start counting from #1, not #97.6. They actually had a .6758% close.

When I told the CSO the real numbers, he had a tantrum. “That can’t be true. Who told you that?! Don’t tell anyone else!!!” Of course not. If the CEO or Chairman of the Board knew the real numbers he’d be fired (and of course he sandbagged the targets to match what he could achieve, thereby diminishing the company’s possible ROI).

I discussed this with my client, who agreed with my results once he saw the real numbers. He was further committed to Buying Facilitation® training as it would bring in 35% close from the first name/lead, with no end-of-month push or price break. We’d easily be able to double business within a year.

PROTECTING FAILURE

One week prior to the training (which the CSO had rescheduled already, two days prior to the original scheduled event), he called late one night and fired me (even though he wasn’t my direct client). “I told you not to tell anyone the numbers.” “I didn’t” I said. “I just called the managers that gave me the numbers to check on their accuracy one more time. And they are accurate.” “But I told you not to talk to anyone. You’re done.”

Then I sent notes with all of the numbers to the CPO, one of the advisory board members, and the CSO’s coach. No one called me back, except their lawyer who wanted to ‘clear up a few loose ends.’ No idea what those were as I never took the calls.

So here are the most confounding thoughts:

1. this man is keeping the company’s ROI down dramatically because everyone is following his lead. The ROI would be SO much higher if they stopped attempting to get appointments (and throwing out the first 97.5% of their prospects) as their first contact;
2. no one knows this man is inflating the numbers by counting from an artificial beginning. Indeed, there were NO numbers to show how many calls were being rejected, how many times a sales person had to call (up to 15) to get an appointment, and how much time was being wasted.
3. the company has a horrific reputation in town for being abusive to their sales people – a truth that the CSO thought was funny: “Yup. I”ve heard that a lot myself. hehehehe.”
4. everyone colluded to maintain the status quo and stand behind this man. No one was willing to stand up to the CEO and offer the truth.
5. a whole system was built around doing sales his way: probably 40% more sales people were hired than were necessary, and they were losing market share and reputation. Buying Facilitation® would have given them a closing rate at least 400% more than the one they were currently experiencing.
6. this man was putting his ego needs above the company’s success.

The entire company’s ROI is a fraction of what it could be. And I was fired for speaking the truth. And the senior people in the company either don’t know, don’t care, or don’t realize they could be so much more successful. They certainly aren’t willing to do anything different because they were ‘meeting their numbers’.

How many times does this sort of thing happen to external consultants? They are the bearers of the Truth, and get let go because the company wants to maintain their secrets – at all costs. And what is the real cost here! To the companies, the consultants, to the people (customers and staff). Is there no way to circumvent these sorts of issues? And what has to be true for a company to prefer to be far less successful and maintain their status quo rather than change and be successful?

sd

To find out how you can make sure you have the skills/tools to get the highest ROI for your company, read sample chapters from my latest book and then buy it! And then call me (512-457-0246) so we can train your sales folks to close 40% of their lead population.

The Consultant as Whistleblower is a post from: SharonDrewMorgen.com

‘How are you currently training your sales folks?’ I asked.

“We’re not. We bring them together once a month, discuss product, and complain about not closing sales. And give each other advice.”

‘How is that working in terms of the results you’re getting? It must be working well or you wouldn’t be doing it.’ I continued.

“Sure. We’re doing our numbers, and have been reaching them consistently for years. So we’re fine.”

‘And, out of curiosity, what has stopped you from buying from Joe and actually adding some new skills training somewhere along the way?” I asked.

“My boss doesn’t believe it in. He says that we’re doing ok, and why fix something that isn’t broken. I’ve tried to convince him that we need some new skills, but he won’t hear of it. I got on the call this morning with you to see if you could call him and convince him.”

‘I can’t convince anyone – especially people who don’t think they have a need and see no problem with what they are doing. If he actively wanted to speak with me I could help him expand his range of choices. But first, I’m curious about why you’ve stayed in a relationship with Joe, and discussed the possibility of  hiring him to do a sales training with you if you knew you couldn’t buy any training from him,’ I said.

“We like each other. We’re in a relationship. Plus, you never know. We might get lucky.”

“And,” my client added, “I can tell he has a need, and I have the perfect solution, and I know they have money. I want to be there when his boss changes his mind.”

The Buyer Must Recognize A Need To Change

How many sales people are doing a ‘relationship’ sale, spending time learning about ‘need’ and ‘decision makers’, and pitching product, until the buyer ‘is ready’?  And then sitting and waiting, hoping the sale will close?

Using Buying Facilitation and Facilitative Questions, prospects can be led to recognize a need that they hadn’t recognized, or recognize the action steps they need to take en route to Excellence, or discover who else needs to  buy-in to choose a solution to purchase. A couple of generic examples taken out of their normal  sequencing:

How would you know when adding new skills would give you the results you deserve?

or

At what point would you consider adding new skills to the ones your folks are already using successfully?

Facilitative Questions, used correctly, might open up possibilities that didn’t originally occur to the prospect. But they are not using ‘convincing’ or any form of manipulation; they merely are a series of sequenced thinking guides that help the person recognize what they need to consider as they discover if new decisions are necessary.

Convincer strategies, charm, good information, and possible ‘need’ don’t help someone decide something different. And until someone recognizes the desire to have something they don’t, and the internal system/environment (the people, the way they run their business, etc.) is ready, willing, able to bring in something new, nothing will happen. No matter the need that we recognize. And ‘convincing’ is useless: we’ve tried for decades to ‘understand need’ and ‘be right’ and all it has gotten us is a 90% failure rate.

If Joe used Buying Facilitation, he could have facilitated a different conversation with his boss – and helped the boss work through any issues he had about what success might look like with additional skills. He even could have helped him work through his own ego issues (How would you know that an additional skill set would add to what you’re already doing so successfully, without compromising all of the hard work you’ve done?). But trying to convince, trying to offer rational details and reasons when the other person has their own version of reality, just doesn’t work.

Stop selling. Help the buyer decide how to buy based on their own mysterious criteria – not on the need you perceive that they have. It’s not about you or the need. It’s not about you understanding their criteria. It’s about you doing something totally different from selling: truly facilitating their own discovery of their buying criteria, and recognizing the elements they must address as they change. It’s a systems issue, not a need issue.

To learn more about facilitating buying decisions from the standpoint of the stages buyers must go through before a buying decision, go to: www.newsalesparadigm.com and see if anything there will help you learn more. As always, we’re here to answer your questions about how Buying Facilitation can be added to your sales skills and help you close more sales.

Also, have a look at this week’s posts. On a myriad of topics, the blog will give you the tools to do business with integrity.

A ‘Need’ Doesn’t Mean A Buying Decision is a post from: SharonDrewMorgen.com