We are all very familiar with the latter: that’s what sales handles so well. But sales does not handle the former at all:

• we are not there when buyers choose the Buying Decision Team, or the machinations of  how they will work together;
• we are not there when the powers that be decide it might actually be time to resolve a problem that has been working well-enough;
• we are not there when internal politics get into gear and people jocky for position in re a new initiative or resolving an historic problem;
• we are not there when the decision is made to either use a familiar provider, or go outside to seek a new one, or do nothing.

To give you some understanding of the order of the steps buyers go through to make the above decisions, think about a time when you decide to purchase a new car, or a new house (or a new something). The very first thing you did was NOT seek out a solution or a vendor. Let’s walk you through the process.

1. consider that maybe, just maybe, your current situation isn’t good enough. Just a thought.
2. take a look around at the ramifications of the existing situation vs what a different  solution would do to your status quo.
3. talk with your spouse, kids, friends – your Buying Decision Team. Is the status quo ok for a while longer? What would be important to consider in the decision: money? the time involved in figuring out a new solution? What do you do with the existing solution – keep it? get rid of it? how will you choose – do you need to do some research on the costs of having 2 solutions? And, what will go on with your daily lives when you decide to make a change? Is it a time issue? a money issue? a space issue? What is involved? And what criteria will be used to choose. What about the relationship issues involved? How does each member of the Buying Decision Team get weighted? involved? How do you know when you’ve got the right people in the team? How do you include those you’ve left out?
4. Figure out the costs (time, people, money, resource, political/relationship capital) in change. It’s easier to remain with the current situation – but is the status quo too costly? Is the cost too high to make a change? How do you and your decision team go about assessing your internal costs? And whose needs are weighted higher than others? How will you know when one of the Buying Decision Team members is resisting – and how do you all handle that?
5. Figure out all of the criteria that will have to be met to keep everyone happy. Everyone. Including your bank.
6. Once everyone has agreed to
   a. changing the status quo;
   b. the type of solution;
   c. the criteria that the change/solution must meet;
   d. the roles people will play in a purchase choice and adoption activities,

then it’s time to start researching solution choices and providers, get agreement for action from Buying Decision Team.

And this is where sales takes over. Not before.

OUR CURRENT STEPS MISS THE IMPORTANT DECISION FACTORS

Here is what is happening now — and you’ll see why it doesn’t work. Let’s again assume you’re buying a new car, and let’s assume a car sale is similar to other sales calls (a bit of poetic license, please):

1. car dealer contacts you to see if you need a new car. Invites you down to showroom to see the car, take you to lunch, sit down and chat with you, etc.
2. you have nothing better to do, and the showroom is near your work. You’re thinking of a zippy car for this time in your life. You visit during lunch. You get the whole schpiel – car details, price discussion, a few drinks.
3. you are excited – but you’re not sure if this car will be acceptable to your spouse. You sit down with your spouse to discuss your desire to get a new, zippy car.
4. spouse is not happy. Spouse wants to buy a vacation cottage with that money; you have an arguement. You decide to put it on the table for a few days and think about it.
5. lots of discussion. After three weeks of discussion and no agreement, you and your spouse haven’t gotten further. Your current car is ‘fine’ although with the kids gone you were hoping for something sportier. Your spouse reminds you of the grandkids that now live around the corner. Is there enough money to have two cars?
6. seller calls you. What’s up? Great price for the car if you want it. Want to come back in?

See the problem? We wouldn’t buy the way we sell – why do we think our prospects will? Why do we forget the basic facts about people? Why do we treat a problem/need as if it were an isolated event? Why haven’t we adopted new skills to help buyers manage their off-line, private, personal decisions, in the way we would need to for ourselves?

Why do we forget that just as we discuss decisions with family, our buyers discuss decisions with colleagues, and weigh several types of considerations (internal stability, balance of internal political/relationship/timing factors, maintainance of status quo) before they can even consider a new solution?

We forget that if they had found their situation terribly problematic they would have changed already. We forget that choosing our solution – like choosing the car to purchase – is the last thing that goes on in a buyer’s mind. We forget that sales doesn’t offer a different set of skills to help with the different set of decisions.

Think about it. How will you know when it’s time to add Buying Facilitation™ to your current skill set, and help buyers manage their behind-the-scenes decision issues before you sell? How will you know that learning an entirely new skill would sit comfortably with your current skill set and enhance your success?

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I’ve developed a new set of learning Accelerators for those folks seeking to put a toe in the water and just learn a few of the skills to add to their sales skills. Have a look.

And, of course, my newest book Dirty Little Secrets: why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell and what you can do about it will explain it all – and give you an intricate case study to follow each aspect of the decision making with Facilitative Questions to help influence the decisions. Enjoy.

The Steps to Buying: remembering the human element is a post from: SharonDrewMorgen.com

• dialogue with me,
• discover ways to partner,
• just chat about places to stay.

And the use and quality of Skype has made it all as simple and cheap as calling a friend in a different city.

IF WE TRUST EACH OTHER, WHY AREN’T WE CLOSING MORE?

With automatic ‘trust’ built in – we’re sort of family once we are connected – our conversations seem to flow smoothly: we’ve used Facebook, the net, and Twitter to discover who the other is, have determined whether and how we want to connect, what we can offer each other, and how to prepare. An off-handed comment about the person’s upcoming wedding, or a congratulatory mention of their new business venture compounds the trust.

Gone are the days of cold calling, running around the country to network, speaking at events for free just to collect business cards. I bet some folks out there don’t even remember when those were the only ways to get leads, other than the phone book.

So why aren’t we closing more?

Not only are we not closing more, we’re closing less.

What is going on?

What’s going on is that our relationships, communication, trust, and friendliness are not helping others reach the sorts of decisions necessary to close a deal.

CHANGE, SYSTEMS, AND BUY-IN

Before we look at what’s happening, let’s change the discussion for a moment to look at what needs to happen for any purchase to occur.

In order for someone to buy something other than a small personal item, there are several steps that must take place to get the necessary buy-in to move forward. The appropriate buy-in must be acquired from the right people and groups; the rules must be changed to allow for a new set of ‘givens’; vendors and business partners must agree; job descriptions must match up with the new jobs.

We tend to forget that all purchases are change management problems. And, because a problem is not an isolated event and has been maintained by the people and policies, rules and politics of the existent environment, there are systemic things that touch the solution that would be affected if a new solution were to enter.

So a new piece of software would seriously affect users, techies, internal consultants, and trainers; training for one group would affect all of the people who touch that group.

And systems prefer to maintain the status quo, even if it means maintaining failure. After all, it has been ‘good enough’ until now, and everything has bought-in to maintaining it as it is. In fact, our buyers would rather maintain their status quo regardless of what it is costing them, and regardless of the efficacy of our solution: no matter how much they will save with a new solution, it costs more overall to bring in something new.

Remember: If the buyer felt pain, or was ready to change, they would have done so already.

So until or unless the status quo will accept the addition of something new, and has the capability to manage in such a way that an addition will not create too much unregulated disruption, it will do nothing.

WHAT IT TAKES TO CLOSE A DEAL

Currently, our relationships through social networking haven’t included the agenda to help the Other recognize and manage the different sorts of buy-in necessary to change. But that doesn’t mean we can’t include that.

I was at a client site recently listening in on a sales call with a prospect who my client had been chatting with for months. It was a lovely call. Laughter, in-jokes, obvious rapport. They were introduced on LinkedIn; they tweeted each other daily. Yet nothing was going anywhere. I wrote a note in front of him, which he repeated:

We’ve been chatting for a while now. And the more I get to know you, the more I see the possibility of our working together somehow. What would you need to know about my solution to know if it would fit, and if your colleagues would be willing to consider adding something new to what they are already doing so well?

The conversation shifted. The man was happy to answer: We’re starting to go through the process of an M&A, and won’t be able to take on anything new for about a year. Can we revisit this in 6 months? At that time there will be new people on board (I might even be gone!), and I don’t know what the hierarchy will be, but we can discuss it.

There could be no buy in, no decision team, and most likely no purchase. Does that make you want to continue being ‘friends’ or end the ‘friendship’? Do you want to ask for a referral? How much time do you want to spend being ‘friendly’ vs closing a sale? And how will you know when/if it’s time to pull the plug, or ask the hard questions?

We’re in a new era. There are no rules – we’re making them up as we go along. So ask yourself:

• What do you want to get out of social media?
• How will you know that one person over another is a prospect?
• At what point is connecting enough, or do you want to connect only with potential prospects or partners?

The capability is in front of us. The choice is our as to what we want to do with it. We just have to remember that being friendly, evoking trusting ‘relationships’, having hundreds or thousands of friends, doesn’t make you a better seller.

What would you need to learn differently to add a new skill set to what you’re doing online, to help you help your ‘friends’ make their best decisions?

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Learn about Buying Facilitation®: Peruse this blog for articles on change management, the buying decision path, how buyers buy, and how to add Buying Facilitation® to your sales process.

Sharon Drew is a contributor to the new Entrepreneurial Selling program by RAIN Group. Registration is now open! Check it out Check it out here!

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

How does social networking help make the sale? is a post from: SharonDrewMorgen.com

“I WANT MY PANCAKES. YOU PROMISED WE WERE HAVING PANCAKES AND THAT WAS AN HOUR AGO AND I WANT THEM NOW!”

His Dad tried to calm him and asked him to be reasonable (something a very literal-minded Asperger’s sufferer defines differently than a ‘normal’ person). “Max. Your cousin is very ill. She may be dying. You’re going to have to be patient. We’ll get you the pancakes as soon as we can, but we’re all worried and waiting to hear from the doctor if she’s going to be live.”

“YOU PROMISED ME PANCAKES. I DON’T CARE IF SHE DIES. I WANT MY PANCAKES LIKE YOU PROMISED.”

Max proceeded to ‘have a melt down’, as it’s called in the Asperger’s world. (I personally call it ‘Having a loopy thing’ as it feels like I’m in a continuous visual/sensory/auditory loop of confusion and expectation that I can’t get out of and I have trouble breathing. Thanks to coaching and therapy, it now happens rarely.)

Later, as he was eating his pancakes, his Dad tried to explain to him about empathy, and that he owed his Aunt an apology for saying he didn’t care if his cousin died. To which Max replied: “Dad, are you mad at me because I have Asperger’s ?”

Of course, there is no simple answer to that question.

My ‘thing’ – and Aspies have a ‘topic’ they concentrate on – has always been systems: how people interact; how decisions get made; how mistakes happen; how families work; how communication works/doesn’t work. The good news is that with all of the years I’ve studied and developed my ideas, and all of the decades I’ve had coaching and therapy, I’m able to work with global corporations, and actually do some good in the world, albeit with a charming twist to my personality (I’m told. To me, it’s normal and I can’t figure out what is so unusual.).

As an Asperger’s sufferer, I don’t always know the ‘right’, or politically correct, thing to say. I have a set of time slots in my brain that everything gets compared with – so when I think  someone should have responded to an email I might write back to find out what’s going on (called pushy by some), but which feels reasonable if I’m not given any other timeline (Why people don’t just respond “Busy now. Will connect next week.” is beyond me.). I sometimes miss nuance, and take things too literally.  My speaking patterns are different from ‘normal’ folks, and I relate quite intensely and super-honestly.

When I was giving a speech recently, I began by saying that I had Asperger’s and folks might find my speaking patterns unusual, but if they could hang in, they’ve find my content thought-provoking, useful and visionary. And fun – I’m a lot of fun. My client came up to me afterwards and said that a handful of people came up to him saying that I was ‘needy’. “She told you she’s got Asperger’s. I found her charming, brilliant, and very authentic.”

I’ve had years of coaching, therapy, and group work to learn social skills, but I still have an ‘interesting edge’. Thankfully, it doesn’t seriously affect my ability to be professional, although it is noticable. With Bethlehem Steel once, the head of the group I’d worked with for 2 years was handing me off to another division head. I overheard the new guy ask my regular client: “Is she always like this?” to which my client replied. “Yes. And she’s wonderful. You will grow to love her.”

Over the years, I’ve been ignored, thrown out of groups, and walked away from, in situations where folks aren’t open to anything out of the ordinary (My clients are visionaries who relate to my brain and heart.). I’ve had wonderful meetings that turned to nothing as folks were uncomfortable with my communication differences. I’ve had people refuse to work with me, saying that I’m just different. When any of the above happen, I”m absolutely baffled. Sometimes I think that because my models are so challenging that folks use my style as an excuse to not have to consider something new.

Internally I can’t understand when or why or how I make some folks uncomfortable (and others not at all), or why when someone says ‘How are you?” I have to respond ‘fine’ even if that’s not true. (Why we ask each other how we are when we don’t want to know the answer is still a mystery to me.).

To be fair, I’ve also been given huge possibility and my brain has developed some truly creative/innovative stuff. And wonderful partners regularly move beyond their immediate comfort zone to think out-of-the-box with me becauses they easily trust my honesty and care. Because the same problem that causes my social issues gives me the ability to innovate and make a difference in the world.

I was deeply touched by Max’s question: are you mad at me because I have Asperger’s? Unfortunately for me – and for others who don’t fit into the norm – the answer is yes. Many of you are mad at me because I respond differently or ask unusual questions. But my world inside feels/looks different from other’s worlds. And I get very curious about things others don’t notice.

So the best I can do is find the right friends, colleagues, and clients who have open hearts, are seeking greater success and authenticity, and can  feel/hear/see and love me as I am – with or without the pancakes.

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

Asperger’s, Max, and Me is a post from: SharonDrewMorgen.com

That means your questions are biased, the answers are biased, and the data you get is such a small subset of the necessary data that precludes buying decisions that sellers end up making costly assumptions: they’ll close ‘soon,’ the buyer is a ‘hot prospect,’ for example. It makes it so difficult for sales managers to predict the real pipeline, and for sellers to know who to spend time with.

Think about it: when your baseline assumption is that just because you’ve ‘uncovered a need’ that you have a prospect, you have no idea who is really going to buy, or you would have closed a lot more business.

WHY IS YOUR STATUS QUO YOUR STATUS QUO?

A buying decision is based on so much more than need. Do you need to lose a few pounds and join a gym? Why haven’t you? Do you need to end a relationship? Why haven’t you? Do you need to get a new car? Why haven’t you?

When we assume that a discovered ‘need’ is a plausible reason to persue a prospect, you’re wasting a lot of time. What will you see when there is actually a prospect? You’ll see this:

• prospects realize there is no internal/familiar resource that can resolve the Identified Problem;
• the Buying Decision Team is ready, willing, and able to go through some sort of change management routine in order to bring in a different X (your solution);
• the political, relationship, strategic, political factors that have created and maintained the status quo have a route to change (i.e. bring in something new) without disruption.

If your buyer perceived that an Identified Problem was important, they would have fixed it already. Indeed, they probably have – they will undoubtedly already have some sort of work-around (see my discussion re work-arounds in my new book Dirty Little Secrets: why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell and what you can do about it.

Think about this when you are doing lead gen, or using social marketing, or prospecting. Just because your solution matches a need does not mean you have a prospect or buyer. Buying Facilitation™ is a change management model that helps buyers navigate through their behind-the-scenes decision issues. It’s not sales – sales comes afterwards. But it is a decision facilitation model to help influence just those things that buyers need to accomplish without you, and for which you sit and wait.

What would you need to believe differently to be willing to recognize that a buying decision gets made behind-the-scenes, separate from the match between your solution and their need? And how would you know that understanding their need is the last thing they need from you? Literally.

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Learn how to help buyers navigate through their internal decision issues.

A buying decision is based on more than need. is a post from: SharonDrewMorgen.com

A lot. But not what you think.

When I began talking about helping buyers buy in 1988, people thought I was a little nuts (and what does that have to do with anything?). I persisted, and finally, about 3 or4 years ago, people began using the phrase as if it had always been around.

But the term is not being defined as I’ve been using it: the definition I’ve been hearing is focused on getting buyers to make a purchase. My definition is a bit different. Well, OK. A lot different.

I’ve always believed that the time it takes buyers to come up with their own answers is the length of the buying decision. Their. Own. Answers.

What does that mean? Well, it doesn’t mean anything about their need – they can’t even fully articulate their need when we first meet them cuz it’s too early in their decision process. It means that buyers live in this tangle of people and policies and initiatives and vendors that actually create AND MAINTAIN their status quo. That’s right: the ‘problem’ that you think you can resolve is part of their system and is happy to be there, thank you very much. Or they would have resolved it already.

So we come in, waving our magic wands, telling them we can fix it. But they mostly don’t want us to. Or at least they don’t come back and buy, even though their need and our solution seem to be a fit. Why?

Because their tangle, their system, their stuff that maintains their need, is a complex system of craziness, and processes, and work-arounds that touch the need, and don’t want to be messed up.

BUYERS MUST MANAGE INTERNAL CHANGE BEFORE CHOOSING A SOLUTION

Before buyers can buy they have to help this tangle agree to change: that’s where they go when they say “I’ll call you back.” And we haven’t had the ability to go there with them. Because sales doesn’t do that: sales is a product/service placement model – not a decision facilitation model. All of the information gathering we do is in service to placing our product to manage their need. We don’t touch the lion’s share of what the buyer must do to be ready to buy.

In fact, the very last thing that a buyer does is make a product purchase. First they must make sure there is buy-in from all of the people and elements that touch the problem, and make sure that there is a behind-the-scenes approach to change. Buyers won’t resolve their problem with our solution until everything in their companies lines up and agrees.

It’s not a buying decision; it’s change management.

That brings me to Buying Facilitation™. Buying Facilitation™ is a decision facilitation model that sellers use to help buyers maneuver through the internal systems issues that they must address so they can get buy-in to change (and bringing in a solution is change) AND THAT OFTEN HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH NEED.

It helps with those meetings our prospects have with their other vendors. Or the new partners who want to resolve the problem in a different way.

Using sales, we cannot influence those off-line meetings. But Buying Facilitation™ helps buyers do that. But it’s NOT SALES.

You know how to sell. You just don’t know how to help buyers buy. Are you ready to do something different?

How would you know that adding a new skill set to what you’re currently doing would give you the results you deserve?

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What Is Buying Facilitation®? is a post from: SharonDrewMorgen.com

But what, exactly, does that mean?

Since I suspect there is a good chance I was the person who first put those particular words together – especially in the sales field – I’d like to offer my definition.

Sales manages the solution placement end of the buying decision. It does a good job gathering data about needs, sharing data about products and solutions, and creating trusting relationships.

But it doesn’t handle the offline issues that buyers have to manage before they can buy.

What happens when the guy from the other department shows up with his favorite vendor who can handle a portion of what you want to resolve? How ’bout that new initiative that proclaims no new vendors? What about the tech team that wants to do it on their own? Or the new director who wants to be involved with everything, and doesn’t like your prospect?

We’ve sat and waited while our customers figure this stuff out.

We’d like to think that the strength of our solution and our relationship management will rule the day. But given our 10% (or less) closing ratios, we know that we’re missing a piece and out of control far more frequently than we’d like to think.

Decision Facilitation

There is actually a string of things that buyers need to address before they make a buying decision. I developed a decision facilitation model that I’ve named Buying Facilitation™ that leads the buyer (and their decision teams) through their path of unknowable stuff they need to address before they can choose a solution.

Unfortunately, it’s not stuff we can control. On the face of it, it’s stuff that has nothing to do with our solution. We’ve never been taught an additional set of skills to help buyers maneuver through the sorts of decisions around people and policies, rules or relationships, that only reside in their culture, and are often pretty personal in nature.

Mostly the stuff they need to figure out seems to have absolutely nothing to do with their need or our solution. It’s in-fighting, or historic stuff that has been hanging around out of everyone’s control.

It is possible to facilitate the entire range of systems-based, internal, offline decisions that buyers need to make before they are able to make a purchase. Until there is buy-in from the relevant stakeholders, or the rules are changed, or the budget gets freed up, or the internal vendor realizes they don’t have time, buyers will do nothing.

Once we take off our ‘sales’ hat, and recognize the necessity to lead buyers through the untangling of the junk they have to manage first, we can use our decision facilitation skills to help buyers manage change first.

The Buying System

Buyers live in a ‘system’ that is a culture, that maintains its status quo with every purchase, every hire, every rule, every initiative. Until or unless they can get buy in from all of the elements that touch the ‘need’ that your product can resolve – even if they have nothing whatsoever to do with need -  and until or unless they can be assured that anything new will not upset their system, they will take no action. That means relationships with other departments need to be resolved, or old partners need to be thrown out of the picture.

This is where buyers go when we wait. But we don’t have to wait. Figure out the rules and roles that need to buy in to change. Help your buyer think through the route they need to take through these issues. Once they figure out how to bring together the right people, manage the right issues that got them in the predicament to begin with, bend a few arms, and influence some of their bosses, they’ll be able to buy.

They have to do this anyway – with you or without you. We sit and wait for them to do it anyway. We might as well help.

But one huge caution: you’ll never understand that relationship, or why that rule is there, or how that initiative is creating problems – so don’t enter attempting to understand. Save that for sales.

Your job is to do decision facilitation: facilitating the bringing together of all of the internal, offline elements that need to buy in to change so they can purchase your product. It is not a sales skill. But it is the precursor to your buyer making a buying decision.

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If you’d like me to write a White Paper for you on understanding the decision issues your buyers face, please email me at sharondrew@newsalesparadigm.com.

Or have a look at my book Buying Facilitation:the new way to sell that inluences and expands decisions. Click here for two free chapters. It will teach you how to understand and manage the route through the internal decision process. Will it help you make a sale? Maybe. Maybe not. But it sure will help you make a client.

Decision Facilitation: Influencing The Offline Decisions is a post from: SharonDrewMorgen.com

As we enter the new year, one of the problems that I know so many of you face is ensuring that your change situations get implemented. I have some thoughts on how to employ Buying Facilitation to help.

When something new enters a system, it challenges the status quo (especially a person’s internal status quo), and folks resist. When we bring in a new technology, or reorganize jobs and job descriptions, etc. we must ensure
that the change we request gets adopted and accepted head-to-heart – from the person’s belief level.

Using Buying Facilitation, I could develop a piece of software called
Facilitating Change: creating Buy-In to enhance full participation from
inception through implementation.

Since Buying Facilitation is really a Decision Facilitation model, and
I’m already developing a bit of software for sellers, no reason I
couldn’t expand this to the general population.

What are you folks using now to help you implement change from the inside out – from the beliefs TO the behavior?

Implementing Change From Inception is a post from: SharonDrewMorgen.com