Here is a story from a client in Australia.

Jack was the MD of the Sydney office of his firm, with his supervisor living in the States. He was successful, and left to his own devices much of the time, but needed his superior for large out-of-budget decisions.

One day he decided that if the company manufactured a new tool, that there would be a huge savings and would address the lagging market share. He spent a month looking around, and found a tool manufacturer in Germany. The sales rep and engineer flew from Berlin down to Sydney (a loooong bus ride) and started designing this tool. Over the course of a year, they all met 3 times (Are you calculating the costs yet for these trips?). Once he had the tool in hand, my client flew to the States (Are you still calculating travel costs??) to talk to his boss. The conversation didn’t take long.

“A new tool? Looks great. We’ve been trying to figure out how to tackle the market-share problem, and we think we’ve come up with several ideas. We’re going to try these – roll them out and follow them. And if we don’t have the success we think we’ll have, I’ll give you a call and we can talk about this new tool. Give me about 2 years to roll out and trial everything we’re already thinking of.”

But there is another way this might have happened that would have been more successful – and cheaper.

First, from the German manufacturing folks:

BERLIN: You want a new tool? What would you want it to give you that you don’t already have now? And what has stopped you from creating one yourselves? How would you and your Buying Decision Team know that this tool would give you the results you seek?

NOTE: these few Facilitative Questions would have gotten everyone on track, and saved the guys a lotta money traveling down to Sydney — and gotten the MD on the phone to his boss before moving ahead on anything. Like other sales folks, they assumed they had a buyer. They merely had a prospect: the buyer did not know how to line up his ‘team’ around a buying decision. And it had nothing whatsoever to do with the solution, the price, the need, or the relationship.

Next, let’s look at it from the ‘client’s’ viewpoint and see how he could have mitigated the situation before spending an expensive year. Not only would he have known that it wouldn’t be possible, but he actually might have shifted the possibility.

MD: Hi Steven. I have a question: How are you and the Board currently thinking about increasing market share? I have an idea that includes a new piece of equipment and would differentiate us at very little cost. How would you all know that something like that is worth considering? What would you need to see from me? And how would you and the Board want to own the solution so it could ‘come from you’ seemlessly without the other MDs feeling I went over their heads?

There are always political problems between the ranks that are part of the system that keeps the status quo in place. Folks have to figure out how to manage these so that when they decide on solutions, the internal  political issues don’t get knocked out of shape. This exchange would have not only opened the possibility of a new solution, but managed the internal issues – and all before any trips or time or cost. And it could have taken place on the phone or on a video call.

For some reason, we always have our sales radar ON: is there a need? what is the problem that we can resolve? We listen and ask through biases, and only focus on how our solution can be used. We forget that it’s merely one part of what needs to get done. And it’s now possible to help buyers do the stuff they’ve always struggled with: get their entire buying decision team in place so they can figure out if they want to move forward to fix a problem that your solution can resolve. Until they figure out how to do this, they will do nothing. And your solution will never be bought. Would you rather sell? or have someone buy?

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It’s not about your solution, folks. That’s the last thing that happens. The system must first decide to do something different. And you can have a bit of control by using Buying Facilitation™ before sales.

The Decisions Before Selling is a post from: SharonDrewMorgen.com

Coaches lose at least 50% of their clients after the first round of coaching. Just like sellers, coaches blame the clients.Where do the clients go? They weren’t ready to change/buy; they maintained their status quo; they used a competitor.

But that’s not the problem. The problem is that the coaching model (and here I’m going to buck the conventional wisdom) merely works within the bias of both coach and client, in the same way that placing a solution and asking information-gathering questions works within the bias of the seller’s bias and ability to fix a problem with their solution.

THERE IS A DIFFERENT APPROACH WITH DIFFERENT RESULTS POSSIBLE

I understand that coaches – like sellers – pride themselves on understanding, wanting to help, caring, and being professional. I’ve spoken and met with dozens of coaches, from all levels of expertise and price – from $300 to $3,000 an hour – and I’ve noticed the same problem: coaching gathers data about ‘the problem’ so the coach can understand and then ‘lead’ the client to an answer.

Make no mistake: once someone is gathering data, the questions are biased. As a result, the responses will be biased.

But change isn’t based on information, and we don’t decide to change because we offer or hear cogent, rational data. Until or unless anyone is able to make internal changes that their current system (that currently holds the need or problem) is willing to adopt, no change will happen. And change rarely starts with a shift in behavior; change begins once there is a belief or values shift internally: then the behavior shifts accordingly.

Say you smoke and want to stop. If you really understand – I mean REALLY understand – that smoking is unhealthy (and you’d have to be living under a rock not to understand this by now), you would have stopped already. The fact that you haven’t means there is a much larger issue than a rational or behavioral issue.

What is causing you to continue? Why do you want to stop? What happened when you tried before?  Those aren’t the relevant issues. The most relevant issue is Who Are You. If you don’t see yourself as a Healthy Person, you may have a belief set that allows smoking to be a bad habit, or an indulgence, or something you deserve, or that you – like your grandfather-who-smoked-all-his-life-and-lived-til-100 – won’t be affected by it.

CHANGE HAPPENS FIRST AT THE BELIEF LEVEL – IT’S NOT BEHAVIOR BASED

Coaching skills, as they are trained in the U.S. today, do not manage Belief Change. I have run coaching sessions with heads of the top coaching schools to show them the difference between what they are training and how to use decision facilitation skills to actually help change take place. They were all mightily impressed. One of them said she got more out of 45 minutes with me than her own coach after 2 months of working on the same issue.

But they all ended with the same comments: “This is so different from what we’re teaching we’d have to revamp some of our programs and we’re not prepared to do that.” Ah. Another paradigm I’ll need 20 years to shift! There aren’t enough years left!

Hopefully, you will read some of my books and learn some of the decision facilitation material to help your clients or your friends or your staff. The baseline beliefs are the same as sales:

1. until or unless people are ready, willing, and able to recognize and manage all of the internal systems issues that have created and maintain their status quo, permanent change is not possible. That means they must address many of their unconscious issues, and regular questions only get to the conscious responses (vs. Facilitative Questions that get to the unconscious).
2. information does not create a new decision to change. Change happens when the internal systems issues that maintain the status quo are able to agree with a change, and make room for it internally in a way that will enable the system to maintain congruence.
3. the sorts of change that clients – buyers or coachees – seek require some form of internal change before anything new can be added to the internal system of behaviors. It’s necessary for their to be belief changes and systems buy-in as a precursor to behavior change.
4. Behaviors change once the underlying system has room for something new and is assured it won’t self-destruct if it changes.

The person smoking would need to become a Healthy Person before quitting smoking – change at the endemic, systems, Identity level, not merely behavior. Learn how to lead your buyer or your coachee through the decision phases that will allow them to change from the inside out (see Dirty Little Secrets – half of the book is about how change happens). THEN you can gather data and offer your wonderful solution.

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Coaching does not have to be like sales is a post from: SharonDrewMorgen.com

As we approach prospects, we end up pushing against their ‘system’ that is ‘relatively ok’  (or it would have changed already) and doesn’t wish to be disturbed until it is assured that anything new will not cause permanent disruption – something they must come to terms with themselves and has nothing to do with their need or our solution.

As a result, sales folks have to suffer the indignities of rejection caused by us showing up with the right solution at the wrong time, determined by the way the sales model itself is structured. To manage this rejection, and because we see an obvious match between their ‘need’ and our solution and believe it’s the right time to involve ourselves, we have developed work-arounds to ‘get in’ and get heard, get seen, get liked. We push against the system as we

• send introductory letters to ‘grease the wheel’ for our prospecting calls,
• network to get to know prospects better so they will like us (and buy our solution),
• meet face-t0-face to prove our professionalism (so they will like us and buy our solution),
• learn opening, closing, gatekeeper, objection-handling techniques,
• finely hone our shining personalities and brilliant persuasion techniques,

all because we unaware of  the stage buyers are at within the change management issues in their internal buying decisions – and then complain about the rotten results we’re getting.

In reality, if buyers wanted to be different, they would have done something different already! But before they take action now, they must go through internal stuff that we can’t understand or see or even be a part of because we are outsiders. And sales doesn’t give us a GPS system to help buyers manuever through their own trip.

The most curious part for me is why sales folks fight to continue these often-useless activities. As I have been introducing decision facilitation and Buying Facilitation™ into the field for decades I have been hoping the field would say “YiPEE – I can ADD some new skills to what I’ve been doing and BUYERS WILL BUY MORE AND FASTER.” But instead for 20 years folks have fought for the right to do what they’ve always done and get a 90% failure rate.

Why is it such a struggle to want to change when there is such a tiny success ratio? I guess we are so used to the struggle that it has become our nature. We’re doing what our buyers are doing: choosing the status quo rather than change.

I wonder.  Sometimes I take responsibility thinking that I haven’t been clear enough with my model – although in my new book I think I finally am – see a review.

Sometimes I think the centuries of sales have just reached a concretized form that will never change.

And yet, over the years, dozens and dozens of companies have hired me, and the field is now finally talking about the ideas I’ve espoused (we now commonly speak of  ‘buying decisions’ and ‘decision facilitation’ and ‘buying patterns’ and ‘buying criteria’ – all phrases I coined decades ago) so I know it’s possible and remain ever hopeful.

Our jobs are only difficult because sales focuses on solution placement and leaves buyers to figure out the route through change on their own. We can help – but not with the sales model. I hope my new book Dirty Little Secrets and my Buying Facilitation™ model will help you manage the front end of the buying decision process.

It really, really doesn’t have to be this difficult. Contact my client Peter Casebow and ask him how we brought his sales to a one year, 3 meeting sales cycle, to a 3 call, 3 week close. But they weren’t using sales to do this.

Let’s make it easier. Let’s stop trying to sell, and really support the buyer’s buying.

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Listen to Sharon Drew Morgen speak on MaestroConference on Oct. 14 at 12P.M. PST

Check out my new book coming out October 15: Dirty Little Secrets: why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell and what to do about it. Read two free chapters. Sign up for presales deals, and announcements.

Or have a look at my book Buying Facilitation: the new way to sell that influences 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, and is meant to be read alongside of the new book, Dirty Little Secrets.

How Does Sales Make Our Job Harder? is a post from: SharonDrewMorgen.com