I’m having such a hard time titling my new book. I’m writing a new book that brings Buying Facilitation into mainstream thinking to be one of the solutions for the problems that sales folks are facing in this economy.

For those of you who have been following my work, you know how I feel about conventional sales (i.e. all sales as we’ve known it): because the basic sales model is based on placing product (ok, ok, on discovering need, making nice, finding a solution…. but net net placing product, right!?) and the underlying systems issues don’t get managed, sales is an outside-in model. And systems spend so much time rejecting anything from the outside, that sales only closes appx 7% (from first call.  And for those of you who think you close, say, 15% (from first prospecting call), you STILL waste 85% of your time!!!).

What this means is that sales doesn’t give sellers the ability to manage all of the different people/roles/rules/politics, etc. that created and maintain the Identified Problem to begin with, and until those issues are managed, no purchase will take place. btw this is where clients go when they say ‘i’ll call you back’. But sales hasn’t been able to follow them there, or know what’s going on. Buying Facilitation manages all that.

Anyway, with this economy, buyers have no idea how to say ‘yes’ because there are new stakeholders and decision makers, edicts going around saying that all non-essential purchases are to wait,  and everyone feels comfortable just saying NO. So they use their old work-around, aren’t buying anything, and don’t know how to decide to do anything different cuz the ramifications are too high.

Enter Buying Facilitation. When sellers learn how to truly, truly serve their buyers by learning a new skill of truly helping them manage all of their internal systems decisions and use their knowledge and care (and skills they learn as part of Buying Facilitation) to support all of the internal buying decisions, they can resposition themselves a true Consultants. So instead of trying to sell product now, use this time to get onto the Buying Decision Team and either help new decisions get made or be there when the decisions get made.

But the skill, the outcome, the goal, and the job, are different from sales.

SO: my model is now an idea whose time has come, but it’s not positioned in the mainstream. How can I title this book so that the Visionaries and the CSR people and the paradigm busters still have interest AND I garner the interest of the mainstream sellers?

And, will sellers ever admit that what they are now doing – the skills they possess, and the outcomes they seek – are moot in this economy? If indeed they ever were valid (Buying Facilitation has a 35-40% close rate, with a 50% reduction in sales cycle, and a 30% increase in prospects in the pipeline). And I have tests on all this…

Call me. I think it’s time for sales to change. And I’ve got the tools to do it.