Buying Enablement: the missing piece in Revenue Enablement

What if

• you could find real prospects early in their Buying Journey?
• you could discover non-buyers immediately while leading real prospects efficiently through their Buy Side steps?
• none of this involves sales, product details, need, or pitch?

How can you promote buying without “sales, product details, need, or pitch”? I believe that by relying on these concepts exclusively you close less sales than you deserve given your efforts and the quality of your solution.

I suggest that by adding new thinking and tools that facilitate and enable buying from the Buy Side – wholly different from Sales Enablement that facilitates the Sell Side – you’ll not only find people on route to becoming buyers, but you can help them be ready to close. Let me explain.

SELL SIDE VS BUY SIDE

All current technology in Sales Enablement, marketing, and ABM is biased toward the Sell Side with a focus on finding, enabling, and engaging folks with an assumed need to ultimately make a purchase. But we overlook an audience of potential prospects 50% larger; our current tools overlook the differences in goals, steps, considerations, decisions, and activity that occur as people try to resolve a problem on the Buy Side.

Sure, we track ‘buying’ but, generally, only in terms of product sale – the Sell Side – and overlook the change management activities that people must address before they’re even buyers.

People don’t start off wanting to buy anything, merely resolve their problem at the least ‘cost’ to their system. They begin by figuring out how to congruently manage change.

Indeed, a buying decision is a change management issue well before it’s a solution choice issue. Because sales tools are aimed at how sales and marketing define ‘buying’ and only apply to the Sell Side, folks in the process of possibly becoming buyers but aren’t there yet, won’t heed our messages trying to sell them anything.

Until people understand the entire fact pattern of what and who’s involved and know what any change means to them, they can’t have a full understanding of a need. They certainly don’t read unsolicited marketing material or take appointments, regardless of a need or the efficacy of a solution.

But take heart! By holding off on conventional sales and marketing until these folks are self-identified as buyers, there’s a way to not only find them but facilitate them through the process they must manage, making it easier for them to buy and for us to sell: those who would never buy fall out, those who become buyers will do so faster, and their names can be handed over to Sales Enablement, ABM, or a sales professional as real prospects.

MY JOURNEY AS A BUYER

As a million-dollar producer on Wall Street in the 70s, I thought buyers were incongruent. We called them ‘stupid buyers’ because they didn’t ‘understand’ what we believed they needed.

In 1983 I became a tech entrepreneur in London and recognized the problem I had had as a seller: Before I could buy anything, I had stuff to do internally that had nothing to do with making a purchase. I certainly wouldn’t consider buying anything until I had no other options. To resolve my problems, I had to

• understand the full problem set by hearing everyone’s thoughts on how they were affected and what they considered a solution;
• try available fixes to resolve the problem internally;
• understand the ‘cost’ of doing something different;
• get buy-in from those who would connect with the solution;

and, once I understood what the change would entail, determine if the problems were worth fixing. Obviously if a fix caused more problems than leaving things as they were, it wasn’t worth solving. But we couldn’t know that until the end of our considerations. Honestly, I didn’t even understand my real ‘needs’ until I had done all of the above.

There seemed to be unknown implications in doing anything different, necessary to take into account beforehand. I certainly hadn’t realized how much disruption was involved, that making any change (all problem-solving involves change) had to be first considered via thoughtful change management assessments and buy-in, to make sure we ended up ‘butter side up’.

Eventually we fixed some of our problems internally. Indeed, I didn’t start off wanting to buy anything, merely wanting to fix problems as simply and congruently as possible. Buying anything was the very last thing on my mind. Last thing.

CASE STUDY

After leaving my company I became an author of the first NYTimes Business Bestseller on sales (Selling with Integrity) and inventor of Buying Facilitation® that taught sales professionals how to facilitate the Buy Side change management process – the process the sales model ignored because it had little to do with ‘need’ or solution placement.

‘Need’ is a big one in sales; it’s assumed if need can be ascertained, the person should buy. Yet there’s a case to be made that ‘need’ is not necessarily a precursor to buying. Here’s an example of a client with a need who ended up not buying because of what it would ‘cost’ to change.

Years ago I ran a pilot Buying Facilitation® training at Proctor and Gamble, in hopes that if successful I could train the other 15,000 sales folks.

The program was tremendously successful – 15% increase over the control group’s 2% which in this instance potentially increased sales by billions of dollars annually. Good, right? But the ‘costs’ ended up being higher than they wanted to ‘spend’. To implement Buying Facilitation® internationally, they’d need to

1. bring in new machinery to manufacture products faster,
2. get more trucks and drivers to transport products to outlets faster,
3. pay more shipping and air rate costs,
4. reorganize their management structure,
5. bring in more assistants, customer service reps, etc.

They calculated it would cost almost $2,000,000,000 (That’s billion.) and take years to recoup, not to mention explain it to their shareholders.

It had never occurred to me to consider what the ‘cost’ of success would be for them. Neither did they. My client said if she’d realized how much more they’d sell and how much faster, she wouldn’t have done the pilot. Confounding.

In this case, they needed the training and loved both me and my ‘solution’ but couldn’t handle the cost of the change. Need, as I learned, had little to do with buying and is actually quite subjective. And outsiders can never factor the private equation.

CHANGE MANAGEMENT BEFORE SELLING

As an entrepreneur I was responsible to staff, solution, and clients. I had to address problem solving as a change management issue and make sure all voices were heard and everyone bought into change.

But as a seller, I never considered the point of view of change. Everything I did, created, or thought was on the Sell Side. I was taught product knowledge, how to listen for a way ‘in’ so I could mention my solution in their context, pose questions that implied a need, start a ‘relationship’ so they’d like me, and assume every ‘need’ or ‘problem’ should be resolved with my solution. As if the Sell Side were the only side.

But how much time I wasted finding and seeking ways to influence folks who weren’t, and might not ever be, buyers! Creating marketing materials to entice would-be buyers who were in process but not ready – certainly not eager to read unsolicited articles on something they didn’t yet know they couldn’t handle themselves.

And how much opportunity I overlooked facilitating would-be buyers to more efficiently figure out what they had to figure out so they would be ready to buy. My ‘Sell Side Only’ practices restricted my audience to those who already considered themselves buyers.

There’s a much larger group of would-be prospects who are not-yet buyers, and won’t be reached with sales assumptions:

1. those still trying to resolve their problem internally;
2. those with a problem they don’t want to resolve (now);
3. those seeking different solutions or from different vendors;
4. those you’ve mistranslated when they respond to your questions and don’t even have a need.

I now finally understood why buyers seemed so stupid: they weren’t even buyers! All those years assuming my solution, ‘relationship’, and marketing materials would convince, influence, or encourage when I could have been using an additional tool kit to lead them efficiently through their change before trying to sell them anything! We’ve overlooked a potentially lucrative audience.

THE STEPS OF CHANGE

I eventually unpacked each step I took during my decision and buy-in process so I could duplicate the route I took as I became a buyer myself.

Turned out my change management process had 13 steps from which I developed Buying Facilitation® for sales, and trained over 100,000 sales folks globally with an average 40% close rate (against the control group’s 5.4%). But these same steps are markers for marketers as well.

Here are the main elements of the 13 step change management path all people go through before they identify as buyers or even understand their needs:

• Recognize a problem
• Gather the full complement of stakeholders to understand the full fact pattern that caused and maintains the problem
• Figure out how to fix the problem with available resources
• Understand the downside, the ‘cost’, of making a change
• Get the buy in from the stakeholders to agree to the change
• Agree on the criteria that an external solution must meet
• Choose a solution that will match their criteria.

If you remember times you bought something, you didn’t begin with the purchase, but could have used help figuring out what you had to figure out – so much of it unknown until the end.

Since the time it takes folks to complete their process is the length of the sales cycle, why not help them? While we wouldn’t be able to sell them anything until the process is complete, we would be selling our services and inspiring trust, and be there as real relationship managers and trusted advisors when they more quickly become buyers. Certainly a competitive advantage.

I suggest it’s time to add technology and new thinking in both sales and marketing to enable the Buy Side to

• find and help people going through change in the area the solution can benefit,
• efficiently lead them through their steps to problem-solve and make decisions,
• gather the right set of stakeholders to involve at each step,
• offer the best available knowledge so each step will explore the cost – and resolution – of the change.

By adding a change management component to marketing and ABM (Buying Enablement), it’s possible to

• recognize non-buyers immediately, and disengage,
• lead would-be buyers through their next steps efficiently,
• understand where, exactly, people are along their 13 step change management/Buying Decision Path,
• efficiently and very quickly lead those who will be buyers through their core change decisions to the point of being ready to buy,
• build trusting relationships through helpful content,
• create a competitive advantage as you truly serve,
• pass the names of real prospects over to sellers and/or sales enablement to do the sales job.

Selling and Buying are two different activities. Let’s develop two different outreach and facilitation processes that work together to efficiently find, engage, and enable real buyers.

BUYING ENABLEMENT AND SALES

In addition to my Buying Facilitation® model that teaches the process of change facilitation to sales folks, I have developed Buying Enablement for marketing to lead folks efficiently through their steps and then hand over names of in-target buyers to Sales Enablement and ABM for the Sell Side.

In other words, help those on route to buying do what they need to do anyway and stop wasting resource following and pushing content to folks you think SHOULD buy but aren’t yet ready. Then hand over real names to SE and sales.

Buying Enablement enters through marketing to facilitate each change management step on the Buy Side, helps would-be buyers become buyers efficiently, then hands off names of real prospects to sales. Of course search analytics can be used, but they will include new terms and timing. The process addresses these points:

• Finding people getting ready to, or in the process of, working internally to resolve a problem that your solution could resolve;
• Noting specific markers to send specific content;
• Helping uncover elements that caused and maintains the problem;
• Facilitating the recognition, incorporation, and buy-in of all stakeholders;
• Diagnosing and resolving the actual ‘cost’ of change to the system;
• Finding a workaround or simple fix where possible;
• Determining sales add-ons – sales enablement, Buyer Personas – to move the activity over to sales.

Buying Enablement makes the Buy Side more efficient. Here’s what I offer:

• Buy Side training: For both sales, marketing, and customer service professionals to understand the profound differences between the Buy Side and the Sell Side so all can work in tandem going forward.
• Data gathering/report: To understand specifically how your specific buyers buy, I’ll speak with several current buyers to discover

a.   the timing, activity, search, people, and constraints during each stage of problem solving and change management;
b.   what they do and when to understand the full problem set. Includes people, relationship, history, and policy issues and snags encountered;
c.   patterns of (external) factors that bias problem maintenance and resolution, and cause resistance;
d.   the possible workarounds and range of solutions they’re considering to resolve the problem and how they fare;
e.   understand their risks in bringing in something new and how that affects people, policies and solution choices;
f.     the times they go online to research each stage and the search terms they use at each stage and why.

I recommend my book Dirty Little Secrets: why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell to better understand each step on the Buy Side.

• Marketing tools, article ideas, and Buyer Personas for each stage. I will suggest best practices and offer article titles along each step, to get folks the knowledge to do what they need to do. Ardath Albee will design Buyer Personas that lead people through each change management stage. With this full tool kit you’ll know

a.   where prospects are in the buy-cycle,
b.   the job titles of those involved,
c.   have a line between marketing -> content -> sales,
d.   offer titles so marketing can personalize the best content for each stage,
e.   be relevant to the specific needs of your audience.

• Digital App: My ‘The Decider’ app can be populated with the knowledge learned from the Report to

a.   efficiently lead folks through their decision phases if they need help;
b.   digitally lead site visitors to the pages with data they need from your site and/or your company,
c.   use with sellers in Deal Rooms,
d.   discover which stage of a change decision they’re at to make sure the best content is sent out to them at the right time.

• Footers: Since they’re not yet buyers, we must be careful how solution details are offered. Ardath Albee can tie the right words, tone, style, and voice to ensure buyers are engaged personally.
• Connect with Sales Enablement: This process will produce probable buyers to hand over to sales and Sales Enablement and continue outreach throughout the length of the customer life cycle.

With our close ratios dropping, and more money being spent to engage it’s time to begin adding Buying Enablement to marketing and Buying Facilitation® to sales. Is it solution related? Nope. But people must do all these things before they’re buyers anyway. We might as well help them.

_____________________________

Sharon-Drew Morgen is a breakthrough innovator and original thinker, having developed new paradigms in sales (inventor Buying Facilitation®, listening/communication (What? Did you really say what I think I heard?), change management (The How of Change™), coaching, and leadership. She is the author of several books, including the NYTimes Business Bestseller Selling with Integrity and Dirty Little Secrets: why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell). Sharon-Drew coaches and consults with companies seeking out of the box remedies for congruent, servant-leader-based change in leadership, healthcare, and sales. Her award-winning blog carries original articles with new thinking, weekly. www.sharon-drew.com She can be reached at sharondrew@sharondrewmorgen.com.

Sharon Drew Morgen October 18th, 2021

Posted In: News

Don’t You Realize Selling Doesn’t Cause Buying?

Until relatively recently, the United States Post Office (USPO) was a universal communication hub. It delivered birthday greetings and Dear John letters (For you youngsters, those were break-up notes – like you use text these days, only nicer.). It transported legal letters, work agendas, and Christmas gifts. It was how we moved information and communication between people and places.

Now we use the internet and social media for most of our communication. And the USPO? It became a relic of a time never to return, used now to send commercial ads and fliers, inundating us, invading us, with the originator’s needs to push data, separate from our need to utilize it. Superfluous to our lives, we discard these, even if the products they’re introducing are respectable.

SALES NO LONGER NEEDED FOR BUYERS TO BUY

The sales model is drifting down the same route. Until relatively recently, sales was universally accepted as a support and service model, representing expertise and products buyers needed. Sellers used their skill and product knowledge to help resolve problems; prospects actually sought meetings to get help figuring out how to improve their environments. And certainly, sellers knew their competition well and positioned themselves accordingly.

Those standards no longer apply.

• People can now choose our solutions without any involvement from us: much of the information buyers need is immediately accessible online – our websites, content marketing, and outreach efforts thoroughly explain our offerings, making a seller’s product knowledge expendable.
• Outside agencies – Google, social media – rate us independently, without our input, enabling customers to share their experiences of our products, accuracy aside.
• Our global competitors are at our door, at the touch of a button and shipped in days, often with lower prices.
• Buying decisions get made amongst large groups of stakeholders, some residing in other countries, often with no direct involvement with day to day operations and certainly well outside our scrutiny or touch points.

The sales model as we’ve known it has gone the way of the USPO – largely irrelevant; buyers now have a more extensive buying decision path that defies our standard practices, guaranteeing much is out of a seller’s control.

And yet we continue using the same prism to sell through, the same techniques we used in earlier times, even though our closing rates, now less than 5% for face-to-face and 0.0059% of tech-based sales, consistently decline. Our decades-long focus of placing solutions merely finds the low hanging fruit.

Here are some sales techniques we use that are problematic to the buying experience:

• Pushing, offering, promoting content is secondary until all the right people are on board there’s agreement they can’t resolve the issue internally, and  any change issues/downsides that a new incoming solution will cause are addressed. Constant receipt of our marketing outreach becomes annoying and we’re blocked and ignored, regardless of the efficacy of our solutions.
• Gathering information is useless if offered before all stakeholder agreement. Our questions, biased by our need to match what we guess might be their requirements to our solutions, have little relevance to the complexities of their problem (that we cannot fully understand, as outsiders) and the intricacies of what a chosen solution must include. People buy only what is agreeable to the full set stakeholders (who we can never know, as outsiders); resolving their problem is secondary to staying stable or they would have resolved it already. Net net, they won’t have accurate answers to our questions.
• Our research into demographics and need doesn’t necessarily find buyers. Sure, we can uncover ‘target markets’ that would have a propensity to be buyers. But they’re not opening our correspondence and not open to connecting until they are ready, willing, able to become a buyer – someone who has addressed all complexities of bringing in a new solution and has gotten agreement from all internal stakeholders. Continuing to base our research and dissemination on our product assures we only close the low hanging fruit. Because a buying decision is a change management issue before it’s a solution choice issue, we can add the ability to facilitate buying to our goals and reach/convert a larger number of prospects.
• Our ‘conversion’ rates are based on a small percent of the total population of would-be buyers, yet we use these to try to convince ourselves that our efforts, our resources, our cost expenditures are relevant. We are not converting potential buyers who haven’t yet become buyers but who will buy once they manage their change. But they are easy to recognize and convert if we shift our prism. Indeed, I’m always curious what those ‘conversion’ numbers represent. Who we seek to ‘convert’ is merely a percentage of those who will/can eventually buy (I hate to keep saying this, but the low hanging fruit.) We miss over 80% of those who will eventually buy: they don’t heed our messages. When you see conversion percentages, ask how much of the potential buying population is being represented. Current conversion numbers are specious.
• The focus on ‘understanding needs’ is necessary only once buyers understand their own needs – at the end of their change processes: finding a route through to stability among the stakeholders and company/personal norms (Is the disruption from bringing in a new solution worse than living with the problem?) is paramount to buying anything. Until that’s resolved, they will not buy due to potential disruption. If you woke up tomorrow and decided you wanted to move, the first thing you’d do would NOT be to buy a house. You’d discuss with your family, looking at all sides from each perspective, organizing the full set of criteria that would keep the family stable first. A seller’s historic ‘need to understand’ (especially when using questions biased by our need to place a solution) is moot: until all stakeholders are on board with the specifics of how adding something new will affect them, there is no defined ‘need’, a seller’s biased questions aside.
• Our push to make an appointment is stupid: who is the person we seek to meet with? Why are they taking the time to meet with us? Does this person represent ALL stakeholders or just the few trying to push internal change? How does the person we meet with present our data to others? And at what point in the buying decision process? We’re so busy following the norms of selling that we haven’t stopped to think this through. We get rejected for an appointment not because of our solutions, but because they haven’t yet gotten the full Buying Decision Team onboard, because they’re still trying to fix the problem themselves, because they haven’t determined if it’s worth an external fix due to the disruption that might result. Looking through our biased prism of placing a solution, sellers aren’t looking at the entire picture that people must address en route to resolving a problem.
• We have a faulty assumption that our solution, data, convincing strategies, etc. will capture a buyer. What is it about the horrific close rates that isn’t registering? Why do we continue to believe if we just have better, faster, improved, advanced content dissemination that we will sell more when it’s a fact that we’re closing less? Why do we continue to assume that with great data, the ‘perfect’ solution, people will buy because WE think it will match what WE consider to be their need? And why is a 5% close rate (i.e. a 95% fail rate) acceptable? Isn’t it obvious there is a problem?

Everything about the selling effort is skewered to finding ways to place our solutions. But we miss the bigger opportunity: we can use our time, our skill, to facilitate Buyer Readiness. That means, leading people through the confusing stages they must – must – manage before they are buyers, before they have needs, before they know if, when, what they’ll buy. We wait on the sidelines while they go through this process; the sales model is not set up to influence this.

I have watched, over the past 35 years, as sales has drifted closer to my beliefs as it attempts to take into account the buying decision and the buyer. But because sales continue to consider buyers ONLY in relation to placing solutions, sales only reaches the low hanging fruit: people in the process of considering how to manage disruption will not have interest (yet) in our content. We haven’t accounted for the entire fact pattern of what goes into a buying decision (i.e. need, problem resolution, and product choice are the final considerations) and overlook the largest portion of buyers: those who will buy but aren’t ready yet.

People really don’t want to buy anything, they merely want to resolve a problem. And the problem is so much bigger than purchasing something. It involves

• getting all – all – the stakeholders and influencers identified and on board (often not obvious);
• trying to find a fix for the problem that’s familiar, and minimally disruptive;
• stakeholder agreement that the cost of a fix is smaller than the cost of maintaining problems (not always obvious) and that they need to go outside for a solution;
• recognizing/managing the challenges of melding something new as it replaces the old (not always obvious).

People issues. User issues. Tech issues. Human issues. Culture issues. All unique. As outsiders we can never understand the totality of what’s going on. And yet until all internal factors are managed to assure the least disruption, they are not even buyers.

It’s only when they are out of options AND get buy in AND manage potential fallout, do they become buyers. Making our solutions the focus relegates us to being noticed by those at the end of their change process – order takers – and robs us of our ability to enter at a stage that helps them become buyers.

Indeed, buying is the last thing people and groups do, and only then when there is agreement that an outside fix is their only option and have figured out how to manage fallout from bringing in something new in a way that avoids disruption.

You can’t buy a house without family agreement, regardless of how wonderful the house or how big the need. You can’t bring in a new CRM system unless the users are on board and are willing to use it, unless the tech folks know how to incorporate it into what they’re already using, until they’ve tried to fix what they’ve got, until a user training is developed and scheduled. It’s not about the house. It’s not about the CRM system. It’s about the change process.

So long as we focus on solution placement, we will only find those who have figured it all out. We could be helping them by shifting our focus to first connect via managing their change. Instead, buyers do all this change stuff without us as we wait and call and hope and call and send and hope and wait.

The sales industry has finally figured out that success has at least as much to do with ‘buying’ as it does selling. But it continues to use the prism of placing solutions even here: it has not gone so far as using new skill sets that help buyers manage the change.

SALES HAS A VERY LIMITED SCOPE

For goodness sakes, it’s time to stop focusing first on placing solutions. Why not help those who WILL buy be ready! And believe it or not, once we take off our ‘selling’ blinders and use a prism of facilitating the steps to change, it’s quite easy to use a different skill set to recognize people who WILL buy on the first call.

For this we enter with a different type of question  (Facilitative Question) and a different goal: to recognize those who seek change in the area we can support them in, and facilitate them through their Pre-Sales change management activities they must complete before they become buyers.

Buying is a change management issue before it’s a solution choice issue – a process, part of systemic change, not an event. People become buyers only at Step 10 of a 13 step decision process that addresses the elements of recognizing and managing change. Until this is complete, buyers can’t buy and we are wasting a valuable opportunity to facilitate them, of entering earlier where we are now ignored. Let’s recognize that due to the complexity of change, selling doesn’t cause buying:

• Our information, website, marketing materials – information – is terrific. Our brand is well positioned, and quality. But from online sales we’re closing 0.0059%. We don’t know why site visitors come to our site. Our wonderful, expensive, information-rich, and creative site is not encouraging anyone but the low hanging fruit to buy.
• Our sales folks are well trained in content, relationship management, closing and pitching techniques. But they’re closing less than 5%. Why is this waste of expensive resource ok?
• Our marketing folks know how to target the ‘right’ audience, but less than one half of 1% even open our emails.
• The only folks who heed our great content are folks at the point of buying and we’re competing with global competitors for the same low hanging fruit.

We have chosen to sit back and wait while they go through their non-solution/buying-related steps. But we can enable Buyer Readiness. The sales model as we’ve known it is insufficient as a stand-alone model. It’s a Tier 2 model. Think about this:

1.    People don’t want to buy anything– they merely want to resolve a problem and the last thing they do is bring in something new. People live in environments – systems, if you will – and try to resolve their own problems. It is ONLY when they cannot, AND they have the buy-in from the full set of stakeholders AND can manage any change that a new solution would incur, that they are willing to make a purchase.

When sellers push solution information before people recognize the complexities of the environment they’re seeking to change – they waste an opportunity to facilitate change (which has nothing to do with buying anything). Again, think of that junk you now get in your mailbox.

Buyers don’t even notice our content it until they seek out a solution that will match the intricacies of their buying decision and environment – at the point they are ready to change/buy. It will NOT convince them to buy something they haven’t yet determined they cannot fix themselves. The last thing they do is seek information. In other words, it will be ignored by those you wish to reach, no matter how accurate your demographic data. It’s about the buying, not the selling.

2.     Until or unless everyone who touches a new solution is on board with whatever change will occur with a new solution, there will be no purchase. Talking to that one person who claims she has a need does NOT give us the necessary information to know what’s going on. We cannot ever know the internal dynamics. Ever.

3.    There is a very specific process that everyone (buyers) goes through before they do anything different (change, decide, buy). It involves the 13 steps to all change, a purchase is a change management decision. The sales model only enters at step 10 when it’s agreed by all that the status quo cannot resolve the problem and everyone is ready to change. Hence, we do nothing more than find the low hanging fruit – and then we all fight over the 5%.

The time it takes for everyone who will touch the new solution and processes that come from it is the length of the sales cycle. Buying Facilitation® starts at the beginning and leads folks through each step, with sales taking over once they’re ready – and already buyers.

4.    People become buyers only if they have a route to manage change. The sales model overlooks the change management piece of the equation, although sellers blame buyers for being ‘stupid’ or ‘not understanding they have a need.’ It’s not about the solution or the information or the buying. It’s about change. So long as sellers focus their interactions on placing solutions, they will merely take orders when people are ready to call in and buy.

The folks who use my Buying Facilitation® model enter all new conversations seeking who is ready, willing, and able to change. The prism is CHANGE, not NEED. Until all the elements of change are managed, people don’t even know what their need entails.

5.    Until everyone buys in to change, the environment will prefer the status quo; whatever is happening now is baked in to the norm. Need has nothing to do with who buys. The prime focus is to maintain the environment. Until they know how to do that, they won’t buy, regardless of need or solution relevance.

6.    We assume that people will understand they need us if we ask the right questions and create the right content, and that folks will wake up and notice of their need as soon as they read it!

We restrict our potential buyers to those who seek that specific information, overlooking their need to integrate information with unique circumstances, their status quo and rules, making much information provided conjecture. Not to mention we could easily reposition the way we discuss the content to meet real needs.

The sales model was designed to place solutions. That’s it. By entering early with a different mindset and skills, we can be closing 40% more sales.

A WHOLLY DIFFERENT SKILL SET

I have written extensively, and trained large numbers of global sellers, around this issue. In Dirty Little Secrets: why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell I introduce a buying-based model (Buying Facilitation®) that explains the 13 steps all people and groups take (even for small individual purchases) on route to becoming buyers. Since the first 9 of them have nothing to do with buying anything but with managing change, it involves a different set of skills – facilitating the right people through their change to buy sooner.

No longer do we begin trying to ‘understand’ buyers, or make appointments, push our solutions, we first find folks who will become buyers and lead them efficiently through their change, and then – only then – offer solution details.

We can’t know anything about the person we’re speaking to, and if they haven’t yet gone through their entire change management process they certainly can’t answer questions about ‘need’.

By knowing each step of change, we can hear where they are along their decision path. Have they collected the full set of stakeholders or are they just beginning? Do they recognize the downside to their environment of a purchase? Are they still trying to fix the problem themselves? Change is complex. People don’t even understand themselves. Here is where we can help. We can facilitate people through the steps of change and convert more people into buyers now.

To shift the focus from selling to facilitating change and the buying decision process, Buying Facilitation® employs different skills:

• since our normal questions are biased by our needs, I developed Facilitative Questions to help Others figure out their own change process;
• Presumptive Summaries that help them recognize what they’re missing in their thinking;
• Listening for Systems as a way to truly hear what’s being said outside of our own biases;
• and the 13 steps of change, to lead them through each of the steps they must, must address en route to change.

The entire process is laid out in Dirty Little Secrets.

It’s not a sales process, but works as the front end of selling to help people recognize the elements in their own process that precedes seeking an external solution and teaches them how to become buyers. Because we seek out folks who CAN change rather than seek those who SHOULD buy, we enter their buying decision path and lead them through each step of change – helping them help themselves.

It’s a Servant Leader model that facilitates change, not a sales model that influences solution placement. It’s a very different mindset. I often ask: Do you want to sell? Or have someone buy? They’re two different activities. And sales ignores one of them.

THE COST OF NO CHANGE

The sales industry is like one of those buyers we disparage for not understanding they need us. Since 1987 when I ran my first Buying Facilitation® program at KLM (titled Helping Buyers Buy), I’ve trained about 100,000 sales folks, beginning with pilot programs that always ran alongside a control group selling the same product. Here’s a calculation of the typical results, regardless of industry or price:

• The groups I trained generally close between 6x-8x more than the control group.
• Buying Facilitators have a very good idea on the first call who will be a buyer, regardless of complexity of sale, eradicating the need to chase folks who will never buy and concentrate their time on facilitating the buying decisions of those who will.
• Marketing materials are created in stages of information that match the needs of each stage of change necessary prior to people becoming buyers.
• Buying Facilitators don’t try to make appointments and yet quickly are invited to meet with the full stakeholder/buying decision team.
• Prospects begin trusting sellers early due to their ability to help gather all stakeholders and figure out how to resolve the problem internally first.
• Buying Facilitators don’t discuss their solutions, ask needs based questions, until people have recognized themselves as buyers, usually in 1/8 the time of normal sales.

Kaiser Permanente: went from 110 visits and 18 closed sales to 27 visits, 25 closed sales.

KPMG: selling a $50,000,000 solution, went from a 3 year sales cycle to a 4 month sales cycle.

Boston Scientific: had a 53% increase in close rates and a one call close rather than months of follow up.

IBM: I personally sold $6,400,000 worth of business as I spoke directly with existing clients during the coaching portion of my onsite Buying Facilitation® training.

Sales professionals have told me my results aren’t possible. And I agree: using the sales model, the beliefs and skills of selling, it’s not possible.

SALES CAN MAKE A BIG CONTRIBUTION – BUT NOT THE WAY IT’S BEING USED NOW

With the skills they possess, sellers and marketers can have a vital role in facilitating people through their steps of change to becoming buyers. First they must understand the differences between selling and buying. Here’s what buying entails:

A buyer is someone (or group) who has tried to resolve a problem using their own known resources (People never, ever, start out to buy something first!), has gotten buy in from everyone who will touch the solution, and knows and manages any fallout that the new will cause. A buying decision is a change management problem first, a solution choice issue second. 

Instead of assuming a buying decision is a solution choice issue and continuing as it has for millennia to push content, instead of assuming our job is still persuade folks to take action on our content, or place solutions (It’s not. It’s to facilitate buying.), sellers can facilitate the folks who CAN/WILL buy through the steps of change they must manage – and that we sit and wait for them to accomplish. I have written extensively on this. Here are some articles to peruse.

Do you want to sell? Or have someone buy?

What is Buying Facilitation® and what sales problem does it solve?

The Real Buyer’s Journey

Recognize Buyers on the First Call

Influencing Congruent Change

Plus, get ahold of my book Dirty Little Secrets: why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell. It introduces each step of the buying decision process, along with how my Facilitative Questions lead prospective buyers, step by step, through to being actual buyers. It’s time to add the ability to facilitate the full buying decision journey into our sales efforts.

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Sharon-Drew Morgen is a breakthrough innovator and original thinker, having developed new paradigms in sales (inventor Buying Facilitation®, listening/communication (What? Did you really say what I think I heard?), change management (The How of Change™), coaching, and leadership. She is the author of several books, including the NYTimes Business Bestseller Selling with Integrity  and Dirty Little Secrets: why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell). Sharon-Drew coaches and consults with companies seeking out of the box remedies for congruent, servant-leader-based change in leadership, healthcare, and sales. Her award-winning blog carries original articles with new thinking, weekly. www.sharondrewmorgen.com She can be reached at sharondrew@sharondrewmorgen.com

Sharon Drew Morgen August 9th, 2021

Posted In: News

Prospects Aren’t Always Prospects

As sellers, we’ve been taught that someone with a need for our solution is a prospect. But that’s not true or we’d be closing a lot more business and wasting a lot less time following prospects who will never buy. Just because we see a need does not mean they

• want it resolved,
• want it resolved now,
• have the buy-in to bring in an external solution rather than using their own internal fix or beloved vendor,
• are ready to give up the work-around they have in place that resolves the problem well-enough.

Not to mention we use our biased questions and listen through biased ears and ‘hear’ what’s being said as a ‘need’. In fact, given our predisposed assumptions and restricted inquiries, we have no way of knowing when, or how, or if the people we speak with are willing to bring in an outside solution regardless of a possible match or need.

A decision to make a purchase is based on dozens of factors that go far beyond need. So rule number #1: need does not a prospect make.

Unfortunately, the sales model has no capability to go behind-the-scenes to facilitate buy-in from the buy side, from folks within the buyer’s environment who

• don’t yet see a need,
• don’t want to share budget,
• want to address the problem in-house,
• have their own agendas.

And the sales model, used to attempt to place solutions, doesn’t have the tool set to enable prospective prospects to manage all their internal, systemic, and hidden issues that are beyond the purview of buying anything. Here’s rule #2: until everyone and everything that will touch the new solution buys-in to bringing it on board, there will be no purchase, regardless of a need.

A BUYING DECISION IS A CHANGE MANAGEMENT PROBLEM

People don’t want to buy anything, they merely want to reach excellence at the least ‘cost’ to the system (their culture, their environment). It’s only when it becomes clear that they cannot resolve a problem internally, and they’ve determined that the ‘cost’ of bringing something in is equal to or less than their status quo, that they’re willing to purchase anything, regardless of need or the efficacy of your solution.

That doesn’t mean they’re not buyers. It just means they’re not buyers yet. And because they’re change focused to start with, they can’t hear, or notice, the content we introduce them to that would lead to a sale.

Buyers have change management problems well before they have solution choice issues. A purchase is merely the last element in a chain of events that must take place, most of which are outside of a seller’s purview.

Of course once the person/group becomes a buyer, they will need the questions and pitches offered by the sales model. But not until then. You see, people take some time to become buyers even when their problem ‘needs’ our solution. Unfortunately, they won’t read our marketing content or take calls, or even buy, until then.

One of the biggest fallacies of sales is that someone is identified as a buyer when it seems they have a need. Because people merely want to resolve a problem, they must explore all avenues of an internal fix, and then get buy-in for change, before recognizing a purchase is their only alternative. And the sales model does nothing to facilitate this.

Indeed, until they figure out if a fix will ‘cost’ less than the status quo, people aren’t even buyers. Remember: they were doing ‘good enough’ until now, and if a new solution causes more disruption than the cost of staying the same, they aren’t buyers. Rule #3: the status quo is sacrosanct, regardless of the need or the efficacy of your solution.

CASE STUDIES

Here are two situations in which I failed miserably (and lost quite a bit of money), prior to understanding that buyers (in companies and individuals) must know how to manage internal change before they can buy. I’ve since figured out how I could have first facilitated these issues, but at the time, I was a victim to their decisions.

1. I did a pilot for the sales group in an iconic multinational. Using Buying Facilitation® the group had a 400% increase in sales over the control group (And we shortened the sales cycle from 7 months to 4 weeks). Yet they chose not to roll out my program because cash flow issues from the short sales cycles caused by Buying Facilitation®, shifts in the manufacturing schedules, etc., would cost many millions to resolve. They preferred to maintain their status quo rather than increase sales, regardless of the relatively short time frame to recoup the costs (2 years).
2. I trained Buying Facilitation® to a large insurance group who got a 600% increase in sales over the control group (They went from 110 visits and 18 closed sales to 27 visits and 25 closed sales). After the test month, the trained team handed in their resignations because they’d been hired as ‘field sales’ reps and would rather quit than be ‘inside sales’ reps, regardless of how much money they made. They liked handing out donuts and schmoozing. True story.

In both situations it seemed crazy to me to give up vast increases in sales rather than figure out how to manage the change. But this is where I had my ‘aha’ moment, where I realized the difference between what I had to sell, their ‘need’, and how they bought: People need to maintain the equilibrium of their status quo at all costs – at all costs – regardless of the benefits of our solutions.

If they have to fire a team to bring in new software, they have a decision: software or people. Do they need the software? Sure. But maintaining the system might have a higher value. Indeed, sellers can’t know the internal criteria – the history, the relationships, the future plans – of prospective buyers, especially with a sales hat on.

By starting first with a solution placement goal, and with ‘need’ as the criteria, sales will only ever succeed with the low hanging fruit – once folks have done their change work and show up as ready. All those who still have to manage change and address their internal issues aren’t buyers yet, regardless of need.

But wearing a different hat, it’s easy to find the ones who are on route to becoming buyers and facilitate them through their change – and be there with them as a real trusted advisor as they become buyers. We wait while they do it anyway. Might as well help and become part of their Buying Decision Team in the process.

THE DAD STORY

I’m going to tell a story I’ve told dozens of times. For those who have read it in other articles or my books, I apologize. But it’s a terrific story.

Years ago, while running a Buying Facilitation® program at IBM, they asked me to speak to folks at a ‘Mom and Pop’ store nearby who they wanted as a Beta test site. These folks would be getting a free computer for their efforts, yet three sales folks had been unable to get a Yes from them even though their old computer was far too slow for their growing company.

A man answered when I called. Here was the conversation:

SD: Hello. My name is Sharon Drew Morgen. I’m calling from IBM. I’m a consultant for them and was reading the files they have on you here when they offered you a free Beta. Can I ask how your current computer is working?

B: Hi. Um, it’s ok.

SD: What’s stopping it from being better than OK?

B: Dad.

SD: Dad? I don’t understand.

B: This is a Mom and Pop shop. I’m the son. The owner is my Dad. He started the company 40 years ago, is now in his 70s, and has been handling all tech issues [Note: those were the early days of the net when there was so much confusion]. He’s retiring next year.

SD: Ah. So you can’t consider bringing in anything new that he might be uncomfortable with and will wait until he leaves to look into it?

B: Right. I would love to do your Beta as our system is so slow. I’ve just got to take care of Dad.

SD: I wonder if you and Dad would be willing to travel about 5 miles to X company on Y street. They are using it right now and are one of our Betas. Maybe you and Dad could go play with it a bit, ask them some questions, and see if Dad is comfortable?

B: Good idea.

They went, and a week later took the Beta. They had a need, but weren’t buyers until they figured out how to resolve the change management issues that were keeping them in place.

No matter how much you think your solution matches with a ‘need’, your goal, your questions, your inquiries, are all based on what you’re selling and you’re not facilitating them in the first steps they must take before they become buyers, steps based on systemic change, not need or solutions.

By this fact alone, you will only ever close those folks who need what you’re selling, the way you’re selling it, at the moment you show up, and you’re only closing the low hanging fruit. My clients find those who WILL buy on the first call, facilitate them through the change process, and close 40% of their list against the control group’s 5.4%. And it actually takes less time (and less wasted resource! And less sales folks!) to close.

Using the sales model you cannot influence what’s going on behind the scenes – the personalities, the history, the internal politics, and the ‘givens’ that an outsider can never understand. And they will never buy until it’s done – regardless of their need or the efficacy of our solution.

THE SALES MODEL IS SOLUTION-BASED; BUYING IS SYSTEMS-BASED

Philosophically the sales model is necessary and important: as sellers we clearly see needs that our solutions will resolve. But we don’t have a prospect until or unless their Buying Decision Team – everyone who will touch the final solution – is ready, willing, and able to

• manage any changes that our solution causes to their people, rules, relationships, or job descriptions,
• ensure the disruption won’t cost more than the problem it’s resolving,

or they cannot buy. Indeed: a prospect is someone who WILL buy, not someone who SHOULD buy. And ‘need’ has nothing to do with it. In other words, sales is a second tier effort – first facilitate the buying decision/change management process, then when they’re buyers, sell.

And unfortunately, as outsiders, we can’t ever really know what’s going on within their decuiosn process. But sometimes, they don’t either. And we can use our knowledge of our industries to really help them in this area before we start selling. After all, we wait while they do it anyway. Might as well be competitive and help them with an add-on skill set.

I developed Buying Facilitation® in 1983 to manage the issues my own sales team faced in my tech startup. The model is an add-on tool for sellers to first facilitate people through their Pre-Sales change management issues before they sell.

As a sales professional, I never understood why ‘prospects’ weren’t buying as often as was logical. When I became an entrepreneur, I realized the problem people have when deciding to either fix their own problems or make a purchase, when I had needs myself.

When potential vendors came in to pitch new solutions to me, they ignored the change management issues I had to deal with as part of my buying decision process. Everything these folks discussed, every question asked, was focused on selling me something.

It never occurred to anyone that just maybe I wasn’t ready to be a buyer yet, that just maybe they had nothing to sell until I could clearly see my way through to a path to buy, to manage any changes that a solution would entail, even though I certainly needed their products. And it never occurred to them they actually could have really helped me make the decisions I needed to make that would have led me to buying.

Our time together should have been used to facilitate my change management issues. And then not only would I have been a prospect, but I would have been a buyer in a fraction of the time it would have taken me to figure it out on my own.

So I developed my Buying Facilitation® model to add to sales to begin prospecting by

1. first facilitating people who might have a need to recognize and organize the full Buying Decision Team,
2. helping them try to find an internal workaround that would maintain their stability,
3. facilitating them through to buy-in and change management when it became clear they needed to go external for a solution (i.e. when they became buyers), [Note: people need to do this anyway, and we wait in limbo while they do it. Might as well add a new skill set to have the tools to help them through their steps to becoming buyers.]

and then selling.

After training this material for decades, I’ve found the most difficult part of Buying Facilitation® is the difficulty sales folks have in remembering to first put aside the ‘need’ or ‘sale’ and instead truly serve others in discovering their most efficient path to their own best solutions. People want excellence. The last thing they want is to buy anything. The last thing.

And you’re pushing the last thing far too soon, certainly depriving yourself of a real possibility of becoming a servant leader, a relationship manager, and a true professional and acting competitively as a true facilitator to enable the change management process that comes before the buying process.

I’m not suggesting you not sell. I’m suggesting you don’t begin by attempting to assess ‘need’ or ‘value’ when there’s no way for them to know the full extent of their need until they’ve gone through their change management and buy-in issues. Indeed, once they’ve got the entire fact pattern, they may indeed need to buy more from you. Using Buying Facilitation® enables you to become more competitive.

One more thing: once you enter a call with the goal of facilitating change rather than trying to sell, you’ll know who will be a likely buyer on your first call: It’s those who seek change, and have been flummoxed by being able to resolve the problem your solution can resolve.

Stop seeking those with ‘need’ and seek those who want to change. And then facilitate them through their process. When it’s time to buy, they’ll be ready, won’t worry much about price, and you’ll barely have to pitch. By that time you’ll be on their team, be a truly trusted provider, be ahead of the competitors, and there won’t be a price issue.

Also remember: Prospects don’t need your help to buy. All of your content is on your website. What they need help with is managing their change decisions – that’s the length of the sales cycle and what takes so long. It’s your competitive advantage.

Help prospective buyers determine how to change, how to get buy-in, how to bring in your solution. And then you can sell. Buying Facilitation® first, then sales. You need both. Then you can help buyers decide to be prospects – and they will buy.

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Sharon Drew Morgen is a breakthrough innovator and original thinker, having developed new paradigms in sales (inventor Buying Facilitation®, listening/communication (What? Did you really say what I think I heard?), change management (The How of Change™), coaching, and leadership. She is the author of several books, including the NYTimes Business Bestseller Selling with Integrity and Dirty Little Secrets: why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell). Sharon Drew coaches and consults with companies seeking out of the box remedies for congruent, servant-leader-based change in leadership, healthcare, and sales. Her award-winning blog carries original articles with new thinking, weekly. www.sharondrewmorgen.com She can be reached at sharondrew@sharondrewmorgen.com.

Sharon Drew Morgen May 24th, 2021

Posted In: News

Beyond the Mask: do we really see each other?

Enjoying my post-gym coffee outside a coffee shop last week I looked up and noticed a maskless man drinking his coffee at a near-by table. I got a shock when I saw his whole face.

A face! The whole face! I’ve gotten so adjusted to only seeing eyes and mask that I was startled, and surprised on many levels. Indeed, an entire population of people wearing masks that have covered half our faces for a year has had some unintended social consequences.

As an Aspie I’ve always felt unsafe looking directly into someone’s eyes and learned to connect by looking at the space between them. Yet somehow, with masks covering half a face, looking directly into eyes unexpectedly became natural and safe. I think I can now do this always! Lovely.

My next surprise, not as pleasant as the first, was my level of judgement. Seeing a stranger’s entire face, now, seemed to confuse me. Seems I’d been making quick assessments of people’s socioeconomic and education levels – even character! – based on the half a face visible! How biased and superficial! After a lifetime of writing, teaching, training, on how we can best serve and respect others, I certainly would never have described myself as biased and superficial. Yet there it was. And I don’t like it.

One other surprise. BC (i.e. Before Covid) walking down a street included smiling at others if eyes happened to connect. Now, no one looks at each other. Why? Certainly smiles cause crinkly eyes, easy to notice even with masks covering mouths. This is a mystery. I’ve been extending myself to smile at strangers under my mask but am met by downcast eyes not noticing my attempts. I’ve never experienced this level of what seems like unsociability. And I don’t even know if this is what’s going on. Have we stopped caring about casual connections? I don’t like this either.

I especially notice this lack of eye contact at the gym. My old gym closed during the pandemic, so I started attending a new one when I returned. Usually it takes only a couple of times attending to get to know the folks who work out at the same time. In the decades I’ve been working out I’ve always enjoyed the comradery and friendliness of other gym rats. But now? Nothin’. Sure, we’re all wearing masks. But no one looks up or makes contact of any kind. No one. I don’t understand it. And I don’t like it.

I wonder why we’ve stopped looking at each other. Is it because talking is difficult with a mask covering our mouths? Or because we don’t want to look directly into someone’s eyes? Or think we can’t be seen? Or after a year of wearing masks or staying home or seeing faces only on zoom have we become comfortable not connecting in person? Have we become shy or are we just feeling separate? Or….? It’s a mystery to me.

I don’t like this new disconnection. Makes me wonder if we see each other at all.

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Sharon Drew Morgen is a breakthrough innovator and original thinker, having developed new paradigms in sales (inventor Buying Facilitation®, listening/communication (What? Did you really say what I think I heard?), change management (The How of Change™), coaching, and leadership. She is the author of several books, including the NYTimes Business Bestseller Selling with Integrity and Dirty Little Secrets: why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell). Sharon Drew coaches and consults with companies seeking out of the box remedies for congruent, servant-leader-based change in leadership, healthcare, and sales. Her award-winning blog carries original articles with new thinking, weekly. www.sharondrewmorgen.com She can be reached at sharondrew@sharondrewmorgen.com.    

Sharon Drew Morgen May 10th, 2021

Posted In: News

Let’s Talk About Sales

Ever since the serpent convinced Eve to eat the apple there’s been someone trying to sell something. The original idea was fairly simple: find folks with a problem, then create and sell a product that will fix it.

For centuries, companies worked hard to understand customer needs then create good products to fill those needs. With limited reach and communication tools, early sellers went around to neighbor’s homes and showed their wares; those with money advertised in the most prestigious magazines (TIME, LOOK, LIFE). Sellers closed 25 – 40% back in the day.

Forward a few decades to Silicon Valley that began creating products because they could, with little concern for need, assuming ‘if they build it they will come.’ Using technology to covertly track and gather huge swaths of data, sellers used their new marketing metrics, human behavior predictors, and an ‘understanding’ of sales demographics to reach high-probability buyers.

Theoretically it became possible to cheaply find those who might need a solution after it was already created, and sell by sending ‘possible buyers’ some ‘targeted messages’ and play the percentages. Given the low cost per touchpoint, sellers only needed a small percentage to take the bait for the investment to pay for itself.

INSANITY

So did it work? Did more sales close? During this new era of using technology, of creating solutions first and then finding potential buyers, sales fell. Here are the actual numbers: according to numbers averaged out from my own clients (Fortune 1000 companies), email marketing closes 0.0059%; sales professionals close less than 5%.

But those numbers don’t seem to matter to the field as it continues to use the same thinking that caused the numbers to begin with. Sales just pushes harder, always assuming they only have to find buyers. Build it and they will come indeed.

To me, those numbers matter. They tell me the industry is failing: A 5% close rate means a 95% failure rate! There is no other industry that finds a 95% failure rate acceptable. No one would even go to a hairdresser with a 95% failure rate. Imagine getting on a plane with a 95% failure rate!

Yet this hasn’t caused a re-think; it’s merely caused sellers to seek more targeted prospects, use more technology, gather more private data, all with the assumption that with better data, sellers can pitch better and close more. And yet, with all the expenditure and brilliant minds working on the problem, the numbers continue to go down as the field continues to attempt to place solutions.

At no point has the sales industry wondered why their sophisticated technology doesn’t close more sales. Well, there’s been a bit of movement: When I began writing about internal buying decisions and decision makers (starting with my first book Sales on the Line in 1992 on facilitating buying decisions) the sales industry fought back (“I know how my buyers decide!!”). Eventually the field took decision makers into consideration (“Yup. A great way in! Let’s include them because they’re smart enough to buy when they hear the facts and how they need us.”), but only as a way to prompt sales.

At no point has the industry realized there might be something going on within a prospect’s environment that causes and maintains the problem the sellers want to fix. At no point has the system, the environment, that prospective buyers live in been a real consideration.

And so it continues. The thinking has remained steadfast: It’s all about the sale. Just find the eyeballs, predict and influence the behavior, and you’ll sell whatever.

SALES USES INCOMPLETE THINKING

Take a moment and think with me, given I suspect that if ‘need’ were the criteria for a purchase, more folks would be buying. And they’re not. Why? Maybe the problem isn’t about what you’re selling.

The industry recognizes that over 40% of a buying decision is based on internal change criteria (i.e. nothing to do with buying anything) and occurs before sales gets involved. So why aren’t sellers doing anything about this? Trying to ‘understand’ to get in and sell misses the point.

Let’s look at the facts. You’ve hired good professional folks, successful, with good instincts. Your marketing materials are great. You’ve learned how to pitch and present your material perfectly. And yet you’re closing less sales than occurred decades ago, when you didn’t have all the technology.

Obviously the problem is not your product or solution. The problem is on the buying decision end and more complicated than the sales model has tools for. There seems to be a gap between the moment people consider themselves buyers and seek solutions, and what and how sellers are selling; the push for eyeballs and understanding don’t address the Pre-Sales, non-buying portion of a buyer’s journey that is focused on change.

But you’re doing nothing about it. With a continued focus on placing solutions, it’s a different mind-set to think about change facilitation as a first step in finding a home for your products.

That’s where the bulk of real buyers are. And you’re ignoring them. They don’t heed your solution data, don’t want appointments, don’t read your marketing materials. They’re just not ready. But they will be. And they can be.

Think with me about the changes in decision making and leadership. Businesses have become sophisticated, as employees and customers and partners are global; leadership is no longer top-down and more inclusive and collaborative.

Given the complexity of environments and their increasingly multifaceted dynamics, and the issues that come up when a problem arises that needs resolving, it’s just not possible for anyone to purchase a new solution on their own. There are just too many consequences with relationships and job functions, chains of command and responsibility to other business practices and partners.

A BUYING DECISION IS A CHANGE MANAGEMENT FUNCTION

To address the complexity, a buying decision has become a change management function before reaching the stage of a solution choice problem.

And the sales industry hasn’t kept up. Instead of helping facilitate the change issues first, it’s still trying to sell, to place solutions, to find buyers, almost at any cost (hacking, spam, false advertising…), insuring they only close the 5% who have already completed their change process on their own.

But the answer is so much cheaper and simpler (and has integrity and far greater success): It’s possible to find those who will seek change in the area your solution can help by putting on a change facilitator’s hat and leading them through the changes they must address before seeing their way clear to buying. And then selling.

By then you’ll both agree to the need, and the sale will be based on values and a real relationship.

Walk with me now through the history of buying decisions.

LET’S LOOK AT BUYING

Originally if there was a need, whoever was in charge would just make a purchase. Now, there are complex decisions to be made even for simple purchases: the days of a single-person purchasing decision are gone; everyone must be involved to fix problems or find workarounds or manage change before any purchase can be considered.

Indeed, all purchases involve some sort of change. It’s a systems problem. You can’t just wake up one day and decide to buy something and ignore everyone else who has a stake in maintaining the status quo.

• If you’re a member of a family and considering moving to a larger house when the kids get older, you don’t begin by calling a realtor. You begin by discussing everyone’s problems and needs, first figuring out if it’s possible fix your house to avoid the disruption of a move. It’s only when the full fact patterns emerge from everyone – needs, fears, current responsibilities, future plans – does the group come up with a solution. It’s not about the house.
• What about buying a CRM app? I bet you don’t read about a new one on Monday, buy it on Tuesday, then tell everyone it’s arriving to be implemented on Wednesday. Why not? Because whoever uses the CRM needs to be consulted; tech folks need to give a heads up; and then users would have to buy-in to any changes. You’d probably first try to fix what you’ve been using to avoid the downtime or cost. It’s got nothing to do with the new CRM app.

People who need to fix a problem must not only rearrange some of the status quo, but also must have the buy-in and implementation procedures in place before they buy anything. It’s imperative: they must do this anyway, with you or without you. Might as well be with you. You wait (and push, and lower price) while they do so.

But you’ll need to begin with a different thinking and skill set. Rather than pushing pushing pushing product data at someone you guess might have a need, just learn to recognize someone who WILL buy once they’ve managed their change and facilitate them through the steps of change that lead to a purchase.

DO YOU WANT TO SELL? OR HAVE SOMEONE BUY?

Why continue to build your strategies on selling solutions when the sticking point is in the buying? People don’t really want to buy anything, merely resolve a problem at the lowest cost to the system. And change is the key at this early stage. Regardless of need or the brilliance of a product or the efficacy of a new solution, nothing will be bought, no solution will be purchased, if the new disrupts the system.

A buying decision is a change management problem well before it’s a solution choice issue. Making a purchase is the last – the last – thing anyone does. Indeed, among the 13 stages of a buy cycle buying is stages 10-13 and the decision/change process stages 1-9 (See my book on these stages.).

This is where you’ll find the greatest concentration of new buyers. And they really, really need help, as figuring out all the stakeholders and the downsides of the change takes them quite a long time… it’s the length of the sales cycle.

Why has the sales industry overlooked this? It’s where the real decisions get made. Nothing, nothing, nothing, to do with your solution and the reason folks still in their change stages don’t heed your marketing or pitches or don’t return calls.

When they’re considering their change issues, they are not yet buyers. Maintaining a working system is their highest criteria: they people will not buy if the ‘cost’ of the fix is greater than the cost of the status quo.

Here are a few bullets to think about:

1. Without the ‘buying’ the ‘selling’ doesn’t have a role. Yet sales continues to think of ‘buying’ through the lens of ‘selling’. It’s wrong. The ‘buying’ should be looked at through the lens of ‘change management’ first.
2. Sellers can’t understand buyers. They’ll never know the weight of influence of ‘Joe in Accounting’, or the history of two feuding teams who have to share budget to buy a new solution, or the relationship shared between their old vendor they’d need to get rid of to buy your solution. People who might become buyers must manage all this before looking for outside solutions. It has nothing to do with sales, solutions, needs or selling.
3. Sellers can never know what that that a prospective buyer’s change configuration is as outsiders can’t know or assess the variables that capture the ‘cost.’ The current state has been good-enough for now; it can continue if the cost of change is too high.
4. Just because someone has a need doesn’t mean they’re a buyer.
5. The time it takes all stakeholders to
   1. know they must seek an external solution because their workaround doesn’t help,
   2. change with the least disruption,
   3. manage the implementation with the least fallout,
   4. get buy-in from all who will be effected by bringing in something new,

6. By focusing only on finding folks with ‘need’, sales reduces the number of potential buyers down to the low hanging fruit (i.e. a 5% close), those who show up after having completed their change.
7. By entering with a change management hat on and focusing first on facilitating change it’s possible to find 8x more prospects – those in the process of becoming buyers but haven’t yet completed their change management – and facilitate them down their decision path. My clients using my Buying Facilitation®method close 40% against the control groups that close 5.2%.
8. It’s possible to find those who will become buyers on the first call – but not with a sales hat on.

It has nothing to do with need, seller, or solution. I can’t say this enough.

It’s time for sales to begin the sales process by facilitating buying decisions as an add-on to their approach. I am not taking away selling from the equation, just adding new thinking to help people buy. After all, without buyers, what are you doing anyway?

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Sharon Drew Morgen is a breakthrough innovator and original thinker, having developed new paradigms in sales (inventor Buying Facilitation®, listening/communication (What? Did you really say what I think I heard?), change management (The How of Change™), coaching, and leadership. She is the author of several books, including the NYTimes Business Bestseller Selling with Integrity and Dirty Little Secrets: why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell). Sharon Drew coaches and consults with companies seeking out of the box remedies for congruent, servant-leader-based change in leadership, healthcare, and sales. Her award-winning blog carries original articles with new thinking, weekly. www.sharondrewmorgen.com She can be reached at sharondrew@sharondrewmorgen.com.

Sharon Drew Morgen April 26th, 2021

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