Sales, Marketing and Social Can Be More Successful: hint – it’s not about your content
Sales, marketing, and social marketing attempt to place solutions and create relationships by supplying great content, discovering likely prospects, and creating trust. Unfortunately sellers end up closing a small fraction – less than 5% – of those they reach, and marketers and social end up closing even less. Our products are terrific. So what’s causing our failure?
PROBLEMS WITH OUR CURRENT THINKING
Here’s a bit of flawed thinking that exacerbates the problems:
- Sellers believe prospects are folks who SHOULD buy (those with a ‘need’) rather than those who WILL buy (those who achieve consensus and set up a way to manage any change a purchase involves, and are ready and able to buy regardless of urgency of need).
- Marketers believe that content is king, that offering the right content at the right time enables a buying decision. But we don’t know the role the reader plays on the Buying Decision Team, how or when our content is being used, and if it’s making a difference in the buying decision (i.e. it might be just a resource);
- Social believes that by engaging in relationships over time and developing trust, followers will come back when they are ready. But because we can’t know their decision path, or associates who need to buy-in to any change, or internal political issues, we can’t know if we are spending time wisely.
We can facilitate buying decisions by employing different thinking to avoid
1. Merely guessing at, or manipulating, our conversations or offerings without knowing where along their decision path our buyers are, and how many of their Buying Decision Team are on board;
2. Playing a numbers game to find and pitch those with a supposed ‘need’, assuming our content persuades buyers to buy or take action;
3. Neglecting possible actions
It’s time to add some new thinking to what we’re doing.
WHAT I LEARNED IN THE TRENCHES
By focusing on placing solutions, we’re missing the first 9 specific steps in a 13 step buying decision path that have nothing to do with our solution:
- People have complicated issues (personal, systemic, organizational, and all criteria-based) to handle before they can buy or change. They only buy when all issues are managed regardless of need (systems congruence trumps need);
- Buying includes change; change means disruption; consensus helps manage the disruption before it’s a problem; each person involved brings unique criteria and voice and shifts the buying criteria (i.e. until the entire Buying Decision Team is formed, weighs in, and agrees, there is no way to accurately define ‘needs’).
- Given politics, internal relationship issues, history and future, it’s challenging, but necessary, to design a route through to change (in this case a purchase) that includes the people, rules, relationships, and group outcomes to avoid resistance and fallout.
I learned this as both a sales person and an entrepreneur. When Merrill Lynch hired me a stockbroker in the 1970s, I became a million-dollar producer my first year. But I couldn’t figure out why everyone with a need (especially those I had a great relationship with) didn’t always buy what I thought they needed. Where did they go?
When I started up my tech company in London in the 80s I realized the problem: as a buyer myself, my direct needs were often superseded by the social, political, organizational, and relational considerations I had to manage. When sellers came to pitch they worked hard to understand my needs in the area their solution served, and gave fine pitches, but as outsiders had no way to handle or understand the fights I was having with the Board, or the issues the distributor was having with their sales force. Nor did anyone even try.
The sales model, I realized when faced with great pitches and lovely sales folks, was not designed facilitate the behind-the-scenes non-need-related issues I had to manage before I could buy anything. I realized that all the great content, all the lovely relationships, all the ‘needs’ I had that matched their solutions, were worthless if I couldn’t manage the off-line, ‘Pre Sales’ issues that would be involved if I purchased anything. So, “Yes” to need; “No” to Buyer Readiness. And the sales model has no skills that address this problem because it is personal, idiosyncratic, and systems-based, and lie outside of the focus of placing solutions. I’ve heard it said that 80% of buyers you’re following now will buy a similar product (not yours) within 2 years of your connection; that’s the time it took them to make decisions that wouldn’t disrupt – the time of the sales cycle.
I then developed a facilitation approach (Buying Facilitation®) for my own sales team to add to the front end of the sales model to first facilitate Buyer Readiness – the steps buyers would have to take internally anyway and without Buying Facilitation® take a helluva lot longer. My team then added a new focus, and entered conversations as change management facilitators first, then selling when/if buyers were ready (more were ready, and much, much quicker, with no chasing around and we were able to disengage very early from those who could never buy.). After all, until they were able to determine if they COULD buy (and still maintain systems congruence) they could never be buyers regardless of need (the reason folks with a real need don’t buy). I continue to pose this question: do you want to sell? Or have someone buy? They are two different activities, and the sales model only handles the sales end; the buying end is change management.
Rule: the time it takes buyers to manage their off-line, idiosyncratic change issues is the length of the sales cycle. We were then able to get onto the Buying Decision Team early, lead buyers quickly through their unique decisions, and became great relationship managers, not to mention servant leaders. Our sales tripled and the time to close was reduced by two thirds; our relationships with clients were cemented and we avoided competition and price issues.
The takeaway here for marketers and social is the recognition that we are largely ignoring the hidden, systemic issues going on within our buyers’ environments that are not available to outsiders yet fundamental for any change to happen. We keep pushing content, hoping and praying that it will reach the right people at the right time. So long as we continue to focus on solution placement, we lose sales that we needn’t. That is our Achilles Heel. And it doesn’t have to be.
WHAT’S THE ROLE OF CHANGE MANAGEMENT?
Buyers and followers don’t know their journey to change when they begin and hence take longer than necessary to figure it out. But figure it out they must. And we can help them, and make our value proposition our ability to be their GPS, so long as our focus is to facilitate change, not push or manipulate to make a sale. Plus, it’s an entirely different skill set.
There are two elements of Buying Facilitation® that can be added to create a ‘pull’ that’s change- and decision-focused.
1. Enter as a change facilitator. Instead of coding, noticing, tracking details that will help us guess at who’s reading, who’s a decision maker, where they might be in their sales cycle, etc. let’s begin listening for, and designing, tools that facilitate each step of the movement along the decision path that change decisions goes through; let’s ensure they discover the right people to be involved (some not so obvious) and help them build the necessary internal consensus. Currently we now listen for what we want to hear rather than listening for issues with decision making, change or choice. I’ve developed a new way to listen (Listening for Systems) that is non-biased.
2. Guide buyers through change management at the start of the sales process. Regardless of the type or size of the solution, buyers cannot buy until they are ready internally, and sales doesn’t have tools to focus to handle systemic change management without bias. Facilitative Questions are a type of criteria-recognition tool that facilitates thinking using Servant Leader thinking. Conventional questions are biased in favor of the seller; Facilitative Questions are biased in favor of the buyer.
It’s possible to develop assessments, questionnaires, intelligent contact sheets, CRM tools that enter in the right place along the decision path, provide the capability to lead buyers and followers through the full complement of steps they must take, making it possible to send out just the appropriate data at the right point in the cycle, and facilitate the consensus and buy-in asthey quickly ready themselves for change. We can add these to the sales, marketing, and social models to truly serve our buyers and followers and close more. It will be an addition, and the results will stronger relationships and more conversions.
The problem has never been your solution; the problem is that we overlook the idiosyncratic stages of Buyer Readiness that are not involved with using our solutions – helping buyers address their unknowable change issues (independent of need, and based on people, rules, relationships, history, etc.) so they can get their ducks in a row to buy anything. By adding a facilitation tool directed at managing change before we try to sell, we can find more clients, and sell more, faster. And we can become true servant leaders.
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Let’s connect. I can help you develop content, tools, training or questions that will enable a buyer’s buying decision process, as well as speak at your next conference. Or I can train or license Buying Facilitation® for your team to add to their sales skills.
Sharon Drew Morgen is the developer of the generic change management/decision facilitation model that teaches Others how to buy, change, collaborate, negotiate, and implement with no resistance, with full systemic buy in. She has trained 100,000 people worldwide, in global corporations (IBM, FEDEx, Morgan Stanley) and consulting firms (KPMG, Unisys). She adds this model to the front end of sales, change, decision analysis, leadership, and influencing. Read more articles on:www.sharondrewmorgen.com
Read two free chapters of her book What? on how to hear others without bias:www.didihearyou.com. She can be reached at 512 771 1117 or sharondrew@
Sharon Drew Morgen August 22nd, 2016
Posted In: Communication, News, Sales
12 Dirty Little Secrets: why buyers don’t buy
Do you sit and wait for your buyer’s to close? They need your solution. They like you. They are OK with the price. What’s going on?
Here are the ‘Dirty Little Secrets’ of why buyers don’t buy, taken from my book of the same name:
- Sales focuses on solution placement and needs assessment, and has no skill set to help buyers maneuver through their off-line, personal, idiosyncratic, behind-the-scenes planning and decision making that must take place in their environment before they can buy.
- Buyers will make no purchasing decisions until they get buy-in from the components (people, policies, initiatives, groups) that are in any way connected to, or will touch, a solution to their ‘need.’
- Until or unless there is buy-in, and the system is ready, willing, and able to buy-in to necessary change, buyers will not accept a solution no matter how great the need.
- Buyers live in systems that operate, as all systems do, from the law of homeostasis, and thereby must resist if something new were to threaten disruption. To insure minimal internal disruption, buyers face internal change management issues as they bring in something new (a solution).
- Until buyers understand and know how to mitigate the risks that a new solution will bring to their culture, they will do nothing. The system is sacrosanct; homeostasis is more important than fixing a need. New solutions can’t be purchased until a way is found to maintain internal balance. Includes internal politics and relationship issues.
- Until all of the Buying Decision Team members have added their voices and fully defined the criteria that a solution must contain, buyers can’t make proper use of solution information (i.e. pitch, presentation).
- Sales, and the focus on solutions, enters the buyer’s decision path too early in a buyer’s decision cycle – usually before all of the Buying Decision Team is on board and has added their specific needs to the solution criteria.
- Helping buyers maneuver through their buy-in and systems issues require a different focus, and a different skill set, than the one sales offers. Buyers don’t buy using a seller’s selling patterns. And the sales model doesn’t have tools to influence non-solution-related decisions.
- Buyers buy on unique, idiosyncratic criteria that are agreed to by their Buying Decision Team – not on the strength of their need, your product, or their relationship.
- The type of relationship a seller has with customers/prospects is a buying feature only once the buyer has determine how, when, why, and if they are going to buy.
- Buyers seek a solution only after they manage their internal systems issues. Part of their decision/choice is the assurance that the new solution will maintain the ecology of the system.
- At the start, buyers don’t know all the issues they need to manage as they begin the process of resolving a problem and choosing a solution.
Your current sales skills do a great job understanding need and placing solutions. But they don’t work with the behind-the-scenes non-solution-related change management issues buyers go through privately.
How will you shift your skills to help buyers manage their buying decision issues?
If you want to help buyers facilitate their off-line, behind-the-skills decision issues, you may want to learn Buying Facilitation® – a set of change management/decision facilitation skills that are wholly different from (but work in tandem with) sales skills, designed to help buyers navigate through their decision path as they prepare to choose a solution. It speeds up their change management process: we sit and wait while they do it anyway.
Add Buying Facilitation® to your sales skills as a facilitation tool, and decrease your sales cycle, find the right prospects to spend time on, and close more sales. Here are some sample chapters to give you more data: Dirty Little Secrets: why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell and what you can do about it and Buying Facilitation®: the new way to sell that influences and expands decisions.
In today’s business climate, decisions to buy are far more complex than they’ve been in the past, and your selling skills aren’t enough. What would you need to know or believe differently to be willing to add a new skill set to enhance your success?
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Sharon Drew Morgen has been coding and teaching change and choice in sales, coaching, and leadership for over 30 years. She is the developer of Buying Facilitation®, a generic decision facilitation model used in sales, and is the author of the NYTimes Business Bestseller Selling with Integrity. Sharon Drew’s book What? Did you really say what I think I heard? has been called a ‘game changer’ in the communication field, and is the first book that explains, and solves, the gap between what’s said and what’s heard. Her assessments and learning tools that accompany the book have been used by individuals and teams to learn to enter conversations able to hear without filters.
Sharon Drew is the author of one of the top 10 global sales blogs with 1700+ articles on facilitating buying decisions through enabling buyers to manage their status quo effectively.
To learn Buying Facilitation® contact sharondrew@sharondrewmorgen.
Sharon Drew Morgen August 8th, 2016
Posted In: Sales
DOing vs. BEing: creating rules that put customers first
I recently purchased dysfunctional products/services from three vendors who were unwilling to go outside company rules to fix the problems they caused. How can we take part in the Trust Economy if our corporate rules preclude us from taking care of customers? Too often there’s a divergence between company rules and customer needs.
I’ll use my vendor issues as a starting point:
- Wheaton International Movers. After researching a big cross-country move, I picked Wheaton. But it was a nightmare: their driver was drunk on both ends of the move; boxes were lost; an expensive sculpture was broken by their packer. Getting reimbursed was a 4-month nightmare: I was ignored, lied to, and finally only paid a fraction of what I deserved even though they accepted responsibility. I was regularly told: “Well, unfortunately Ms. Morgen, that would go against our rules.” No one ever apologized; I’m still missing a favorite painting and important office paperwork; my sculpture is gone.
- CVS online pharmacy. These folks sent a bottle with crushed pills. I fought for weeks to get the pills replaced but I was told I should send them the offending bottle first (the post office is in a different town). “I understand your concern, but we must operate according to company rules.” Rules before my health?
- Fitbit. I purchased a broken Fitbit from an online vendor. Fitbit said they’d send a replacement I never received; the replacement from the online vendor was also broken. Reps at Fitbit actually said they received hundreds of calls a day about the problem but weren’t allowed to do anything about it until their ‘fix’ was ready. What?
As a consumer, I trust I’ll receive what I pay for, and be cared for if there’s a problem. Yet each company above took care of their rules before taking care of me. They put the DOing before the BEing.
RULES
When companies construct internal rules that are juxtaposed with customer needs they ignore the consequences
- Without customers, there’s no need for rules.
- Customer’s complaints go viral.
- Hurting, cheating, disregarding, and ignoring customers always, always loses business.
- For each customer who doesn’t feel fairly treated, companies lose unknown-hundreds of prospective clients for an uncertain time moving forward.
Too often companies confuse their rules [the DOing – regulations, results, performance] with a customer’s needs [the BEing – values, feelings, requirements]. Too many companies make it binary – company rules OR customer criteria – rather than Both/And. How do we design customer service scripts and training, how do we instill a primary focus on serving customers, to achieve Both/And and win/win?
The difference between DOing and BEing is Heart – heart, being one of those ‘soft’ ‘feminine’ words that assumes it’s not possible to make money and make nice (While training Buying Facilitation® at Morgan Stanley I heard they were conducting ‘closing’ training the following week. What? Why do you need both training programs? “Because BF is ‘soft’ and we need ‘hard’ skills to close.”). Isn’t it time to meld heart and head and DO-BE-DO-BE-DO? To make money AND make nice? All research shows the BEing is more profitable.
HOW TO PUT CUSTOMERS FIRST
There’s a way to put customers first AND take care of corporate rules. A few examples:
- Use an impossible customer request as a means to create a life-long partner.
“I hear you’d prefer if we were able to X. Unfortunately we aren’t able to do that, but we want you to be happy. Is there anything else I can do to get you what you deserve? Let’s see if we can get creative.”
Years ago while working with Bethlehem Steel during a trucker’s strike, I had my clients actually purchase steel retail from Pittsburg Steel to make sure Mazda wouldn’t have expensive downtime. We took the hit on cost to keep the customer happy. Well – to keep the customer!
- Use customer’s feelings to exhibit your dedication to them. During month 4 of my Wheaton ordeal, someone said “If you don’t stop shouting I’ll hang up on you!” Seriously? The rep should have been taught to grow a pair and not take it personally:
“Wow. Sounds like you’re really upset. I can imagine how annoyed you must be. I’m so sorry.”
- Make sure each Rep owns the problem. Nothing makes customers more angry than having to call back again and again (and be on hold forever) to find someone to help them, or having to repeat repeat repeat the same complaint to each new Rep. Assign the first Rep to own the problem to resolution.
MAKING MONEY AND MAKING NICE
To operate effectively in this new world of connection, workarounds, visibility and competition, your main differentiator may be how you take care of employees and customers.
- Design company rules that put customers first. So, instead of ‘Send us the damaged pills first [so we can fix any internal problems here]’ it would be, “That prescription is important to your health. I’ll send you an entirely new bottle and include a return mailer so you can send the bad ones back at your convenience. I’m sorry.”
- Trust that customers aren’t your enemies: they pay your bills.
- If you broke it, it’s yours. If you send a bad bottle of pills, a bad Fitbit (twice), or break a sculpture, fix it easily. Don’t take your costs out on the customer.
- Make sure that every customer is happy by the end of each interaction. An unhappy, screaming customer cannot be passed on.
- Create a vision statement that includes the words ‘Customer Service’. So: We are a Customer Service company that designs CRM software.
- Employees are customers. Happy employees take care of customers. I’ve never heard of a company that’s loving, kind, and respectful to their employees and mean to their customers. It’s that BEing thing again. I want to share a story that embodies the Truth of this.
Years ago a client sent a new employee to one of my Buying Facilitation® public training programs to get him caught up with the team I already trained in-house. This man, call him Glen, was angry, rude, mean, and dismissive of everyone around him. I called my client: Who is this mean person? He’s making everyone cry. Why did you hire him? “Do whatever you have to do to break him. I hired him because he’s got potential.” So I went into action on Day 2 and facilitated Glen through the outcomes he was causing. On Day 3 he came to class like a saint – supportive of others, kind, gentle, fun. What happened? Here’s what he said:
Every day, I’ve had to leave my house for work and put my ‘mean’ suit on. I was told I had to convince prospects, push closes, bias discussions about our products to promote a sale. I hated it: I had to shift my personality to ‘Do’ this manipulative, insensitive person. I told myself I had to become a shark. I’ve been miserable and my family has suffered; I didn’t know any other way to keep my job except to follow their rules and be miserable. Now I’m learning it’s possible to make money AND make nice; now I can be my real self and do my job successfully.
As a testament to his change, he got a huge – huge – tattoo of a shark on his back the evening he had his realization. He came to class the next day with the tattoo stating “I’ve put the shark behind me.”
To determine if you need to rethink your rules, to be part of the Trust Economy, consider these questions:
How will you know that the rules you have in place are customer-centric? If you need several layers of customer service to handle angry customers, or you regularly read negative Tweets or Yelp comments about you, there’s a problem.
How can you tell if you’re putting employees first? High turnover might be an indication.
How often do customer problems get escalated? Have you trained every level of staff to seek win/win results?
If you put people first, how would your rules change? And what beliefs would you need to reconsider?
What skills do employees have to achieve win/win when a problem occurs? Remember the mythical customer service rule Nordstrom was famous for? “Use your best judgment.” Of course that changes your hiring criteria. So be it.
I realize regulations are necessary to run a company. But so are customers. It’s possible to do the DOing and the BEing in a way that promotes income and care. What’s stopping you?
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Sharon Drew Morgen is an original thinker and visionary who designs communication/choice models for sales, coaching, customer service, and leadership. She is a keynote speaker, trainer, coach, and consultant. Sharon Drew is the developer of Buying Facilitation® and author of the NYTimes Business Bestseller Selling with Integrity, and the Amazon Bestseller What? Did you really say what I think I heard?as well as one of the top 10 bloggers in sales/marketing (www.sharondrewmorgen.com).
Contact Sharon Drew to help you review your regs and design people-centric rules that support customers. sharondrew@sharondrewmorgen.
Sharon Drew Morgen June 27th, 2016
Posted In: Communication, News
Using Follow Up Effectively
Do you attempt to follow up with prospective buyers because they haven’t contacted you when you thought they should? Do you know what is stopping them from contacting you? Or where they are along their decision path – their steps from idea to consensus, from change to choice, that buyers must address – while we sit and wait, hoping they’ll close?
With a focus on understanding need and placing solutions, you may have no idea what stage they are at: did you originally connect when they were first considering possibly fixing something? Or when they were comparing your solution to an internal workaround or their favorite vendor? Were they just seeking information to share at a planning session? I bet you don’t have all the data on this.
BUYERS DON’T WANT US EVEN WHEN THEY NEED OUR SOLUTION
We tend to think buyers need our solution, but that’s only a part of the issue. They don’t really want to buy anything, merely to solve a problem. And they always start out by trying to find a way to fix the problem themselves (When we think they are stalling, this is what’s going on that we don’t see.); it’s only when they realize that a workaround isn’t sufficient, or their internal folks can’t resolve the problem, or their regular vendors aren’t around, or or or… are they willing to buy.
But they have work to do before they are ready – and cannot not buy, regardless of how great a fit your solution is with their need, until these steps are completed (and all sizes/types of solutions require some form of these):
1.They must assemble anyone who will touch the final solution, (not obvious)
2. get buy in and consensus from both decision makers and influencers, (not easy)
3. manage any change a solution will bring. (complicated, even with a small sale).
Price is not the issue. Competition with other providers is not the problem. The problem is how they will manage the internal change your solution incurs (separate from the benefits of your solution). Read my article on the complete list of steps buyers must take before they can buy.
If you want to facilitate their decision making, and your prospect is aware they need your solution and they seem to be stalling, call with these questions:
- What would you and your decision team need to address to manage the types of change that would be required by purchasing our solution?
- How will you and the decision team know that an external solution might be more effective and efficient than an internal workaround?
I’ve developed Buying Facilitation® to use in conjunction with the sales model to give you the tools to help buyers manage the necessary steps to be ready to buy your solution. Use your follow up contact to help them figure out how to resolve any of these issues that might cause them to be stuck. Your solution is perfect for them; they just need help getting their ducks in a row so they can give you the order.
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See my new Entrepreneur Programs: Getting Funded; Creating a Selling Machine; Marketing to Buying Decisions
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Sharon Drew Morgen is the NYTimes Business Bestselling author of Selling with Integrity and 7 books how buyers buy. She is the developer of Buying Facilitation® a decision facilitation model used with sales to help buyers facilitate pre-sales buying decision issues. She is a sales visionary who coined the terms Helping Buyers Buy, Buy Cycle, Buying Decision Patterns, Buy Path in 1985, and has been working with sales/marketing for 30 years to influence buying decisions.
More recently, Morgen is the author of What? Did You Really Say What I Think I Heard? in which she has coded how we can hear others without bias or misunderstanding, and why there is a gap between what’s said and what’s heard. She is a trainer, consultant, speaker, and inventor, interested in integrity in all business communication. Her learning tools can be purchased: www.didihearyou.com
Sharon Drew Morgen June 3rd, 2016
The Arrogance of Listening
When researching my book on the gap between what’s said and what’s heard (What? Did you really say what I think I heard?) I discovered that most people believe they listen accurately, and that any miscommunication or misunderstanding is the fault of the Other.
When my book came out, 20,000 people downloaded it in the first 3 months. I received hundreds of emails from readers profusely thanking me for the book, saying they were going to give it to their spouses/colleagues/clients so THEY could learn to hear to these readers without bias or misunderstanding. Did readers not grasp how our brains are wired to make it highly unlikely we understand what others mean without bias? How was it possible that they missed the fact that ALL brains operate this way, even their own?
I also received calls from managers saying they wanted me to train their teams so they could better listen to each other, and to their clients. Yet none of them hired me. Why? Their teams believed they didn’t need training cuz they listened just fine, thanks, that any miscommunication lie on the side of the client/colleague.
HOW OFTEN DO WE MISUNDERSTAND WHAT’S MEANT
There are two issues here.
Truth: our brains have constructed unconscious, subjective filters (biases, assumptions, triggers) over the course of our entire lifetimes, making it highly improbable to accurately hear some percentage of what others mean to convey (percentages vary according to how far they are from our own subjective biases). Additionally,our brains subjectively and habitually match what they hear, to stored, historic conversations we’ve had (some from decades ago, some wildly out of context), thereby altering our Communication Partner’s meaning – and what we think they’ve said – accordingly. Unfortunately for us all, it happens at the unconscious, making it difficult for us to change/fix/recognize.
Reality: because our brain only offers us the interpretation it has constructed, (and we have no idea what percentage of this is correct), we believe we ‘hear’ accurately. So if I say ABL and your brain tells you I’ve said ABP, you will fight me to the death that you heard ‘right’, or that I just didn’t remember what I said, without realizing that your brain may have altered the transmission all on its own, without telling you. I had one Active Listening professor wildly mishear and misrepresent what I said, yet claimed I was probably having a Freudian Slip (he actually said that) because what he ‘heard’ was ‘accurate’ and I was mistaken.
Sadly it’s impossible to accurately hear the full extent of what our Communication Partners mean to convey (although we might hear the words [which we remember for 3 seconds]). Obviously with folks we’re in contact with regularly, our brain recognizes those unique communication patterns via habits and memories and does a better job for us. Not so much with people not in our immediate sphere, or when we enter conversations with assumptions and biases that restrict the entire dialogue.
SOMETIMES WE’RE JUST WRONG
But haven’t we all been burned over time with misunderstandings or assumptions? Haven’t we all realized that maybe, just occasionally, maybe sometimes, that we might have, on a bad day, misunderstood someone? And that it was actually our fault? What’s the deal about needing to be ‘right’?
In a recent conversation with my friend Carol Kinsey Goman (body language guru) we couldn’t figure out why the word ‘listening’ elicited so much denial. Why don’t companies demand their employees listen without bias? To hear clients without assumptions? To walk away from meetings with To-Do lists that actually represent what was agreed to at the meeting? Why is ‘listening’ a ‘soft skill’ when it informs all client interactions, team productivity, and creativity? Why do we assume we listen accurately?
Misunderstanding, misrepresenting, distorting what others say costs us all a lot – in personal capital, money, and possibility. So I ask you:
- What needs to happen for each of us to recognize that we share 100% of our 50% of conversations? That when one person ‘mishears’ maybe there is a problem between both Communication Partners? That there is a probability of some distortion, and nip it in the bud after every conversation?
- How will we know that it’s time to check in with our Communication Partner to ensure we’ve understood the same things – before we use the data we collected, or during an intense negotiation, or during/after a conversation or coaching session or employee review?
- At what point in any misunderstanding or confusion might we be willing to say, “Could you please say that to me a different way?” to make sure you’ve understood the importance of what has been said? What will we hear/feel to recognize there is a problem?
- What would you need to believe about yourself to admit that you, like every human being with a brain, are at best a mediocre listener? Because once you believe this is true, you might – you just might – be willing to be someone who occasionally misunderstands, or once-in-a-while makes a wrong assumption or mishears. Being Right is an expensive position to hold. At what point is the Greater Good more important than Being Right?
- Until we’re all – all – willing to admit that we’re biologically inadequate listeners, and be willing/able to include in dialogues some check points of agreed understanding (not to mention the occasional apology), or learn how to supersede our biases, we will suffer from Arrogance of Listening, and our lives, our relationships, and our incomes, will be restricted.
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Sharon Drew Morgen is the author of What? Did you really say what I think I heard? and 7 books on decision/change facilitation in selling/buying decisions including the NYTimes Business Bestseller Selling with Integrity. She is the developer of Buying Facilitation® a generic change management model that enables leaders to facilitate clients through their change decisions (for sellers, coaches, leaders, negotiators). She coaches, trains, keynotes, and consults in the areas of sales, listening, change, and leadership.
In addition to introducing a model in What? that enables readers to circumvent their brain’s filters, Sharon Drew has developed an on-line Listening Assessment to make it possible to recognize where biases lie, and a Listening Tool to help individuals and teams learn how to circumvent the unconscious and listen without any filters or bias. There is also a one-day training program to teach teams how to listen to each other and clients with no bias.
Contact Sharon Drew directly with questions. sharondrew@sharondrewmorgen.
Sharon Drew Morgen May 18th, 2016
Posted In: Communication, Listening
Trump as Change Agent?
As a spiritual person I recognize there are always concurrent views of events: the one we live with as it’s happening – the story, details, information – and the broader scope, higher view, or historic perspective usually not recognized until well after the event. So as I’ve gone about my life over the past weeks and been inundated by the over-abundance of focus on Donald Trump (All Donald. All the time.), I’ve been thinking of the broad view. Is there indeed a bigger picture? Something a terrified liberal can hang on to as maybe a positive? As someone who believes ‘Everything happens for a reason.’ I have to at least entertain the notion that maybe something is going on I don’t understand.
Here’s what’s most confusing: Trump’s content isn’t new; his demeanor is unacceptable; he’s abusive and silly. And yet he’s found a wormhole into the consciousness of us all – the ‘on’ button that’s making some people excited and others furious and starting new conversations in politics, religion, media, immigration, race, transgender, business, world affairs. The list goes on.
WHAT’S GOING ON?
What is it that’s so inspiring? What is it that makes my liberal intelligent neighbor – a middle school teacher who worked for Obama’s re-election – want to vote for him? That makes my colleagues in China, Sweden, or Israel shift our conversations over to The Donald? What’s so compelling that a man who is obviously sexist/racist/homophobic, scary, abusive, inappropriate, sociopathic, and deeply mean, is attracting global attention?
If you or I said what Trump is spouting we’d be laughed at, or lose jobs and friends. But we listen to him because he’s earned a place in the Global Famousphere as a symbol of the Ugly American – loud, rich, and arrogant – and has a Voice Heard Round the World. But what if he’s compelling because he’s saying some of the things we’ve always felt deep inside but would never admit?
He’s obviously touching something primal, putting words to something deep inside that hasn’t had a vehicle for expression before.
When I think of the bigger picture and attempt to view this event with a spiritual eye that’s not caught up in the Story, I grudgingly notice he’s doing something interesting: he’s basically challenging the status quo. He’s pushing against the beliefs, the rules, the conventional norms that have informed many of the systems we live by. He’s like a walking Id who we’ve approved to challenge our systems at the very core and breaking all the rules along the way – rules he’s proceeded to break so completely they may not go back to their original form and will have to be reconstructed into something currently unknown. Scary. Exciting.
That’s the bigger picture. Change cannot occur if things remain the same; Trump is the Bomb, mandating change in places that have been stuck in their status quo. Trump is a Change Agent.
CHANGE
What we’re hearing now is the sound of broken systems in historically broken industries fighting to maintain the status quo and resisting the threat of change. Personal systems, corporate systems, media systems, political systems – all initially designed and maintained by those in power who are often deaf to the needs of the followers, now being blown apart by this insidious blowhard who is giving us an opportunity to change.
Let’s stop for one moment to discuss change, systems, and beliefs. Systems are comprised of rules agreed/adhered to by the elements within and ruled by core beliefs. Our behaviors are the actions of our beliefs. To create real change, core beliefs must be re-examined or modified and the underlying system reorganized around potentially new rules with new behaviors. If the beliefs aren’t bought-in to the proposed change, we get resistance. And Trump is challenging our beliefs.
And we’re not effectively impeding him because we’re attempting to go after him with facts. This is not a content discussion, it’s a beliefs discussion.
Watch the kicking, yelling, screaming, manipulating, blaming, over the next 6 months. That’s what we all do when we’ve been violated. That’s what we all do when we are forced to change. As a change agent Trump is forcing us to re-examine our systems and change our rules; he’s causing us to notice our resistance and inability to collaborate; he’s forcing us to work together in new ways that we’ve not tried before because those with money/fame/status have designed our systems on the backs of the rest of us who haven’t had a voice.
We may end up discovering a lot and end up building new systems that create more inclusion and opportunity. Stay tuned.
____________
Sharon Drew Morgen is the author most recently of What? Did you really say what I think I heard? as well as self-learning tools and an on-line team learning program – designed to both assess listening impediments and encourage the appropriate skills to accurately hear what others convey.
Sharon Drew is also the author of the NYTimes Business Bestseller ‘Selling with Integrity’ and 7 other books on how decisions get made, how change happens in systems, and how buyers buy. She is the developer of Buying Facilitation® a facilitation tool for sellers, coaches, and managers to help others determine their best decisions and enable excellence. Her award winning blog sharondrewmorgen.com has 1500 articles that help sellers help buyers buy. Sharon Drew recently developed 3 new programs for start ups.
She can be reached at sharondrew@sharondrewmorgen.com 512-771-1117
Sharon Drew Morgen May 17th, 2016
Posted In: Communication
Anatomy of a Lost Sale: Case Study
I’ve been writing a lot lately about how we lose sales and forego success because we enter and conduct conversations through our biases and assumptions. Here is recent dialogue with a potential partner that gives a terrific example of possibility lost.
The representative of a sales/marketing blog called to discuss republishing my articles. Sounds great, right? But the hidden agendas, assumptions, and lack of collaboration ruined what might have been possible.
Here’s the story – and I’ll call my Communication Partner Bill.
DIALOGUE
Bill: Hey Sharon Drew. We love your content and would love to make it available to our 100,000 readers. Are you interested?
SDM: Sure. But I notice you’re a ‘sales’ blog, and my stuff is not exactly sales. Do you know the difference between Buying Facilitation® and sales?
Bill: I’d like to say yes, but I probably don’t.
SDM: Should I explain it? And if you still like what I’m doing we could see if your readers would like it too.
I then proceeded to explain my change facilitation model.
Bill: I hadn’t known all that. Good stuff. So we can repurpose your articles, and then you can use social media to link back to us?
SDM: What do you mean, Repurpose?
Bill: I just sent you links to 5 articles we’ve already repurposed so you can see. We reserve the right to change 25% of our contributor’s articles to enhance Search capability. Take a look. We haven’t published them yet and are awaiting your approval.
SDM: Wait. You want to rewrite one quarter of what I’ve written, possibly without fully understanding what I’m saying, and then use my name as the author? How do you know what you’ve changed imparts the same message?
Bill: Well, we hope we get it right.
SDM: You hope? So you rewrote some of my article to suit your needs, didn’t ask me to do it myself so it would line up with my intended message, didn’t understand Buying Facilitation® before you changed it, and spent hours rewriting my stuff before getting my approval – and still want me to have my name on stuff I didn’t write so your site can align with my brand?
Bill: Well, yes. But we have 100,000 readers that you’d then have access to.
SDM: Do you know how long those articles take me to write?
Bill: No idea. A couple of hours?
SDM: 10-20 hours. I’m a writer! Each word is carefully chosen to mean exactly what I want it to mean; a specific flow that I carefully create. No one – no one – touches my articles! Even my editor just writes me notes, like ‘Too wordy’ or ‘This is in the wrong place.’ And you want to rewrite 25% of my articles? And you were so sure that I’d be ok with this that you already rewrote 5 articles? That’s quite an assumption, not to mention time waste.
Bill: We didn’t mean to annoy you. Other bloggers are happy to have 100,000 eyeballs reading their stuff.
SDM: My blogs have plenty of eyeballs. But that’s not the point: why would I put my name on something I didn’t write and may not represent my thinking accurately? I find your assumptions infuriating and arrogant.
Bill: How ‘bout if instead you just share links to some of our articles with your social media connections?
SDM: The mainstream reader isn’t my audience. Did you know that? Did you ask who my readers were?
Bill: Oh. I didn’t know that. How ‘bout if you wrote an article just for us?
SDM: Sure. Any thoughts on how you might compensate me for my time and ideas?
Bill: We can’t pay you.
SDM: If you think of any way to compensate me, let me know.
Bill entered the call with biased expectations and assumptions based on his needs – access to my readers and the use of my name and content. His assumptions absolutely infuriated me, stepped on my beliefs, my ego, my professionalism, my time/hard work/ideas. I felt disrespected, abused, and annoyed that he merely wanted to meet his own goals, hadn’t done his homework, and assumed that his ‘product’ (100,000 eyeballs) met my criteria of a ‘win’ (It didn’t.). Unethical and out of integrity. If he had entered by assuming that between us we’d find a ‘win’ we could have found a way to serve us both.
A DIALOGUE USING BUYING FACILITATION®
Sellers lose sales when entering with biased, self-serving assumptions that limit possibility. Conversations that might have proved fruitful end up inadvertently annoying buyers, miss real prospects, and only connect with those having the same assumptions and biases. Here is what the conversation, and a partnership, could have been using Buying Facilitation® (and a bit of homework).
Bill: Hey Sharon Drew. I’m calling from X blog, and we love your stuff. I wonder if there is a way we could share your ideas with our readers in a way that would enable Google search for us both? From reading some of your articles, it seems that your target audience are early adopters and we might have some in our database.
SDM: Cool beans. Thanks for the call. How do you generally enhance search capabilities in your author’s articles?
Bill: We change about 25% of the content to use the most productive search terms. We might have to discuss if the same terms work for you also. How would you know, before we begin, that it’s possible to add search terms that could maintain the integrity of your message while effectively reaching the right audience?
SDM: As a professional writer, I don’t allow anyone to touch my writing. But I’d be happy to discuss search terms that would work for us both, and add them into the article. Does that work?
Bill: I’m sure between us we could find the right words. Worth a try. Another thought: maybe you could write an article for us? Since we couldn’t pay you money, do you have some ideas about something we could do together to make it a win for both our readerships?
By entering with the goal of win/win, by entering without self-serving assumptions that biased the entire conversation, we could have found a creative win for both of our readerships.
I don’t know what might have been. Maybe we could have created the largest sales blog in the world together. Or co-authored a book on the arc of the past and future of sales. Maybe we could have started a podcast series and invited disparate professionals to speak. Maybe. But we’ll never know. And that, my friends, is how you lose sale.
____________
Sharon Drew Morgen is the author most recently of What? Did you really say what I think I heard? as well as self-learning tools and an on-line team learning program – designed to both assess listening impediments and encourage the appropriate skills to accurately hear what others convey.
Sharon Drew is also the author of the NYTimes Business Bestseller ‘Selling with Integrity’ and 7 other books on how decisions get made, how change happens in systems, and how buyers buy. She is the developer of Buying Facilitation® a facilitation tool for sellers, coaches, and managers to help others determine their best decisions and enable excellence. Her award winning blog
sharondrewmorgen.com has 1500 articles that help sellers hep buyers buy. Sharon Drew recently developed 3 new programs for start ups.
She can be reached at sharondrew@
Sharon Drew Morgen May 2nd, 2016
Posted In: Communication, News
The What of How: ‘Why’ and ‘What’ are inadequate to enable action
When you’re conversing with a prospect, a teenager, or a team member, how does your brain choose the most effective words to connect your message to that particular person – and how do you know if there is a problem before it’s too late? How do you determine what to say, exactly, to effect real choice and change with folks who may have different mindsets and goals than you?
We’ve been through decades of Why, then What. But without the How, the Why and What can’t initiate choice or change: Recent brain research has proven that humans actually have no conscious access to the associations that drive our beliefs, biases, or behaviors. How do we get to our own, and Other’s, unconscious to enable change? How do we go beyond our own beliefs, biases, and behaviors to enable all that’s possible in any communication? How?
CONVENTIONAL QUESTIONS AND LISTENING FAIL
To get to the unconscious and real change, our habitual skills are inadequate:
Questions: our natural curiosity and inquiry-based questioning processes are biased – posed by Questioners from their restricted subjective experience (and curiosity, and assumptions) and predisposed goals; our conscious curiosity restricts possible outcomes and butt up against the limits of our Communication Partner’s (CPs) biases, assumptions, history, expectations and knowledge base.
Listening: we only hear what CPs mean to convey (and they hear us) according to habitual filters (bias, assumptions, triggers, memory). I spent 3 years writing and researching a book on how our brains prefer to reject anything we hear that makes us uncomfortable.
Goals: ‘Gather information’ and ‘Understand’ are biased by our own goals and biased questions and listening skills. Plus, we may be making false assumptions:our CPs have no
TOOLS FOR HOW
Doing what we’re doing now, it’s hard to facilitate the How of change which demands that the underlying beliefs, values, agreements, and structural elements of a system (individual or group) must shift congruently. Here’s the How of unconscious change:
Beliefs vs. Behaviors: our behaviors are representations of our beliefs – our beliefs in action, if you will. And our beliefs are what makes each of us ecologically sound. Until or unless beliefs (mostly unconscious) are engaged, buy-in occurs, and any potential threats to the underlying system are managed, change will not happen. Too many of us – coaches, sellers, doctors, leaders, parents, to name a few – base our connections on offering and gathering information (which accesses conscious behavioral data) causing us to succeed only with CPs whose unconscious beliefs are aligned. Otherwise, we’re merely pushing good data into a closed system and facing resistance. This is where we lose buyers, fail coaching clients, offer unheeded information to patients or teens, and have difficulties collaborating, implementing, or changing. To enable change, we must have an array of unbiased communication tools to engage our own and our CPs unconscious beliefs, which can’t be done by gathering or offering information. [Note: information gathering and sharing is necessary once the unconscious is ready for change.]
Change: change occurs only when all of the elements (all) of our unconscious that have created and maintained our status quo buy-in to the new. If we try to push change without first getting buy-in, our unconscious thinks there’s a foreign element pushing in and rejects it. This is the problems with implementations: even when the change is ‘discussed’ beforehand, it faces resistance due to the nature of the ‘information-in’ approach without engaging the unconscious systems elements necessary.
Insider vs Outsider: only insiders can understand, figure out, and make their own changes. Facilitators are outsiders and can never understand the system that re-creates the status quo every moment.
‘HOW’ DEMANDS REACHING THE UNCONSCIOUS
I have spent decades developing a ‘How’ model that’s used at the front end of questioning, data gathering, and data exchange. I know most folks prefer their habitual skills, intuition, and experience; but they rationalize any failure by calling buyers stupid, or patients un-educated or lazy, or say that clients don’t really want to change. Rather than considering the possibility that it’s our own skill sets that need enhancement, we continue what we’re doing and built our failures in (i.e. a 4% close rate in sales is deemed ‘normal’) as ‘acceptable’.
The real How requires helping CPs engage and manage their own unconscious. Facilitators must stop trying to meet their own expectations and facilitate Others in reaching their own – their way. Offering advice, pitches or information doesn’t make a dent, and as Outsiders, we’ll never understand anyway.
As a student of ‘How’ since I’ve been 11 years old, I’ve spent decades developing (and then training to global corporations) a ‘How’ process by unwrapping and scaling my systemizing Asperger’s brain, using NLP as a structural frame, and studying systems and brain science (a very cursory explanation of my lifetime of study and trial). My material uses a sequenced process of unbiased, systemic questioning and listening that gets precisely to the unconscious to make change, choice, and new decisionspossible. I’m eager to teach the material to anyone involved in facilitating excellence (sellers,
Facilitative Questions: These questions engage unconscious systems and are NOT inquiry-based. They follow the brain’s sequence of systemic change, and use specific words, in a specific order, to engage specific elements of our unconscious in the specific path our systems take to reorganize around change without disruption. Note: these questions have been tested and trialed over 30 years.
Listening for Systems: We’ve never been taught to listen for the underlying system or metamessage or unconscious patterns that form the status quo. By hearing what’s meant we can formulate the right FQs. When listening for what we want to hear rather than what’s being meant, we circumvent success.
The Sequence of Change: There’s a generic, specific, systemic sequence that all change takes regardless of the circumstance (or industry, or situation. Change has identifiable, explicit, generic steps). Until or unless all elements (or stakeholders, or beliefs, etc.) are recognized, all the elements that maintain the status quo buy-in to change, and the system designs a route toward systems congruence, no change can occur.
Goals: We must become Change Facilitator first. Starting with ‘I need to know’ or ‘I seek a prospect with a need’ or ‘I need to offer this information’ impedes success. Without win/win, and Servant Leadership as goals, you’re a solution seeking a problem and merely find the low-hanging fruit.
WHAT TO DO?
So if you can’t ask questions, gather data, understand needs, or offer advice, what should you be doing instead? Here is the approach to How:
1. Enter as a Change Facilitator/Servant Leader. Help others examine their unique unconscious system of beliefs and biases to determine what’s missing within their system to reach Excellence in the area of your solution. Ultimately, they’ll need to recognize what’s standing in the way of them having the beliefs and steps to support the congruent change and determine a way forward that incorporates all (all) of their unique criteria – and maybe your solution. They do this anyway – just without you.
2. Begin the communication by listening for metamessages to trigger the
3. formulation of your Facilitative Questions that
4. lead your CPs through their unconscious status quo and enables them to discover
5. what’s missing (at the unconscious level) for Excellence to occur, and notice any incongruencies.
6. They must gather the appropriate people, policies, relationships, etc. and begin the change process. Once this is completed, THEN you can…
7. Ask information gathering questions or give advice to those who are able to change congruently.
Always remain in a Witness, or Observer stance to remain unbiased. Obviously there comes a time when gathering/sharing data, or offering important advice, is vital. But save it for end when there is a readiness for change. It’s a systems thing. And I can teach you how to do this.
If I had my way, every scientist, teacher, doctor, seller, coach, lawyer, leader, and parent would know how to do this. For me, we all should be Servant Leaders to each other to enable good decision making for effective interactions. Sellers can find the right prospects on the first call and attend meetings with every stakeholder present; marketers can enter the Buy Path much earlier in the decision cycle by using Facilitative Questions; parents/doctors can inspire appropriate action; leaders can eschew their biases and facilitate change without resistance. I’m here to help those companies and individuals interested in learning the How of change.
Uses: Questionnaires, prospecting, advertising, assessments, teaching, therapy, leadership, coaching, relationships, sales/marketing, prospecting, closing, coaching, implementations, decision science/analysis, negotiation, consulting, doc/patient, legal, meetings, presentations.
___________
Sharon Drew Morgen is the author of 9 books on decision facilitation, Buying Facilitation®, and listening. Her award winning blog (www.sharondrewmorgen.com) has 1600 articles on sales, facilitation, change, bias, listening, questions, etc. She has trained over 100,000 people in dozens of corporations globally, and is recognized as a visionary and thought leader. Sharon Drew trains, keynotes, consults, and coaches sellers, coaches, and leaders. www.didihearyou.com; www.dirtylittlesecretsbook.com 512 771 1117.sharondrew@sharondrewmorgen.
Sharon Drew Morgen April 25th, 2016
Posted In: Communication, Listening
Buying Decisions, Buying Decision Path, Buy Cycles, and Pre-Sales by Sharon Drew Morgen
I’d like to set the record straight. In 1985 I coined terms that I’ve written extensively about in best selling books, magazines, and hundreds of articles. Unfortunately, when finally adopting them, the sales field defined them differently than originally intended, causing important concepts to be lost. This article presents the intended definitions and explains how I came to coin the terms.
In 1979 I became Rookie (stockbroker) of the Year at Merrill Lynch with 210 accounts (the market was 777). I couldn’t understand why prospects who ‘should have’ bought didn’t buy. When I started up a tech company in London in 1983 and became a ‘buyer’ I realized the problem and developed a new skill set to migrate it. Here’s how I figured it out.
HOW SALES IGNORES BEHIND-THE-SCENES BUYER’S REAL ISSUES
As an entrepreneur with needs, I invited sellers in to pitch me. But regardless of their professional skills or my potential need, I couldn’t decide what or if to buy before
- the people involved shared their thoughts and concerns, and bought-in to any changes a new solution would involve,
- we discerned any fallout to the company, relationships, people, policies etc. that change would incur and figure out ways to minimize it
- we tried workarounds and determined we couldn’t fix the problems with known resources.
Even though we were only a $5,000,000 company, I had a closely knit team and flourishing business to consider before bringing in anything that might rock the boat with my employees, investors, clients, company strategy, bottom line, brand, daily routines and systems. With a focus on placing solutions and ‘understanding’ needs (impossible to answer accurately until we all comprehended the scope of the givens) the sellers pitched solution data I didn’t know how to consider responsibly and potentially lost me as a buyer. That’s when I realized the problem I had had with buyers not closing:
The sales model focuses on placing solutions (seeking folks with a ‘need’ who ‘should’ buy) and ignores the confounding human-, policy-, and system-specific issues buyers must handle before a purchase could even be considered (folks who ‘will’ buy). By entering only during the final element of choice (vendor, solution), sellers squander the ability to influence the major portion of a buyer’s decision process which has little to do with needs or purchase.
Indeed, the sales model promotes the cart before prospects even know if they have a horse or have mapped out a destination, ensuring only those who have their cart ready to go (knew the obstructions, route alternatives, and danger signs) would buy. Promoting solutions, and asking questions in service of a sale, merely captures the low hanging fruit – those ready, willing, and able to buy – and ignores the possibility of influencing, enabling, and serving the early, Pre-Sales components in the decision-making path (whether selling/marketing online or through customer contact) – not to mention loses untold amount of business.
I realized all buyers must do this; and as I seller I had been sitting and waiting while buyers did this on their own, without me. Indeed, the time it took them to complete this was the length of the sales cycle. I figured if I could facilitate the buyer’s decision path, I could accelerate their decisions to ‘buy’ or ‘not buy’, stop wasting time, close more sales (quickly) and really serve. So I coded the entire change/decision arc (13 Steps, 9 of which [70% of the decision process] are outside the scope of how/what we sell), learned how systems make decisions to change, coined some new terms and developed some new models for questioning and listening without bias, and built this into a front end to sales so I could enter, facilitate/serve, and influence, earlier. I named this process Buying Facilitation® to denote the difference in focus between ‘selling’ and ‘buying’ and help buyers do the initial stuff they had to do anyway, but without sellers:
- assemble all appropriate stakeholders ((Buying Decision Team) to get their input;
- get consensus for types and levels of change manageable;
- research options;
- discover easy, economical workarounds where possible;
- decide how to identify handle any disruption a new addition would cause;
- weight risks with stakeholders to discern the efficacy of buying anything (Buy Cycle);
- choose solutions and vendors.
To be fair, the sales job has never been about facilitating change, using a restrictive ‘solution-placement’ model since its inception without recognizing the low close and enormous time wastage is anything more than a problem finding buyers. This singular focus has been so endemic that sales hasn’t accounted for either the idiosyncratic issues buyers must address prior to buying anything (even for inexpensive items) or the opportunity to influence and serve buyers much earlier than the final point they might reach to buy, believing that if they find creative ways to offer content earlier it will mitigate the problem. But it doesn’t.
The industry close rate of 4% has always been an indication of a problem: the centuries-old bias toward placing solutions (How can we accept a 96% failure rate [from first contact] as standard?) ensures all sales models, including Challenger, create resistance, potentially turn off real buyers who need your solution (80% of prospects buy a similar product within 2 years of your interaction), and ignore the ability to influence 70% of the Buying Decision Path.
Indeed, buyers don’t want to buy anything, they just want to resolve a problem congruently, without major disruption to that which works well. Indeed a purchase happens only when there is no alternate resolution; and we haven’t had a skill set that blends with the sales model to help: except for visionary areas within the global companies I’ve trained over the last 30 years, the sales field found my ideas and newly coined terms pointless. But sellers who added Buying Facilitation® to their sales activities experience upward of a 6x increase in sales as they truly facilitate buying decisions. My dream has always been that Buying Facilitation® be taught as part of sales training for all sales professionals.
BUYING FACILITATION® FACILITATES 70% OF BUYER’S DECISIONS
I taught my sales team how to add Buying Facilitation® to their current sales skills; we quickly experienced a 40% increase in sales (from first call) and I only needed half the sales staff. My tech team used the material to involve all the right people immediately and extract the most vital information quickly, making programming and implementing more efficient, and insuring early project completion and no ‘user errors’. I began teaching the material to clients, coaches, and managers.
Approximately five years ago my terms began entering the sales field. But, as happens when a new idea enters mainstream, the terms were not defined as I defined them, but re-defined to be a part of the very concepts I was fighting against.
TERMS DEFINED
I have no illusions that the mis-definitions will continue and some mainstream sellers will think they ‘do this’ already. Hopefully some folks will seek to learn the material (and training is required as the model employs entirely different thinking and skills). But just for my own piece of mind, I’m offering the definitions of the terms I coined in 1985. They include some form of the word ‘buy’ to denote the disparity between the act of buying and the process of selling. And the underlying belief is that as sellers we should be using our unique positions as corporate representatives and knowledge experts to be servant leaders and truly serve buyers to discover their own path to excellence, hopefully, ultimately, with our solution (But if not, we end quickly and gently. Otherwise, we close in half the time.).
Buying Facilitation®. A generic change management model for coaches, sellers, managers, etc.) that enables efficient, congruent change, that employs a specific type of listening (Listening for Systems), and new form of question (Facilitative Questions – not information gathering), used in a specific, coded sequence, for facilitators to enable excellence through congruent change. It manages all of the unconscious, upfront, endemic change issues that would have to accede for change to happen. Until buyers (or anyone) know how to manage this, they cannot agree to change/buy, hence the length of the current sales cycle.
Helping Buyers Buy. The term comes from the first Buying Facilitation® training I delivered in 1988 to KLM. By ‘helping buyers buy’ we facilitate the full Pre-Sales Buying Decision Path.
Buying Decisions/Process. The outcome of resolving all of the change/decision issues into an action: consensus of all stakeholders who will touch the new solution; the route forward to change without disruption or resistance; deciding to move beyond their workaround; AND THEN the solution/vendor choice issues. The term is being misdefined by sales to merely include vendor/solution choice issues.
Buying Decision Path. 13 steps that traverse the elements of change management: starting with an idea (Step 1) through to a purchase (Step 13). It includes people, systems, implementation, resistance, workarounds, relationships – and comes well before any decision is made to buy anything, and quite separate from any ‘need’. The sales field uses this term erroneously to denote how buyers choose one vendor/solution over another, line up the funds, etc. – a usage dynamically opposite to the original definition.
Buy Cycle. The entire set of givens necessary for buyers to end up with excellence (either internally or with a purchase). Again, it’s not only the solution/vendor choice issues.
Buying Decision Team. The full set of stakeholders – some not obvious, some not ‘decision makers’ – who will touch the final solution and need to add their ideas, concerns, knowledge, and feelings to the discussion. Usually sellers (or change agents) aren’t privy to the internal machinations necessary before a purchase (or any change) can happen. Hence the 4% close rate.
Buying Patterns. The way the buyer has traditionally bought/changed in the past. Do they always use known vendors? Will they never take cold calls or meetings with sellers? Sellers traditionally use their comfortable selling patterns and cannot connect with buyers with divergent buying patterns.
Marketers currently use the term Buyer Persona to denote ‘influencers’ who will enable a sale. This ignores most of the early decisions buyers make and keeps marketing from entering effectively much earlier. Using different types of content it’s quite possible to influence different points along the Buying Decision Path.
TIME FOR CHANGE
Think about it. Are you happy with your low close rate? Your horrific waste of time and resource running around after people who will never buy (and who you could know on the first call weren’t buyers) or responding to RFPs that fail? The time waste seeking prospects who will take an appointment only to have one person on a data gathering mission show up – and then you never hear from them again (not to mention the hours planning for the meeting!)? Have you never wondered where buyers go when YOU think they have a need?
The current sales model closes a fraction of people who need your solution, and costs much more than necessary on wasted resources (large sales forces, presentations, proposals). The problem isn’t finding the buyers; the problem is facilitating those who can buy. As an example, using Buying Facilitation® at Kaiser, sellers went from 110 visits and 18 closed sales in a month, to 27 visits and 25 closed sales, an increase of 600%, not to mention the time saving.
I go back to the original question I posed decades ago: Do you want to sell? Or have someone buy? They are two different activities. And I’ve developed terms that help sellers think through the steps that help buyers buy. Maybe it’s time to begin learning the ‘how’ of helping buyers buy, the ‘what’ of the buying decision path, and the ‘who’ of the buying decision team. Let’s begin using the terms properly and stop ignoring such a large piece of the puzzle.
____________
Sharon Drew Morgen is the creator of Buying Facilitation®. She’s written 7 books on the topic including one NYTimes Business Bestseller. Sharon Drew has trained and coached in companies such as Unisys, IBM, KPMG, Kaiser Permanente, Morgan Stanley, Wachovia, HP, GE, Bose, etc. To find out more about how buyers buy, go to www.dirtylittlesecretsbook.com
www.buyingfacilitationtraining.com
or 512-
Sharon Drew Morgen March 14th, 2016
Meetings: The Purpose, The Pain, The Possibility
As business folk, we hold meetings regularly. Yet often we don’t accomplish what we set out to achieve. Why?
The Purpose
Meetings are held to accomplish a specific, beneficial outcome requiring the attendance of the right people with the right agenda.
The Problem/Pain
Often we end up with miscommunication, wasted time, incomplete outcomes, misunderstanding, lack of ownership and ongoing personnel issues – sometimes an indication of internal power and faulty communications issues.
The Possibility
With greater success we can: stimulate thinking; achieve team building, innovation, and clear communication; and efficiently complete target issues. Here are some problem areas and solutions:
People. When outcomes aren’t being met effectively it’s a people- and management problem including: fall-out, sabotage, and resistance; long execution times; exclusion of peripheral people; restricted creativity and communication; exacerbated power and status issues. Are the most appropriate people (users, decision makers, influencers) invited? All who have good data or necessary questions?
- Rule: unless all – all – relevant people show up for the meeting, cancel it. It’s impossible to catch people up or have them collaborate, add creative thoughts, or discuss annoyances. Once it’s known that meetings aren’t held unless all are present, the frequency, responsibility, and motives shift.
- Rule: unless all – all – of the people who will touch the outcome from the meeting’s goals are in some way represented, the outcome will not reflect the needs of all causing fallout later, with resistance, sabotage or a diminished outcome.
Agenda. No hidden agendas! Recipients of potential outcomes must be allowed to add agenda items prior to the meeting.
- Rule: unless all – all – of the items of ultimate concern are on the agenda, the meeting will be restricted to meet the needs of a few with unknown consequence (resistance and sabotage).
Action. Too often, action items don’t get completed effectively. How do action items get assigned or followed up? What happens if stuff’s not done when agreed? How can additional meetings be avoided?
- Rule: put a specific, consensual, and supervised method in place to ensure action items get accomplished as promised.
- Rule: as meeting begins, get consensus on what must be accomplished for a successful outcome. This initial discussion may change agenda items or prioritize them, detect problems, assumptions, resistance before action items are assigned.
Discussion. How long do people speak? How do conversations progress? How do the proceedings get recorded? What is the format for discussions? How is bias avoided?
- Rule: record (audio) each meeting so everyone who attends can have it available later. Folks who didn’t attend are not privy to this audio. (See People above).
- Rule: design a time limit for speaking, and rules for topics, presentations, discussions, cross talk.
- Rule: include periods of silence for thought, notes, reflection.
Understanding. Does everyone take away the same interpretation of what happened? How do you know when there have been miscommunications or misunderstandings?
- Rule: unless everyone has the same perception of what happened for each topic, there is a tendency for biased interpretation that will influence a successful outcome.
- Rule: one person (on rotation) should take notes, and repeat the understanding of what was said to get agreement for each item before the next item is tackled. This is vital, as people listen with biased filters and make flawed assumptions of what’s been said/agreed.
Transparency. Agendas should be placed online, to be read, signed-off, and added to.
- Rule: whomever is coming to the meeting must know the full agenda.
- Rule: everyone responsible for an action item must be listed with time lines, names of those assisting, and outcomes.
Accomplishments. Are items accomplished in a suitable time frame? What happens when they aren’t?
- Rule: for each action item, participants must sign off on an agreeable execution. A list of the tasks, time frames, and people responsible must accompany each item, and each completed task must be checked off online so progress is accountable.
- Rule: a senior manager must be responsible for each agenda item. If items are not completed in a timely way, the manager must write a note on the online communication explaining the problem, the resolution, and new time frame.
Meetings can be an important activity for collaboration and creativity if they are managed properly and taken as a serious utilization of time and output. Ask yourself: Do you want to meet? Or get work accomplished collaboratively?
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Sharon Drew Morgen is the author most recently of What? Did you really say what I think I heard?, as well as self-learning tools and an on-line team learning program – designed to both assess listening impediments and encourage the appropriate skills to accurately hear what others convey.
Sharon Drew is also the author of the NYTimes Business Bestseller ‘Selling with Integrity’ and 7 other books on how decisions get made, how change happens in systems, and how buyers buy. She is the developer of Buying Facilitation® a facilitation tool for sellers, coaches, and managers to help Others determine their best decisions and enable excellence. Her award winning blog sharondrewmorgen.com has 1500 articles that help sellers help buyers buy.
Sharon Drew has recently developed 3 new programs for start ups. She can be reached at sharondrew@sharondrewmorgen.
Sharon Drew Morgen February 22nd, 2016
Posted In: Sales