Blog – Page 22 – What? Did You Really Say What I Think I Heard?

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.

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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 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

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 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@sharondrewmorgen.com 512-771-1117

Sharon Drew Morgen May 2nd, 2016

Posted In: Communication, News

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 conscious access to the full range of possible responses or change vehicles, and may not be in a position to accurately represent stakeholders. We’re gathering incomplete and inaccurate data; we’re sharing data our CPs can’t make sense of.

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, marketers, coaches, negotiators, leaders, etc.) as I begin my retirement process.

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.com

Sharon Drew Morgen April 25th, 2016

Posted In: Communication, Listening

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. To peruse 1600 articles on the subject go to www.sharondrewmorgen.com. To find out about Buying Facilitation® training go to
www.buyingfacilitationtraining.com To contact Sharon Drew: sharondrew@sharondrewmorgen.com
or 512-771-1117

Sharon Drew Morgen March 14th, 2016

Posted In: Listening, News

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.com 512-771-1117

Sharon Drew Morgen February 22nd, 2016

Posted In: Sales

As a kid I had fantasies of what the rest of my life would be. I was going to be (in no particular order): a New York Times Bestselling author (check); a world change agent (check); a singer (Nope!); recognized for my beauty and talent (Um…); a wife to a nice man and mother to 3 kids (In the ballpark.); live happily ever after (Jury is still out.). Some of that came true. But not much. And certainly not like I fantasized.

As I’ve lived my life, each decision, each turn of events, seemed to be both dynamic and challenging. Was I supposed to keep my dreams in mind or create new ones? It took decades to realize that whatever decisions I made were the right ones at the time.

My life turned out quite differently than I imagined, with my personal life taking a back seat to the work I somehow knew I was meant to convey. Personally, I took two very brief trips through marriage and motherhood (one son), with some movies, dancing, and travel to 63 countries. Professionally, I’ve written books; developed, scaled, and trained my original thinking in training, decision making, and change; coded how people hear each other (or don’t); and founded a non-profit. I always felt secure in the creativity and brain stuff, and horribly inadequate in the personal.

TRAPPED IN A BRAIN

As a child of domestic violence with Borderline Personality Disorder, Asperger’s and PTSD, I recognized I was trapped in a pretty cool brain with little ability to relate or socialize according to conventional norms. I mistakenly thought that if I got married and had kids, and worked in a corporate job, I’d be normal. But ‘normal’ wasn’t in the cards: I eventually had to give up a personal life in order to have the clarity, simplicity, and space to daydream, think and write.

Looking back, I cannot imagine how, as a damaged 11 year old, I understood I needed an enhanced skill set to face the challenge to the status quo that my ideas caused – a journey that took me 30 years with the help of gifted, kind, and demanding therapists. I had to learn appropriate communication, unbiased listening, patience, self-acceptance, authenticity, humility, trust, clarity, and boundaries. I had to make sure my mind/body/spirit was healthy. I had to learn to take the risks necessary to proclaim ideas that flew in the face of mainstream. I had to dig deeply into spirituality, values, meditation and find the courage to change, even in the face of abject terror and confusion. And always, I had to learn how to bring my heart into everything I did because my models blend heart and mind.

Luckily I found clients interested in my ideas. Over the decades, I learned to show up as socially appropraite most of the time, albeit ‘eccentric’ and occasionally obnoxious. Once, following a two year stint teaching Buying Facilitation® and my Facilitative Questioning technique to national sales team at Bethlehem Steel, my client was handing me over to a different department. “Is she always like this?” he whispered? “Yes,” my client whispered back. “And you’ll learn to love her.”

TENACITY AND TRANQUILITY

What I find curious is that regardless of how scared or isolated I was, I always – even as a child – knew with utter clarity that my ability to code systemic change was important enough to devote my life to and needed a global audience. I accomplished what I was meant to accomplish. The fields I’ve been challenging (sales, coaching, decision making) are even starting to catch up with the models I developed many decades ago.

I passionately hope next lifetime will be simpler. The struggle to encourage change in mainstream has been wearisome; the lack of a personal life has been sad. I’ve shed millions of tears and spent hundreds of sleepless nights. But I turn 70 knowing I’ve made a difference, and can rest in the knowledge that the world is a better place for having had me in it. And that knowledge is its own reward.

I face aging with contentment, curiosity, a bit of fear (I’m not afraid to die, just of losing my ability to think and be curious. My father died of Alzheimer’s.), and an excitement to learn my next lessons. I have no more idea of what the rest of my life will be like than I knew as a teenager.

But I do know this birthday is confusing me. I cannot imagine me as my mental picture of what an old woman should look or act like. I appear to be the same in the mirror, at the gym, dancing, writing, creating. When will something get different? Can I keep daydreaming and discovering? It’s quite confusing. No answers. Will let you know what happened next year. But I do know I seem to be settling in.

Sometimes, these days, I feel drawn to stillness. I just moved to a floating home on the Columbia River. Am spending vast amounts of time sitting quietly, watching the water go by. Peaceful. Sweet. Kind and soft in my heart. And so nice to not feel driven.

But sometimes I’m drawn to learning and thinking. I’m finally reading David Foster Wallace’s masterpiece Infinite Jest. And books on Bio-Hackers, predictions, New York garbage collection, and food. So much to learn.

I can’t stop having fun either. I finally found a replacement to the Broken Spoke here in Portland for my life-long Western Swing dancing hobby. And I’ve started a Non-Fiction Book Club.

New ideas aren’t slowing down one bit. But now, although I’m available to folks who need me, I write my ideas in notebooks instead of seeking to have ‘the world’ hear them. My job now is merely to be the person I’ve become over the last seven decades. I even seem to have a personal life emerging!

I feel complete. I can just be. And wherever my life now takes me is fine. I’ve lived my life fully and purposefully. I’m deeply happy. I’ve made a difference. And it’s been a privilege.

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Sharon Drew Morgen teaches the ‘how’ of decision making, change facilitation, and collaboration for sellers/buyers, leaders/followers, change agents/groups to corporations such as Kaiser, KPMG, IBM, Wachovia, etc. Her most recent book What? breaks down the gap between what’s said and what’s heard and teaches communication in corporations. She’s written 7 books on her unique model Buying Facilitation® which teaches sellers how to facilitate change and consensus for buyers. www.sharondrewmorgen.com.

Sharon Drew Morgen February 15th, 2016

Posted In: News

A person who facilitates excellence in others facilitates potential change, usually by asking questions to identify the components of the problem and deciding between possible solutions while reinforcing the changes and maintaining a trusting relationship. To achieve excellence, it’s necessary to avoid the listening filters that could prejudice the interaction, such as:

Bias. By listening for specifically for elements of the stated issues – problems, hopes, missing skills or motivation –facilitators merely hear what they can recognize as missing. If the context is unique, if there are unspoken or omitted bits, if there are patterns that should be noticed, if there are unstated historic – or subconscious – reasons behind the current situation, facilitators may not find them in a timely way (if at all), causing the interaction to begin in the wrong place, with the wrong timing and potentially not even discovering the crux of the problem, creating mistrust with the client.

Assumptions. If the person facilitating has had somewhat similar discussions, it’s possible that s/he will make faulty assumptions or guesses based on their history that do not take into account the client’s specific, historic, unconscious, and certainly idiosyncratic challenges.

Habits. The facilitator may enter the conversation with many prepared ways of handling similar situations and may miss the unique issues, patterns, and unspoken foundation that may hold the key to success.

As I write in my book What? Did you really say what I think I heard? the problem lie in our brains. Once we listen with a specific mindset or expectation, we restrict all else: our brains interpret the words spoken according to what it has heard before, with varying/unknown degrees of parallel to the current situation and often missing the client’s real intent, nuance, patterns, and comprehensive contextual framework and implications. We may end up offering help that misses excellence.

To have choice as to when, whether, or how to avoid filtering out possibility, we must go ‘beyond the brain’ by disassociating – going up on the ceiling and look down – to remove ourselves from any personal biases, assumptions, triggers or habits, enabling us to hear all that is meant (spoken or not). [In What? I have devoted an entire chapter to explaining how to trigger ourselves the moment there is a potential incongruence.]

For those unfamiliar with disassociation, try this: during a phone chat, put your legs up on the desk and push your body back against the chair, or stand up. For in-person discussions, stand up and/or walk around. [I have walked around rooms during Board meetings while consulting for Fortune 100 companies. They wanted excellence regardless of my physical comportment.] Both of those physical perspectives offer the physiology of choice and the ability to move outside of our instincts. Try it.

It’s important to excel at disassociating, entering conversations without any sort of biases or assumptions, and doing whatever is necessary to restrict any possibilities. Too often our clients and employees seek real leadership from us, and all we’re doing is what’s most comfortable for us – never discovering the real problems or solutions that would make a difference. As facilitators we hold important keys to making a difference. Let’s not discount the power of our positions.

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See my new Entrepreneur Programs: Getting Funded; Creating a Selling Machine; Marketing to Buying Decisions

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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. She can be reached at sharondrew@sharondrewmorgen.com 512 771 1117 www.didihearyou.com;
www.sharondrewmorgen.com

Sharon Drew Morgen January 11th, 2016

Posted In: Listening

Training successfully educates only those who are predisposed to the new material. Others may endeavor to learn during class but may not permanently adopt it. The problem isn’t the value of information or the eagerness of the learner: It’s a problem with both the training model itself and the way learners learn. It’s a systems/change problem.

HOW WE LEARN

We all operate out of unique, internal systems comprised of mental models (rules, beliefs, history etc.) that form the foundation of who we are and determine our choices, behaviors and habits. Our behaviors are the vehicles that represent these internal systems – our beliefs in action, if you will. So as a Buddhist I wouldn’t learn to shoot a gun, but if someone were to try to kill my family I’d shift the hierarchy of my beliefs to put ‘family’ above ‘Buddhist’ and ‘shooting a gun’ might be within the realm of possibility

Because anything new is a threat to our habitual and carefully (unconsciously) organized internal system (part of our limbic brain), we instinctively defend ourselves against anything ‘foreign’ that might seek to enter. For real change (like learning something new) to occur, our system must buy-in to the new or it will be automatically resisted. It similarly effects selling/buying, coaching/clients, doctors/patients, leaders/followers.

A training program potentially generates obstacles, such as when

– learners are happy with their habitual behaviors and don’t seek anything new,
– fear they might lose their historic competency,
– the new material unconsciously opposes long-held beliefs.

We are programmed to maintain our status quo and resist anything new unless our beliefs/mental models recognize that the new material will align with our status quo regardless of the efficacy of the required change.

HOW WE TRAIN

The training model assumes that if new material

is recognized as important, rational, and useful,
is offered in a logical, informative, interesting way,
allows time for experience and practice,

it will become accepted and habituated. But these assumptions are faulty. At an unconscious level, this model attempts to push something foreign into a closed system (our status quo): it might be adopted briefly, but if it opposes our habituated norm, it will show up as a threat and be resisted. This is the same problem faced when sellers attempt to place a new solution, or doctors attempt to change the habits of ill patients. It has little to do with the new, and everything to do with change management.

Truly experiential learning has a higher probability of being adopted because it uses the experience – like walking on coals, doing trust-falls with team members – to shift the underlying beliefs where the change takes place. Until or unless there is a belief change, and the underlying system is ready, willing, and able to adopt the new material into the accepted status quo, the change will not be permanent.

One of the unfortunate assumptions of the training field is that the teach/experience/practice model is effective and if learning doesn’t take place it’s the fault of the learner (much like sellers think the buyer is the problem, coaches thinks clients are the problem, and Listeners think Speakers are the problem). Effective training must change beliefs first.

LEARNING FACILITATION

To avoid resistance and support adoption, training must enable

buy-in from the belief/system status;
the system to discover its own areas of lack and create an acceptable opening for change

before the new material is offered.

I had a problem to resolve when designing my first Buying Facilitation® training program in 1983. Because my content ran counter to an industry norm (sales), I had to help learners overcome a set of standardized beliefs and accepted processes endemic to the field. Learners would have to first recognize that their habitual skills were insufficient and higher success ratios were possible by adding (not necessarily subtracting) new ones. I called my training design Learning Facilitation and have used this model successfully for decades. (See my paper in The 2003 Annual: Volume 1 Training [Jossey-Bass/Pfieffer]: “Designing Curricula for Learning Environments Using a Facilitative Teaching Approach to Empower Learners” pp 263-272).

Briefly: Day 1 helps learners recognize the components of their unconscious status quo while identifying skills necessary for greater excellence: specifically, what they do that works and what they do that doesn’t work, and how their current skills match up with their unique definition of excellence within the course parameters. Day 2 enables learners to identify skills that would supplement their current skills to choose excellence at will, and tests for, and manages, acceptance and resistance. Only then do new behaviors get introduced and practiced.

Course material is designed with ‘learning’ in mind (rather than content sharing/behavior change), and looks quite different from conventional training. For example Day 1 uses no desks, no notes, and no lectures. I teach learners how to enlist their unconscious to facilitate buy-in for new material.

Whether it’s my training model or your own, just ask yourself: Do you want to train? Or have someone learn? They are two different activities.

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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. She can be reached at sharondrew@sharondrewmorgen.com 512 771-1117 www.didihearyou.com; www.sharondrewmorgen.com

Sharon Drew Morgen November 9th, 2015

Posted In: Listening

Tags: Training Your Team

Answer these questions to see how accurately you hear what your communication partner intends you to hear, and how much business you are losing as a result.

How often do you enter conversations to hear what you want to hear – and disregard the rest?
How often do you listen to get your own agenda across, regardless of the needs of the speaker?
How often do you have a bias in place before the speaker’s points or agenda are known?
Do you ever assume what the speaker wants from you before s/he states it – whether your assumption is accurate or not?
How often do you listen merely to confirm you are right…and the other person is wrong?
Do you ever enter a conversation without any bias, filters, assumptions, or expectations? What would need to happen for you to enter all conversations with a totally blank slate? Do you have the tools to make that possible?
Because your filters, expectations, biases, and assumptions strongly influence how you hear what’s intended, how do you know that your natural hearing skills enable you to achieve everything you might achieve in a conversation?
How much business have you lost because of your inability to choose the appropriate modality to hear and interpret through?
How many relationships have you lost by driving conversations where you wanted them to be rather than a path of collaboration that would end up someplace surprising?

While writing my new book “What? Did you really say what I think I heard?” I spoke with dozens of people about the way they heard others. Almost to a person, everyone thinks they listen accurately. Ah, but do they hear what’s intended??

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See my new Entrepreneur Programs: Getting Funded; Creating a Selling Machine; Marketing to Buying Decisions

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Learn more about programs, assessments or study guides.

Sharon Drew Morgen November 2nd, 2015

Posted In: Listening

telephone

I believe that cold calls are quite important as part of an overall sales strategy. How they are done, however, determines their success. If the goal of the call is to gather data, share product information, start a conversation, or make an appointment, the odds are that the outcomes will be less than successful: sellers claim over 90% failure on their attempts.

If, however, a seller can enter the call with a goal to create the means for buyers to discover their path to excellence in the area of the seller’s solution, to figure out who they should assemble to begin a change process that leads them to excellence (and possibly a purchase), and create a win/win collaboration with the seller that engages buyers and prospects to continue communicating, then it’s a win.

Using current cold calling techniques, cold callers don’t recognize that the call is meant for them to get their own needs met. Sellers enter the call as if the buyer:

were sitting and waiting to hear from them with nothing else to do,
needs the solution regardless of their status quo,
should respond fully and honestly to a stranger asking probing, rude questions.

And worse of all, there are a large percentage of real buyers who won’t take the call because they either don’t want to speak to a stranger who wants to take their time, don’t like the prying questions or the information push, or aren’t at the stage in their decision path that would enlist a solution or sales person. Using other means of cold calling, these folks could easily be brought on board for appointments with all of the decision makers, or for continued calls of discovery and collaboration.

Here are two lousy cold calls I got recently. I took one of them and created a ‘good call’ using my Buying Facilitation® model to show you the difference between playing a numbers game, and serving buyers to facilitate excellence. Read them all, and decide which is better.
#1
C: Hello, Sharon? Joe from Mimeo calling. How you doin’ today? [I assume he was attempting to be intimate, not knowing that anyone intimate with me would never call me ‘Sharon.’] SDM: Do you know if that’s my correct name?
C: I do know. It’s your name.
SDM: Really? Are you absolutely certain?
C: I am.
SDM: How can you be so certain?
C: Wait. Aren’t you Sharon? Is Sharon there?

Seriously. That call happened. Word for word.
#2
E: Hi. I’m calling from Ecsell. Is this Sharon?
SDM: Is this a cold call?
E: No. It might be a partnership call and I might be able to hire you as a speaker.
SDM: Cool. You should know, then, that my first name is Sharon Drew.
E: OK. I didn’t know that. But I know you’re a sales company and want to tell you about our coaching products. [And the reason she doesn’t want to collaboratively figure out if our solutions would blend is….? And the reason she tried to trick me into speaking by lying to me is…?] SDM: Do you know who I am and what I do?
E: You’re the President of Morgen Facilitations. What else should I know? (She’s asking ME?)
SDM: So you didn’t do your homework. I’m a sales visionary, and for decades have been teaching a buy-in model I invented and teach to sales folks and coaches to give them the tools to help buyers make the change management decisions necessary to be ready to buy.
E: That’s no reason you wouldn’t be able to use our products also, or tell your clients to use our products.
SDM: Wow. You’re still pushing without listening to what I said.
E: Oh yeah?? I’m not pushing. Just educating .(So she’s assuming that I need education, that what she has to say is more important and better than who I am, what I do, what I might need, and – worse of all – she’s missing a potential win/win collaboration by lying to ‘get in’ just to educate me.’) After I hung up on her, she called me back three times to leave me messages!

These calls really happened. You can see the lose/lose here, the disrespect, and the lost opportunity. Do you know how your sales folks are making their cold calls? Have you ever considered adding new skills that would facilitate a real collaboration?

This is what a sales call would look like if I use Buying Facilitation® in call #2.

E: Hello. My name is Ellen from Ecsell, and I’m selling coaching products. This is a cold call. Is this a good time to speak?
SDM: Yes, I have a few moments, but I’m not in the market for coaching products. I sell some myself, and use a unique coaching model I developed that probably wouldn’t work with a more mainstream coaching solution.
E: Interesting. I wonder if you ever partner with other companies for those times you find groups with other innovative solutions.
SDM: I would be very interested. What do I need to do to find out if there is a partnership possibility here? It goes beyond whether or not I like your solution, as there are generally criteria on both sides that need to be met. What do you suggest?
E: Well, we could start with introducing each other to our solutions on this call, and if we both like what the other has, then I would set up a conference call with one of our principles. And a good question for us both to answer might be: What would we each need to see from the other to know if we have the content and the integrity to consider a partnership of some kind? If it makes sense, we can go from there. Does that work for you?

See how easy? Collaboration. Win/win. Trust. Respect. And we expanded what might be possible, added in a bit of integrity, and everyone brought their beset game – all on a cold call.

If you ever want your cold calls

to enable a collaborative dialogue that’s win-win,
to facilitate decision making change, buying and integrity,
to make appointments that include the necessary decision makers,
to teach your buyers how to consider working with you on the first call,

consider adding Buying Facilitation® to your sales model (it works with all sales models). It uses unique questions and listening that opens discussions that enable change, collaboration, and potentially buying. And you wouldn’t sound like these idiots who called me. sharondrew@sharondrewmorgen.com

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Sharon Drew Morgen is an original thinker, inventor, trainer, and consultant. She is the author of 9 books, including the NYTimes Business Bestseller Selling with Integrity, and the Amazon bestseller What? Did you really say what I think I heard? She is the developer of Buying Facilitation® a generic change management/decision facilitation model that give leaders, decision analysists, coaches, and sellers the tools to help other make their own best decisions based on their own values and beliefs. She works with global clients to enable them to listen without bias, pose Facilitative Questions that enable Others to recognize and act on their own best answers, and help buyers buy. She can be reached at sharondrew@sharondrewmorgen.com. 512 771 1117.

Sharon Drew Morgen October 13th, 2015

Posted In: News

« Previous Page — Next Page »

Trump as Change Agent?

Anatomy of a Lost Sale: Case Study

The What of How: ‘Why’ and ‘What’ are inadequate to enable action

Buying Decisions, Buying Decision Path, Buy Cycles, and Pre-Sales by Sharon Drew Morgen

Meetings: The Purpose, The Pain, The Possibility

On Becoming 70

What Should Coaches, Managers, and Consultants Be Listening For?

Training vs. Learning: do you want to train? Or have someone learn?

How Much Do You Suck at Listening?

Two Cold Call Case Studies: Why Your Cold Calls Aren’t Working