Listening – Page 6 – What? Did You Really Say What I Think I Heard?

For years I’ve written about how sales suffer because the sales model, designed to seek buyers and place solutions by information sharing and gathering, ignores the vast opportunity to close more sales by adding the function of facilitating Buyer Readiness (i.e. systemic change). The absence of this capability restricts sales to searching for those ready to buy, and causes objections en route:

You’re getting objections not because of your terrific solution, your professionalism, your lists, your competition, the buyer’s need, or your price (It’s never ever about price.). Nor because buyers are liars (David Sandler once told me he never meant the take-away that that expression has evolved into.), stupid, or connivers.

You’re getting objections because you’re using content push and various methods of information sharing as your main vehicle to selling, before buyers are ready or able to buy, before they know why, or when, or if to hear your message. As a result, you’re getting objections because you end up merely seeking those who SHOULD buy, ignoring the vastly larger group who CAN buy but haven’t yet gotten ready (and who won’t object once they get their ducks in a row).

You’re getting objections because you’re reducing your entry points, and along the way, annoying those who don’t (yet) know how to respond to what feels like an invasion.

Sales is designed to

find those ready to buy: the low-hanging fruit – those who have already recognized that making a purchase is the only way to resolve a problem, have the buy-in to proceed, and know how to manage any change a new purchase would demand;
seek those who are ready, willing, and able to listen to/hear you;
ignore those who haven’t yet decided on bringing in an external solution but will ultimately be buyers (Read my article on the 13 step Buying Decision Path.);
make information/content the preferred focus with which to close sales, and as a result,gather needs (as per your biased criteria), understand (as per your biased criteria), pitch/place data (which often overlooks their real internal change challenges), and/or seek appointments (based on who’s willing to spend time with you) to pitch solutions without recognizing an additional entry point might be to find/facilitate far more real buyers through the Pre-Sales, change management portion of their decision path (causing countless wasted appointments with those merely seeking data to use internally, or using your content to try to persuade other team members);

and as a result you’re getting objections. With a function limited to using solution-based information as the route to placing solutions and searching for those who SHOULD buy – and getting objections from those who don’t find relevance in your offering, or may feel insulted or made ‘stupid’ – sales overlooks the possibility of facilitating the far larger group who CAN buy. It’s only when they’re certain they can’t fix the problem themselves AND get buy-in, do buyers consider going ‘external’ for a solution. And objections are merely a reaction to feeling pushed by your content and goal to place a solution.

WHY YOU GET OBJECTIONS

I define ‘buyer’ as a person/group who has discovered they can’t fix a problem internally, traversed their change management issues, and has gotten agreement to seek an external solution. The very last thing buyers need is your solution – literally.

So here, in no particular order, is a list of reasons why you get objections, and why/how the limited solutions-push focus of the sales model merely handles a small fraction of a Buying Decision Path instead of actually enabling buying. And fyi: by adding the functionality to help potential buyers traverse their systemic change management issues first, you’ll never get objections.

Selling doesn’t cause buying. Do you want to sell? Or have someone buy? Two different activities and mind-sets.
Buying involves both systemic change AND (when there’s no other option) solution choice. Using solution data as the main skill to make a sale restricts possibility, getting you objections from those who don’t know how to hear it (Remember: we all listen through biased filters.)
Buyers buy according to their buying patterns, not your selling patterns.

Pushing solution data too early causes objections, regardless of need or the efficacy of your solution.
Until buyers recognize how to solve a problem with maximum buy-in and minimum fallout to their status quo (i.e. when they have their ducks in a row), they aren’t buyers regardless of what you believe to be their ‘need’. If they buy without first managing congruent change, they’ll cause internal disruption.
Until buyers are certain they can’t solve a problem themselves with their own resources, they can’t recognize, and don’t have the full data set to understand, what they might need to buy and will resist/object when having seemingly pointless content shoved at them.

Sales and marketing pitches use biased language to describe solutions, further restricting the buying audience. Until buyers can handle their change, and know the full extent of internal givens (i.e. personal, systemic) they have to deal with, they don’t know how to listen to your content details effectively, and object when pushed. It’s possible to design unique pitches that facilitate change and Systems Congruence for each stage of their non-solution-based, Pre-Sales Buying Decision Path.
By restricting the sales model to finding interest using the solution data, you’re only handing the last 30% (steps 1-9) of the 13-step Buying Decision Path. The first 9 steps (Pre-Sales) are a change management exercise, focused on fixing their problem in a way that minimizes disruption and maximizes buy-in, recognizing a need for an external solution only at step 10. When sellers try to place solutions before they’ve gotten to step 10, buyers object.
Sales ignores the possibility of influencing the path of (Pre-Sales) change that is driven by the buyer’s system of unique rules, people, history, etc. that protects itself at all costs (i.e. objects).
Your sales and marketing efforts seek those who you’ve determined will have a likelihood of buying (the low hanging fruit), and you’re competing for this small percentage, ultimately closing only 5% of a much broader set of possible buyers.
There is an entirely different goal, focus, solution, thought process, skill set, necessary to become part of, and facilitate, the Pre-Sales, systemic, Buying Decision Path that must, as per the laws of Systems Congruence, enable change congruently before any purchase is considered.
You’ll avoid objections when you first facilitate and expedite the change that those who CAN buy must handle, and THEN use your information-centric approach to sell to those you’ve helped be ready to buy. The time it takes buyers to get buy-in for congruent change is the length of the sales cycle, regardless of their need or the efficacy of your solution.
Pitching, content marketing, presentations, cold calling, etc. get objections because they push solution data into a ‘closed system’ that feels compromised by the push, and must resist until there is systemic agreement to go external for a fix.
Judgements regarding the reasons buyers offer objections are subjective, biased interpretations contrived by sellers to make buyers ‘stupid’ when they aren’t getting the outcome they sought. Sellers rarely consider that they’re entering at the wrong time, in the wrong way, for a situation and unique set of internal, systemic dysfunctions they really (really) have no understanding of, or that the buyer is in the early steps of change and hasn’t yet recognized a need to buy.
You can accelerate a buyer’s route to decision making by helping them traverse their route to congruent change, but not with a restriction that begins by using solution-based information as the vehicle to influence buying. It’s possible to close five times more than you’re currently closing.

You’re actually causing your own objections. You get no resistance when facilitating prospects through their own steps to congruent change first, get them ready to change, and continue on to placing your terrific solution content with those specific prospects who CAN buy. (Read my article on the Buyer’s Journey that lays out the entire Pre-Sales buying decision process.) But you’ll need to take a different – additional – path through a different lens. You’ll need to understand the change management issues within your industry. And no, you cannot use your current sales skill to accomplish this.

FOCUS ON FACILITATING BUYER READINESS FIRST

Here is the deal. Until now, you’ve waited while buyers do this change stuff: they must do this anyway (with you or without you). So you can continue pushing your content and getting objections, or you can add a new function to your outreach to connect with the right ones sooner: enter their decision path, get onto their Buying Decision Team, and facilitate the ones who CAN buy through to buying. Just recognize the sales model doesn’t do the facilitation portion as it’s solution-placement based.

I designed a new methodology to facilitate the front end of the decision path (Buying Facilitation®). It’s a change facilitation model that works with sales to help buyers congruently and

Recognize all of the elements they must assemble to get appropriate input for problem solving and change;
Figure out if they can/cannot fix it themselves (You can facilitate this on the first call so long as you avoid discussing need or solution.);
Pull together all of the systemic elements that must be in place for any change (i.e. purchase) to happen to ensure a minimal disruption;
Be ready to choose your solution.

Buying Facilitation® is a generic change facilitation skill set, with no content focus, no bias, and is systemic in nature. It involves facilitating change (vs pushing content) with a new form of question (Facilitative Question) that enable systems to recognize their own criteria and manage change congruently; a new form of listening that involves Listening for Systems; and Presumptive Summaries to enable people to move outside of their subjective experience and view the entire situation as an Observer/Coach. I’ve trained it to about 100,000 sales folks globally, in several industries and product price points, and generally get a close rate of 5x the control group.

Right now, you’re closing 5% and wasting a lot of resource to find them. You’re hiring too many people to close too few; ignoring real prospects on route to making an appointment – and then going to appointments with a fraction of the appropriate people present, to push content they don’t know how to listen to, and fighting with competitors for the same restricted group of buyers – when if you could enter differently, with a willingness to add a new skill set, you could find/close more buyers.

There are a lot more REAL buyers suffering from lengthy Buying Decision Path confusions as they fumble through change. They really could use your help. Read Dirty Little Secrets; why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell, and learn about the systems involved in buying (or any change), and add this to your sales initiatives. You’ll have more clients, shorter sales cycles, meaningful relationships built on trust, and no objections.

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Sharon Drew Morgen is a Change Facilitator, working with sales (Buying Facilitation®), coaching, leadership, buy-in, implementations, and consultants. She has trained sales and management teams in global corporations for 35 years. She is the author of the NYTimes Business Bestseller Selling with Integrity, and the Amazon best sellers Dirty Little Secrets: why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell, and What? Did you really say what I think I heard? Sharon Drew is also a coach, speaker, and consultant. She can be reached at sharondrew@sharondrewmorgen.com

Sharon Drew Morgen June 26th, 2017

Posted In: Listening

Have you ever been absolutely certain you heard someone say something they later claim they didn’t say? Or inaccurately interpret requests from your spouse or colleagues when you could swear you’re right and they’re wrong? It’s interesting how mutually defined words end up causing such havoc.

Spoken language is a mutable translation system – a best attempt to impart thoughts, feelings, and world view between dialogue partners for the purpose of shared understanding, intimacy, and maintaining relationships.

Senders (unconsciously) choose their words as representative of what they wish to share. Most of the time their Communication Partners (CP) understand them. But sometimes Receivers don’t hear a Sender’s message accurately even when they define the words identically, causing them to misunderstand or bias what’s been shared, with a potential for a miscommunication. What’s going on?

When researching my new book (What? Did you really say what I think I heard? ) I spent a year reading 52 books to learn why there is a gap between what’s said and what’s heard. I studied brains, bias, collaboration, filters, AI, and the neuroscience aspects of communication, and learned just how fragile our listening process is. Before the research I had naively believed that I accurately heard what others meant to convey most of the time. I was shattered to learn that’s not even possible.

THE REASONS

The problem is our brain. As Listeners, we think there is a direct transmission between words spoken and our interpretation. But the reality is far murkier: just as our eyes take in light and our brains interpret captured images, our ears take in sound and our brains interpret meaning. That means we all see and hear the world uniquely, according to our mental models and filters, and are at effect of what our brains allow us to hear, not necessarily what’s said.

During conversations, our brains delete, misconstrue, and misinterpret according to filters – biases, triggers, assumptions, beliefs, habits and mental models – in order to keep us comfortable and maintain our status quo. Accuracy is not their criteria. And we’re left with the residue, assuming our unique interpretation is accurate: not only do we not realize what we think has been said might be inaccurate, we adamantly believe what our brains tell us we’ve heard is accurate. Hard to fix when it’s not obvious there is a problem.

How, then, do we know when we’ve misheard? How do we correct a problem we literally can’t get our minds around? We must go beyond our brain.

THE CURE

For us to accurately hear what our CPs intend to convey we must enter conversations from an ‘observer’ standpoint, allowing us to rise above our filters (I have a thorough discussion on this in Chapter 6 in What?). Since we can’t use the same skills that cause the problem, we must use our physical system to go beyond our brains. Try this technique: During conversations stand up (I get permission to walk around during meetings, saying “Do you mind if I walk around so I can think more creatively?”) or lean back against your chair with your feet up. It physically unhooks you from your physiology that causes automatic responses and takes you, instead, to an unbiased place in your brain. I know this sounds simplistic but try it – it’s an NLP technique that I’ve used in my training programs and coaching sessions for 30 years. It works.

It’s also possible to notice clues in your CP that denote ‘misunderstanding’. Visibly, s/he will look confused, or his/her face will go blank or scrunch up. Verbally, you’ll hear a response that is not aligned with your response, or there will be a long silence, or a voice/tempo/volume shift, or a ‘What??’ The cues of miscommunication will depend upon the strength of your relationship, of course. The worst result is that nothing is said and the conversation continues as if there has been understanding.

THE PREVENTION

To have more choices when you need them, start with discovering your tolerance to adding new behavior choice:

Where or when are you willing to have a miscommunication? Are there times you need choice to ensure you avoid miscommunicating? Times you don’t mind if there is a miscommunication?
How will you know if/when a problem exists early enough to avoid a defective communication?
What are you willing to do differently to avoid misunderstanding or misinterpretation? And what happens when you don’t?

The big decision is: are you willing to do something differently to have a higher probability of having an effective communication? Because if you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always got. And just maybe you might need new choices for those times what you’re doing isn’t working. Not to change what you’re doing, but just add a choice when you need one.

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Sharon Drew Morgen is the author of What? Did you really say what I think I heard? (www.didihearyou.com) that explains, and offers tools to correct, how and why people end up mishearing and miscommunicating. I also developed some learning tools for those who wish to enable their communication choices. Sharon Drew is also the author of the NYT Business Bestseller Selling with Integrity, and the Amazon bestseller Dirty Little Secrets: why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell. She is the developer of a change facilitation model used in sales called Buying Facilitation® and trains companies seeking to add a skill set to their sales tools to facilitate Buyer Readiness during the Pre-Sales decision process.

Sharon Drew Morgen May 1st, 2017

Posted In: Listening, News

Buyer Personas do a great job finding and reaching probable buyers, while positioning messages and providing data. But it’s possible to make them even more efficient. Here’s a question to start thinking about Buyer Personas from a different angle: Do you want to sell/market? Or have someone buy?

You need both, of course. But right now your Personas just seek to ensure those with a need have optimal data to choose your solution, believing that if you can sell/market appropriately – the right campaign to the right buyer with the right solution, messaged the right way at the right time – buyers will buy. But you could be closing a lot more.

DEVELOPING BUYER PERSONAS

Currently your targeted campaigns are only reaching the low hanging fruit. It’s possible to enter earlier and facilitate (and influence) the hidden portion of the buying journey that the sales model, profiling, positioning, or messaging doesn’t address.

As an outsider, you can never have intimate knowledge of how any particular buyer buys and your generic profiles and categories are not only restricting your audience but missing the opportunity to influence them earlier by

providing them help traversing the confusing decision path they must travel to
assemble the entire set of voices that will collaboratively uncover the specifics of a need, and
get the consensus and manage the change to be ready and able to buy. [i.e. Pre-Sales].

Doing a Google search, I found this definition from Hubspot: “Personas are fictional, generalized characters that encompass the various needs, goals, and observed behavior patterns among your real and potential customers.” And herein lies the problem: while Personas can generalize the range of needs or buying criteria along a generic standard there’s no way to facilitate any individual user or influence the systemic decision issues they need to resolve before they can consider buying anything. In other words, the very definition of the term (fictional, generalized) excludes the full range of possibility for people who may be buyers, or those seeking data from a site.

But that’s only one of the problems. The other is that you’re missing an opportunity to expand your buyer base and recognize and touch those who need you but aren’t yet prepared to buy, and actually facilitate Buyer Readiness. By shifting the types of information you offer to influence each stage of the Pre-Sales decision path and any Personas that are uniquely involved in a specific buying decision, you can close more.

DATA PROVIDED LIMITS FULL RANGE OF POSSIBILITY

Populating data to attract Buyer Personas assumes you know who is buying and the specific information they need to make a buying decision. But there are inherent problems with this assumption:

INFORMATION: Information is the very last thing anyone needs as they make a decision, so your data may not be reaching the full range of Buyer Personas until too late. Until buyers get all the right voices on board, know the risks of bringing anything new in to their status quo, and have consensus, they don’t even have a complete description of their needs. So the information you offer will only be read by those who have completed their change work and know they need to buy something, (and then you’re fighting against your competition), and your important data may not be used. Knowing what Personas are doing with your data is important to consider: Do they need research data for a meeting with their regular vendors? Do they want comparisons against their own capability – and use it to enhance themselves without ever buying your solutions? Or are they among the relative few who have already gotten consensus and buy-in, and ready to make a purchase? Until then, even if you have an appropriate solution they cannot buy.
A PURCHASE LAST: Every buyer group must traverse a 13 step systemic, unique, and personal change-based Buying Decision Path before they are ready, willing, or able to buy. Indeed, buyers don’t want to buy anything, they merely want to resolve a problem and the last thing they do, when all else fails, is consider buying. By offering data to those you consider Buyer Personas, you may influence those who have completed their Pre-Sales buying journey and determined a willingness to buy, but miss the opportunity to facilitate the greater number of prospective buyers who actually need you but aren’t yet ready.
NEED TO BUY: A buying decision is a change management problem, not a solution choice issue. Until they determine they canNOT congruently fix a problem themselves with familiar resources, buyers aren’t even seeking to buy anything regardless if they have a need for our solution. Getting solution data to these folks at the wrong time is moot and ignores the chance to help potential buyers get to the point of willingness and ability to buy.
CHANGE MANAGEMENT: As an outsider you can’t know how a specific group, Buyer Persona, or community agrees to change as a purchase is a systems/change/resistance issue. Until or unless the group understands the entire set of givens they must confront, they don’t even know if they will buy anything, regardless of their ‘need’ or the efficacy of your solution.
UNDERSTANDING: It’s not possible to ‘know’ or understand your buyer specifically, or what they’re thinking. All buyers live in a unique ‘system’ of relationships and rules, history and habits that no one outside their system can understand. When it’s time, of course you’ll need to understand in order to sell. But I’m suggesting you first put your consulting/coaching hat on first to get all of the approriate Personas on board and help them facilitate change – and THEN sell, gather data, and understand.
SEQUENCE OF CHANGE: There are very specific steps buyers must take en route to finally deciding if a purchase is the way to go. Making information available to those folks you believe to be the Buyer Persona may not be read if it’s out of sequence with their decision/change steps, or not passed on to the group at the right time, or not explained properly in a meeting, or used with other vendors. Anything – anything – that comes from the outside will be used uniquely and out of your control.
RECOGNIZING BUYING DECISION TEAM: Not only can outsiders never know for sure exactly who is on a buyer’s Buying Decision Team, it takes a while for our buyers to recognize their full complement of decision makers and influencers as it’s not always obvious. Everyone routinely forgets ‘Joe’ in accounting, or fails to bring in HR until the very end when she enters an almost-completed decision process and throws oil on the fire. But until everyone is on-board, they can’t even know their needs let alone know if they want to buy anything.

If you knew how to truly influence, or find the full set of Buyer Personas, you’d be closing more sales. Currently, you continue to attempt to push your content out, hoping – hoping is the operative word – it lands where you want it to land, but face an unnecessary failure factor when your only tool is to ‘understand need’ or ‘offer’ good, relevant information that may get to them at the wrong time or in the wrong way for them. Why not put on a Coach/Consultant hat on first, enter during the decision/change phase first, become part of the change-based decision path, discover ALL of the Buyer Personas, and actually lead them through their Buyer’s Journey and facilitate Buyer Readiness?

QUESTIONS TO CONSIDER FACILITATING THE BUYING DECISION PATH

To get the right information to the right people (i.e. the full complement Buyer Personas) at the right time, the following things must occur for a buyer before they can consider what solution or vendor to choose:

Assemble the full Buying Decision Team: since buyers cannot consider or even have the accurate fact pattern for any potential need until the entire complement of folks is assembled, how can you use the Buyer Persona model to help your particular buyer universe discover how to know if they have collected ALL of those who will be affected by a change (which might include your solution)?
Discern the givens: until ALL of the givens – the people, policies, history, relationships – are recognized and understood, buyers cannot know how ready for change they are. They would rather maintain their status quo than face disruption, and can’t know the parameters of possibility until then. How can Buyer Personas help them?
Workarounds: to avoid disruption, buyers will attempt to use familiar resource to fix their issues. They will contact old/current vendors, try to have current teams fix the problem, etc. The last thing they’ll do is buy anything as the process is too disruptive. Can Buyer Personas help here?
Change management: until or unless buyers can be certain that a purchase will not lead to disruption, and they have figured out how to get buy-in/consensus and manage change, they cannot buy. What would it look like if you added change management to your informatin the Buyer Personas will read?

All of these issues are Pre-Sales, do NOT include seeking to make a purchase, and are focused on maintaining Systems Congruence. Until all of the above is handled your focus on getting ‘good’ data to them ignores the change management portion of the Buyer’s Journey and only finds the low hanging fruit.

Let’s come up with additional profiles and categories for the types of issues buyers need to handle as they traverse their decision and change issues by entering early with a different focus and using Buyer Personas to facilitate the buyer’s change issues first. Use your knowledge of the buying environment to create different types of content to focus on each Pre-Sales decision factor and an expanded set of Buyer Personas. Become part of the Buying Decision Team, be there are they traverse their change, and be ready and prepared to sell when it’s time….with the prospects who will/can buy.

BUYING FACILITATION®

I’ve developed a change facilitation model (Buying Facilitation®) that enables buyers to involve all the right people very quickly, fully understand the complexities of their situation, discover how to test workarounds, get consensus, and manage change. It employs a specific guided approach to coach buyers through their internal politics, consensus, and change processes, with profoundly different results from using sales and marketing alone. With a focus on addressing the path of congruent change, it employs a new form of question, a different type of listening, and a systems-thinking role consistent with true consulting. Once you’ve facilitated buyers to the point they recognize they need to make a purchase, you’re already on their Buying Decision Team – and then you can sell or market earlier and faster, to the right people.

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I can teach your sales team how to become facilitators, show your marketing team ways to design the right questions to help buyers traverse each stage of their unique buying journey, and help you write the content to find and influence the full range of Buyer Personas. See more articles on www.sharondrewmorgen.com. Read my book Dirty Little Secrets: why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell, that describes each stage of the Buyer’s Journey (www.dirtylittlesecretsbook.com). Or call me: Sharon Drew 512 771 1117. Or take a look at my book What? Did you really say what I think I heard? and learn how to hear what customers are really saying beyond what you’re hearing.

Sharon Drew Morgen March 20th, 2017

Posted In: Listening, News

In 1937 Dale Carnegie published his celebrated How to Win Friends and Influence People – the first book suggesting sellers build relationships. 1937: with primitive transportation, sellers found clients closer to home; telephones were emerging (FYI – Morse Code was preferred for 40 years after the telephone was invented!); marketing avenues were limited, as was advertising (Sears Catalogue, Life Magazine, The Farmer’s Almanac, the local paper or general store). Obviously there was no technology, or global competition.

Selling focused on natural customers – face-to-face relationships with neighbors and friends. And buyers needed sellers for information and relevance. Relationships were vital.

It’s now 2016. We have a plethora of options to present our solutions. Our communications capability is global, cheap, and ubiquitous. With safe payment and delivery options, global competitors are pervasive. And – here’s the big one – our prospects have the ability to receive the information they need to easily choose a solution without us. Buyers contact us only when they’ve done their Pre-Sales change work and are ready. They don’t need a relationship with us.

THE PLOY OF BUILDING RELATIONSHIPS

So why do we continue to think we must ‘build relationships’?? As a carryover from Carnegie, relationship building has been used as a ploy to manipulate a sale. If buyers like us, the thinking goes, they’ll buy. Here’s the reality:

Everyone knows you’re pretending. Until you’ve known people over time, through the good times and bad, you’re not in a relationship with anyone, especially when you’re trying to be nice so you can meet your own agenda.
Your ‘relationship’ will not facilitate a sale. Buyers cannot buy unless they have managed their internal change management journey that

1. assembles all the people needed to be involved and hears their voices/concerns/criteria;

2. gets buy-in from the Buying Decision Team that something must change;

3. figures out how to meet everyone’s needs and make adjustments that fit without internal disruption.

Buyers can’t buy until they’re ready, willing, and able to bring something new into their status quo regardless of how ‘nice’ you are.

Buyers aren’t swayed by your niceness. It will, however, make you a preferred vendor WHEN ALL ELSE IS EQUAL and WHEN THEY HAVE REACHED THE POINT OF CHOICE.

It doesn’t work when your focus is a sale. Here is a real dialogue:

SELLER: HI SHARON! AND how are YOU today??

SDM:[picking up the phone in tears, thinking it was my friend] My name’s not Sharon! And I’m rotten. I just put my dog down!

I offered an ‘authentic’ moment, useful as an opportunity to connect: he should have said ‘I’m sorry that happened. Obviously you can’t speak now. Is there a better time? This is a sales call and I’d like to discuss X when you’re feeling better.’

Whether for a large, complex sale, or a small personal item, buyers cannot buy until they have their internal ducks in a row, and then agree to seek an external solution (Step 10 of a 13 Step process). Because the sales model focuses on placing solutions – possible only after buyers have completed their Pre-Sales change management issues – we can’t discern where buyers are along their Buying Decision Path and buyers show up seeking a transactional connection. Our ‘niceness’ (which I’m differentiating from real customer service) is irrelevant; we just sound like everyone else trying to sell them something.

DIFFERENTIATION?

I’m told sellers use the ‘make nice’ ploy to differentiate – difficult using the conventional sales route. Following acceptable marketing criteria of the era – words and phrases that are in vogue, graphics and colors that are deemed ‘what everyone is doing’ – it’s hard to be unique. And the myth of being a ‘Relationship Manager’ or ‘creating a relationship’ is supposed to show buyers why they should choose us over the competition. See?? I’m NICE!

Here’s the truth: buyers don’t start off wanting to buy anything whether it sounds like they have a need or not. They merely want solve a problem. But they have work to do before they’re ready. It’s only once they’ve determined their systemic change management requirements that they’ll buy – but by then they’ll haven chosen their list of vendors and solutions from online data or referrals.

By focusing on attempting to influence people to buy because we’re nice, we’re left out of their behind-the-scenes decision process and reduced to ‘being there’ when/if they show up (the low hanging fruit, or 5%). Not to mention chasing bad leads with folks who we think should be buyers (Prospects are those who WILL buy, not those who SHOULD buy.)

We can mitigate this and REALLY be nice by entering enter early and facilitating buyers along the route of their systemic change/Pre Sales path. I’ve coded the steps in their decision sequence and developed a model that facilitates Pre-Sales Buyer Readiness (Buying Facilitation®). You don’t have to use my model – create your own! But entering the buyer/seller interaction as a change facilitator will differentiate you and enable a true relationship.

Buyers would never buy from anyone else when a seller has taught the prospect how to assemble ALL of the folks necessary to be part of the Decision Team, or HOW to get everyone on board for change. Remember: they will do this anyway before they buy – they might as well do this with you.

There’s a way to make money AND make nice. It’s by being a true Servant Leader and change facilitator; by entering into a WE Space in which there is a tracit agreement that everyone will be served. Stop using ‘nice’ as a sales ploy. Stop focusing on the low hanging fruit. Add a change management focus and find real buyers who’ve already recognized a problem, and first facilitate them through their route to inclusive, congruent, systemic change. Then you can become part of the Buying Decision Team, make a difference, close more, waste less time, and act with integrity.

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Sharon Drew Morgen is a thought leader and visionary in change management, consensus building, decision facilitation, and win/win collaboration. 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 teaches, consults, speaks, and coaches sellers in getting on to the Buying Decision Team and helping buyers buy. Sharon Drew has worked globally with many of the Fortune 500 sales departments. She has also developed online learning for sellers and those seeking to communicate without bias. She can be reached at: sharondrew@sharondrewmorgen.com or 512 771 1117.

Sharon Drew Morgen October 3rd, 2016

Posted In: Communication, 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.com 512 771 1117

Sharon Drew Morgen May 18th, 2016

Posted In: Communication, Listening

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.

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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.

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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

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

Why We Get Objections

Miscommunication: The Reasons, The Cure, The Prevention

Optimizing Buyer Personas to Facilitate Pre-Sales Decisions

Why the Need to Build Relationships is a Myth

The Arrogance of Listening

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

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?