News – Page 11 – What? Did You Really Say What I Think I Heard?

How do we manage change in our organizations? Not very well, apparently. According to statistics, the success rate for many planned change implementations is low: 37 percent for Total Quality Management; 30 percent for Reengineering and Business Process Reengineering, and a whopping 97% for some software implementations. Regardless of the industry, situation, levels of people involved, or intended outcome, change seems to be sabotaged in unknown ways, causing the real possibility of failure:

Internal partners fail in attempts to promote and elicit proposed change initiatives across departments.
Leaders get blindsided by unknowns, creating more problems or becoming part of the problem when attempting to find a fix.
The system gets disrupted during the change process, unwittingly harming people, relationships, and initiatives.
Improper, or non-existent, integration between developers and users cause lack of buy-in and resistance.
The change doesn’t get adopted as conceived, with financial and personal fallout.

Is it possible that our approach is causing some of the problems? I submit that we’re omitting some of the foundational elements to congruent change, change that can be successful in:

its comfortable transitions between phases;
its ease of buy-in;
enabling all participants to embrace leadership roles and be a part of designing and developing the Rules and Beliefs that will define the emerging, new system;
reducing fallout and cost;

eliminating resistance,
encouraging creativity.

But we’ll need to do something different from what we’re currently doing.

THE SYSTEMS ASPECT OF CHANGE

Let’s begin at the beginning with my definitions of change and systems.

CHANGE: Change is a new set of choices within a system that cause the elements of the system to exhibit altered Behaviors while still maintaining homeostasis. No change can occur unless the system reorients (i.e. re-organizes, re-prioritizes etc.) itself in a way that incorporates and maintains its core accepted norms (i.e. homeostasis, Systems Congruence). In other words, all change must include a way for the elements to ultimately buy-in to, and incorporate, new functioning while maintaining the rules and Beliefs of the status quo.SYSTEM: Any connected set of elements that comprise a homeostatic entity, held together by consensual rules and Beliefs that then generate a unique set of Behaviors that exhibit its unique identity. All systems must maintain Systems Congruence or they lose their identity and become something else. Because change represents the disruption of the status quo in unknowable ways, systems defend themselves by resisting when feeling threatened. In order to facilitate congruent change, it’s necessary to get the agreement, and a recognized path forward (There are specific, sequential steps in all change processes.), of all of the bits that will be effected by the final solution to ensure it maintains its core identity, Beliefs, and rules.

As a lifelong student of systems thinking and theorizing (50+ years), I’ve recognized that change is often approached with an eye on altering activity and Behaviors without addressing the vital need for the core system to maintain homeostasis. And when we tie our understanding of the functionality of a system to its Behaviors and attempt to push Behavior change before eliciting core Belief change, we

overlook the ability to facilitate the system down its own path through to it’s own version of congruent change
are relegated to managing the fallout when the stable system reaches Cognitive Dissonance and is forced to defend itself.

Herein lie the problem: until or unless the full complement of relevent elements (that not only created the problem but holds it in place daily) agrees to congruently alter, and get buy-in from, the elements that caused the problem and will be effected by any change, it will resist change regardless of the underlying problem that needs fixing. The system is sacrosanct. And it applies whether trying to get a teenager to pick up his socks, a diabetic patient to exercise, a team to work harmoniously, or a person to figure out if/when she needs to buy something. In general, outsiders cannot effect congruent change because they cannot know the core elements that have created and maintain the status quo, nor how to re-orient them congruently around any proposed change. It’s an inside job.

With our focus on changing Behaviors, we’ve overlooked the need for a system to maintain Systems Congruence – the foundational rules, Beliefs, relationships, etc. that define the system. Outside influencers – regardless of their initiatives or rationality or persuasiveness or authority – can never understand a system they’re not a part of. Change must begin by teaching the system how to change itself. I’ve written this article to:

Explain how current approaches to change management lead to resistance,
Introduce the elements of change and need for buy-in,
Introduce a route to change that can achieve goals without resistance while maximizing leadership and creativity through buy-in and congruent change.

In my forthcoming book (tentatively titled Facilitating Change) I’ll explore this topic thoroughly. In this article I’ll introduce the important elements and lay out my thinking. And I look forward to your feedback.

ALL PROBLEMS START WITH SYSTEMS

Most influencing professions (leadership, coaching, consulting, sales etc.) begin with a goal to be met, adopt an outside-in approach that uses influence, advice, ‘rational’ scientific ‘facts’, and various types of manipulation to inspire change – while ignoring the fact that anything new, any push from outside the system, any dissimilar element not already within it, represents disruption and Cognitive Dissonance. We put the cart before the horse, attempting to change Behaviors and elicit buy in before the system is certain it won’t be compromised and knows how to make sure it survives. Until the necessary steps of change are completed and the system knows it will maintain Systems Congruence, the identified problem will continue as is: it’s already built into the system:

The full complement of elements and that created the problem and represent the status quo must be assembled and recognized [Note: this applies to making an individual decision since each of us is an individual system.];
Everyone/everything within the system must accept that it’s not possible to fix the problem with known resources;
All of the elements (people, policies, rules, relationships, etc.) that will be effected by a new solution – i.e. change – must begin by understanding, buying-in to, and accounting for, the ways they’d be changing to ensure the path they design for better funtioning leads them to homeostasis.

Until all that happens the system will resist change (or buying, or learning, or eating healthy or or) regardless of the level of need or the efficacy of the solution. And because of the unconscious, historic elements involved, for congruent change to occur, those inside the system must design their own route to acceptable change. And as outside influencers we actually cause our own resistance by pushing our agendas, when we can actually lead Others through to their own change.

By assuming a Behavior addition/subtraction is ‘rational’ or necessary, without accounting for whatever workaround the system has already adopted and built in to its daily functioning, we end up with far more failure and resistance than we should have given the efficacy of our solutions. Indeed, it’s necessary to elicit buy-in for each element that will be changed: to maintain congruence throughout the change process, systems must

Maintain Functional Stability. Systems must maintain homeostasis. Their current functioning, even when problematic, has been finely honed over time, waking up every day maintaining the Behaviors, rules, goals, etc. that created the problem to begin with. Change is not so simple as shoving in a new Behavior. Remember: a system doesn’t judge itself as ‘good’ or ‘bad’. It just is. And it keeps ticking over the same way day after day.
Achieve Buy-In. Whether consciously or unconsciously, a system will resist anything from outside that threatens the status quo, regardless of the efficacy of the change. For successful change to occur, the system must recognize exactly what fallout will occur when anything shifts or is added, and how each affected element must modify itself in a way that maintains the integrity of the system (i.e. Systems Congruence). I can’t say this enough: the system is sacrosanct, quite separate from whatever reasons an influencer uses to change it.
Maintain Underlying Rules and Beliefs. Great data or solutions, important needs or dangerous consequences do not influence the change if they run counter to the system’s homeostatic Beliefs and rules, overt or covert. (It’s why your Uncle Vinny still smokes with lung cancer, and why training doesn’t cause new behaviors.) Note when we attempt change a set of Behaviors without changing the underlying Beliefs that created those Behaviors to begin with, we cause resistance. And here’s a tip: when you start from inside out, from eliciting any change within a system’s Beliefs and rules (i.e. rather than ‘Eat your broccoli,’ start with ‘I’m a Healthy Person.’), new behaviors will automatically accompany them. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work the other way ‘round: when we attempt to push a new Behavior into the system – say, asking a heart patient to change her diet or exercise program – before eliciting Belief change from the entire (and largely unconscious) system, we will achieve resistance as it may be seen as a threat. It cannot be otherwise.

The issues are the same regardless of the focus, whether it’s a company resisting reorganization, a patient refusing meds, a user group resisting new software, a buyer who hasn’t figured out when, if, how to buy, or a group not taking direction from company leadership. As outsiders we too often push for our own results and actually cause the resistance that occurs.

It’s possible to use our positions as outside influencers eschew our bias and be real Servant Leaders and teach the system how to traverse each step of its own change.

CASE STUDY: SYSTEMS ALIGNMENT

Here is a case study that exhibits how to enable buy-in and congruent change management by facilitating a potential buyer through her unique systems issues en route to a purchasing decision. Note: All change situations (whether coaching, leadership, software implementations, family problems, healthcare initiatives, etc.) must go through a series of steps to change to achieve buy in. Until now, we’ve left Others to manage the route through to the steps of change on their own as we push, advocate, advise, influence, manipulate for our own agendas and then we blame them when they resist – not to mention potentially not even reach their own internal route to change.

I was with a client in Scotland when he received a call from a long-standing prospect – a Learning and Development manager at a prodigious university with whom he’d been talking for 11 months – to say, “Thanks, but no thanks” for the product purchase. After three product trials that met with acclaim and excitement, an agreed-upon price, and a close relationship developed over the course of a year, what happened? The software was a perfect solution; they were not speaking to any other providers; and price didn’t seem to be a problem.

At my client’s request, I called the L&D manager. Here is the conversation:

SDM: Hi, Linda. Sharon Drew here. Is this a good time to speak? Pete said you’d be waiting for my call around now.
LR: Yes, it’s fine. How can I help? I already told Pete that we wouldn’t be purchasing the software.
SDM: I heard. You must be so sad that you couldn’t purchase it at this time.
LR: I am! I LOVE the technology! It’s PERFECT for us. I’m so disappointed.
SDM: What stopped you from being able to purchase it?
LR: We have this new HR director with whom I share a leadership role. He is so contentious that few people are willing to deal with him. After meeting with him, I get migraines that leave me in bed. I’ve decided to limit my exposure to him, discussing only things that are emergencies. So I’ve put a stop to all communication with him just to keep me sane. He would have been my business partner on this purchase.
SDM: Sounds awful. I hear that because of the extreme personal issues you’ve experience from the relationship, you don’t have a way to get the necessary buy-in from this man to help your employees who might need additional tools to do their jobs better.
LR: Wow. You’re right. That’s exactly what I’ve done. Oh my. I’m going to have to figure that out because I’ve certainly got a responsibility to the employees.
SDM: What would you need to know or believe differently to be willing to work through the personal issues and figure out how to be in some sort of a working relationship with the HR director for those times your employees need new tools?*
LR: Could you send me some of these great questions you’re asking me so I can figure it out, and maybe use them on him?

I sent her a half dozen *Facilitative Questions to both teach her how to design a route to her own sanity and a path to healthy collaborative partnership with the HR Director. Two weeks later, Linda called back to purchase the solution. What happened?

1. While the university had a need for my products solution, the poor relationship between the HR director and the L&D director created hidden, ongoing dysfunction. The information flow problem could not be resolved while the hidden problem remained in place – details not only hidden from the sales person (outsider) but used as a deterrent by Linda (who didn’t know how to resolve the problem other than to walk away because her own internal system had been violated). So yes, there was a need for the solution and indeed a willing partner, but no, there was no systemic buy-in for change.

2. I stayed completely away from attempting to resolve the problem by sharing, gathering, pitching information or my reasons why change (i.e. buying my solution) was necessary. (Not only is information not needed until the system knows what information it needs – if you haven’t figured out what type of car you want to buy there’s no need to hear a pitch about a Lamborghini – but the bias involved in sharing it and gathering it restricts success. There’s plenty of time to offer our solutions when we can pitch it relevantly, according to the way the system is set up to use it.). The only viable route was to help her figure out her own route to a fix.

3. This was not a sales problem (It’s always a ‘systems change’ problem, rarely a ‘coaching’ problem or an ‘implementation’ problem) – the Behaviors/outcomes were merely representing a broken system. I had to facilitate the change by enabling Linda to resolve her own system. This is how current change management models fail: they attempt to rule, govern, constrict, manage, influence, maintain the change, rather than enabling the system to recognize and mitigate its own unique (and largely unconscious) drivers and change itself congruently.

4. There was no way for the system to fix itself as long as the L&D director – merely one piece of the systemic puzzle that created the problem to begin with – didn’t know how to develop additional choices for herself. Her choice to do nothing was an ode to Systems Congruence.

5. In Linda’s unconscious decision to forgo a problem fix to maintain her own personal homeostasis, she unconsciously weighted her personal criteria above her criteria for doing her job. In order to buy the solution, she’d need to find a way to ensure personal Systems Congruence.

Linda was willing to separate her work-related decision from her personal issues and reevaluate her choices once she realized there was a way to maintain her internal homeostasis AND fix the problem.

Rule: Until or unless people grasp how a solution will match their underlying criteria/values, and until there is buy-in from the parts that will be effected from the change, no permanent change will happen regardless of the necessity of the change, the size of the need, the origination of the request, or the efficacy of the solution.

Current change management models assume that a ‘rational’, information/rules-based change request and early client engagement will supplant the system’s need for homeostasis.

Focusing instead on effecting Behavior change as per the route, goal, assumptions, needs of the influencer. Indeed, even when change agents attempt to include clients into the software design or change implementations, their questions and info sharing strategies are largely biased by their personal outcomes and unwittingly overlook the interdependency of core Beliefs, historic roles, unspoken rules and relationships, and unconscious drivers within the user’s unconscious system.

Rule: Whether it’s sales, leadership, healthcare, coaching or change management, until or unless the folks within another’s system are willing to adapt to, and adopt, the requested change using their own rules and Beliefs, they will either take no action or resist to maintain the homeostasis of the system. The system is sacrosanct. And information push, rational argument, leadership directives, or any outside-in model threatens the system.

HOW BELIEFS, BEHAVIORS, AND BUY-IN EFFECT SYSTEMIC CHANGE

Fortunately, it’s possible to highlight each pivotal element of change and get buy-in before attempting a change initiative. It requires an understanding of what, exactly, is a Behavior, and why starting by attempting to change the Behaviors/output of the system can only cause resistance.

Behaviors are merely Beliefs in action – the physical transaction that exemplifies the underlying rules and values of the system. In other words, they’re the means a system uses to operate and perform its purpose – the end point, and certainly an ineffective place to begin change.

Think of it this way. If you want your forward-moving robot to go backwards you might tell it why moving backward is beneficial, order it to move backward, offer scientific proof why moving backward is best, or push it. But until the internal programming is changed from the core, it cannot change regardless of how you position your request or push the robot backwards. Indeed, you might even break the robot in your attempts to get it to behave the way you want it to behave.

Since it’s not possible for an outsider to lead from inside, we must teach the system how to lead itself, much like a GPS system leads a driver to a destination without actually being in the car or noticing the landscape. Like a GPS system, we begin by leading the system through its own idiosyncratic route to design its own change (i.e. like I helped Linda figure out her core issues (i.e. not our products) and how to communicate with the HR director) to ensure Systems Congruence, buy-in and leadership from within. Here are my rules to facilitating congruent change and buy-in:

1. Enter with no bias. Help the system define the elements that created the status quo and must buy in to the change. These include anything – jobs, people, initiatives, relationships, departments – that the new solution will touch. Rule: Entering the decision-navigation portion of the change experience with bias or a personal outcome will impede the process and create resistance. Change agents must listen for systems without a biased ear (see my new book on this topic – What? Did you really say what I think I heard?) and eschew attempting to introduce information until the system is set up to change, knows what it needs to know (usually quite different from what we think it needs) and has achieved buy-in.

2. Help the system recognize all of the parts – the people, rules, relationships, presuppositions, workarounds – that created and maintain the status quo. Rule: Until or unless the system recognizes all of the factors, knows how they have contributed to the problems in the status quo, and ensures that they buy in to the change, it will not be able to give agreement.

3. Help the system figure out how to reorganize around the new change so it will not face disruption and will have all of the pieces in place to accommodate the change. Rule: The change cycle is the time it takes for the system to figure out its own trajectory so there will be minimal disruption during the change process.

BUY-IN: A REAL WORLD EXAMPLE

Joseph, a coaching client of mine, was a CMO in a small company (around 150 employees) had a problem: He wanted to implement a new customer-service initiative but had just joined the company and was fearful of making waves. He initially wanted to design the project, issue edicts, and fire those who didn’t comply with the initiative. After casually speaking with a few people about it, he got huge resistance.

He called me in when he realized he had to choose between enforcing the Behaviors and outcomes he had in mind, or creating the structure and teaching the employees how to become creative leaders who would design their own congruent process. I helped him build a creative structure for congruent change, which meant giving up some of the details of his plan while maintaining the congruence of what the outcome looked like. Joseph put together a list of his baseline criteria and then left open the financials, job descriptions, activities, and other decisions:

1. Maintain the company’s integrity, professionalism, and level of service;

2. Design a mix between technology and human interaction;

3. Provide customers with better access to more data, have ease of use for any information they needed, and meet their needs more proactively;

4. Create award-winning service that would differentiate the company from all competitors and keep customers over time.

He called a meeting with the entire company – even groups that the change process wouldn’t necessarily touch – and told them that he was thinking about expanding the customer service operations. He asked everyone to take a few hours to discuss, think about, and brainstorm what it could look like if they had an unlimited budget (which they didn’t have, but it would eliminate the money piece from their brainstorming), and said he’d meet with them the next week to get their ideas.

He told them that this process was highly important, and he wanted it to be part of people’s daily discussions over the next week. He asked that each group have a spokesperson and historian to keep track of all ideas.

The next week, Joseph met with employees again and asked for their input. He captured the ideas by audio and put them all up on an interactive website for the new ideas and told people to add their thoughts. He then sent them back to consider the ideas offered and generate even more.

At the next meeting, he asked workers to take all of the ideas now floating around and use them to brainstorm what the new initiative would look like, who might do what, what would have to change, and what the change would look like for those involved. He asked them to consider:

1. What jobs would change? What jobs would be added/subtracted – and what would happen with the people whose jobs might be affected?

2. What needed to stay the same internally, no matter what? And how could this be included in the new initiative?

3. What might be the possible fall-out from the staff and from customers?

4. What could get in the way of a successful change initiative?

Eventually, employees got into teams and developed solid implementation plans. Those folks who had to change jobs or had their work significantly restructured in a way that might cause resistance joined a management team or focus group and became part of the solution. And throughout the process, I listened carefully to hear points of discontinuity so we could stop and go through their internal examination of their steps to change.

Did Joseph get everything he wanted? Well, yes and no. The new organization ended up far exceeding anything he had conceived. It had more creativity and leadership. It also cost more than he realized (time and money) to put everything in place. But it elicited buy-in from everyone: there was no resistance because everyone had bought in to the idea and made it their own. And over a short amount of time, the change paid for itself.

This is only one method of facilitating change and avoiding resistance. I’ve developed a Change Facilitation model, used often in sales as Buying Facilitation®, that uses a unique skill set to enable core change. I’ve trained this to Senior Partners at recognized consulting firms, farmers in Iowa, tech people in Hong Kong, coaches in Kansas. It’s a generic model that influencers can use to elicit real change. I’m happy to discuss it with you (Sharondrew@sharondrewmorgen.com).

Conclusion

Before introducing any change initiative, give up the need to push the change, listen without bias, and enable Others to traverse their route to discovery:

what elements created and maintain the status quo,
who needs to be included (often a larger group than anticipated),
recognize what would get in the way of success and what needs to happen to mitigate that interference,
figure out how to manage the workarounds in place that attempt to mitigate the problem,
notice levels of buy-in and help those who resist shift their personal criteria to become part of the group,
get agreement, steps, criteria, and Behaviors for an intact, non-resistant, functioning system that welcomes the new initiative. Then introduce the change.

Until now, we’ve assumed that resistance is a normal part of the change process. But we’ve effectively been pushing our own biased needs for change into a closed, hidden system. We’ve ignored the rule of systems and forgotten that the change we are suggesting will encounter a status quo that is trying to maintain homeostasis. But as we’ve explored above, it is possible to get buy-in without resistance. We don’t have to throw out the many wonderful change models out there. But we first need to get buy-in, and then the change will be welcomed rather than spurned or sabotaged.

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Sharon Drew Morgen is an original thinker, systems theorizer, and developer of a change facilitation model used in sales as Buying Facilitation®. She is an award-winning blogger (www.sharondrewmorgen.com), and the author of 9 books, including the NYTimes Business Bestseller Selling with Integrity, and the Amazon bestsellers Dirty Little Secrets
and What? Did you really say what I think I heard? Sharon Drew has trained Buying Facilitation® to coaches, leaders, healthcare providers, in many global corporations such as KPMG, Wachovia, Bose, Kaiser, Morgan Stanley, IBM. She is currently working on a new book tentatively titled: Facilitating Change: the route to congruent decision making, buy-in, and compliance.
www.sharondrewmorgen.com; sharondrew@sharondrewmorgen.com

Sharon Drew Morgen May 14th, 2018

Posted In: Change Management, Listening, News

I recently accepted a cold call from an insurance guy because I was thinking of switching providers. Instead of facilitating my buying decision, the bias in his questions terminated our connection:

TODD: Hello Ms. Morgen. I’m Todd with XYZ. Are you interested in new car insurance?
SDM: I am.
TODD: Is your main concern lowering your costs?
SDM: No.
TODD: You don’t care about saving money?
SDM: Of course I do.
TODD: So your main concern IS lowering your costs?
SDM: No.
TODD: So what is it?
SDM: I’m interested in a personal connection, in knowing that if I have an accident I will be handled by someone who will take care of me.
TODD: I can promise you I’ll take care of you. My clients love me. Do you want to discuss how much you’ll save?

And, we were done.

Good sellers and coaches pose better questions than Todd’s, of course. But the conversation exemplifies how a Questioner’s biased questions can significantly influence outcomes.

THE BIAS INHERENT IN QUESTIONS

Questions restrict answers to the assumptions and biases of the Questioner; Responders respond within the limits set by the question. Asking someone “What did you have for breakfast?” won’t elicit the answer “I bought a lamp.” Even questions that attempt to open a dialogue, like “What can you tell me about the problem?” or gather data, like “Who’s in charge of decision making?” merely elicit top-of-mind responses that my not effectively represent – and indeed might cloud – the issue. Biased question; biased answer.

Sometimes questions are so biased and restricted that the real answer might get overlooked. ‘Do you prefer the red ball or the blue ball?’ excludes not only the green ball, but a preference for a bat, or a discussion about the Responder’s color blindness. But a question such as: ‘What sort of a game implement could be easily carried and engage all employees?” might elicit a response of a ball or marbles or Monopoly and include more team members.

Most questions pull or push the data sought by the Questioner, making it difficult to know if

the communication partners make the same assumptions;
the wording of the question is ideal;
a better answer exists outside the limits of the question;
the question encompasses the full set of possible responses.

What if the best answer is outside of the framework of the question? Or the question isn’t translated accurately by the Responder? Or there is an historic bias between the Questioner and Responder that makes communication difficult?

FACILITATIVE QUESTIONS

Questions can be used to facilitate choice, to lead Responders to new options within their own (often unconscious) value system, rather than as set ups to the Questioner’s self-serving objectives. Using a Facilitative Question, the above dialogue would sound like this:

TODD: Hi Ms. Morgen. I’m Todd, an insurance agent with XYZ Corp. I’m selling car insurance. Is this a good time to speak?
SDM: Sure.
TODD: I’m wondering: If you are considering changing your insurance provider, what would you need to know about another provider to be certain you’d end up getting the coverage and service you deserve?

The question – carefully worded to match a Responder’s criteria for change – shifts the bias from Todd’s self-serving objectives to enabling me in a true discovery process; from his selling patterns to my buying patterns. How different our interaction would have been if his goal was to facilitate my buying decision path rather than using his misguided persuasion tactics to sell.

I developed Facilitative Questions decades ago to enable any Questioner to facilitate someone’s route to congruent change. With no manipulation or bias, they require a different form of listening, wording, and objectives, thereby avoiding resistance and encouraging trust between sellers, coaches, consultants and their clients.

Take a look at your own questioning strategy to see if they might work for you:

*How are your questions perceived by your Responders? How do you know? What’s your risk?
*How do your questions address a unique Responder’s decision criteria?
*How do your questions bias, restrict, enhance, or ignore possibilities?
*What criteria to you use to choose the words to formulate questions?
*To ensure any new skills would work effectively with your successful skills, what would you need to know or consider before adopting additional question formulation skills?

Remember: your innate curiosity or intuition may not be sufficient to facilitate another’s unconscious route to change – or buy – congruently. You can always gather data once the route to change is established and you’re both on the same page. Change the goals of your questions from discovering situations you can provide answers for, to facilitating real core change. Before buyers or clients will work with you, they have to do this for themselves anyway. You might as well do it with them and create a trusting relationship.

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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 a Change Facilitator, specializing in buy-in and change management. She is well known for her original thinking in sales (Buying Facilitation®) and listening (www.didihearyou.com). She currently designs scripts, programs, and materials, and coaches teams, for several industries to enable true buy-in and collaboration. Sharon Drew is the author of 9 books, including the NYTimes Business Bestseller Selling with Integrity, and the Amazon bestsellers 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 has worked with dozens of global corporations as a consultant, trainer, coach, and speaker. She can be reached at sharondrew@sharondrewmorgen.com 512 771 1117

Sharon Drew Morgen February 19th, 2018

Posted In: News

There are currently more than 165,000 healthcare apps used for a variety of purposes – helping patients routinize new dietary choices and exercise programs, patient engagement, collecting measurements and feedback for providers, managing clinical trials, and care coordination to name a few. The virtual healthcare system is revolutionizing health care. It’s exciting.

But to me, one element seems missing: other than a few attempts at behavior modification, I haven’t noticed any targeted capability to formalize lasting patient compliance. We’re providing patients the What and Why, but not doing such a great job on the How. It’s a conundrum: Why don’t patients do what they know they need to do? Why isn’t a rational argument, or a health scare, or trust in a provider, enough to inspire behavior change?

KNOWLEDGE DOESN’T ENABLE BEHAVIOR CHANGE

For those times we believe our patients need to change behaviors for improved health benefits, we’re not doing such a great job of helping them change. Indeed, we’re asking patients to change before they know how, causing resistance and non-compliance. But with a slight adjustment it’s possible to help them adopt and routinize new health-driven behaviors – in office or on apps – and avoid resistance completely. The first element to consider is behavior. What are behaviors, and why are they so hard to change?

Behaviors are merely the expression – the representation – of our Beliefs; the translations of our values into practice; our Beliefs in action. Without Beliefs as the foundation of our actions, new behaviors have no source.

Think of it this way: behaviors express our Beliefs much like the functionality of a software program – the upward movement of an arm on a robot, for example – is a result of the programming. To change the output, to make the robot’s arm do something different, you don’t start by changing the functionality; you first change the coding, the programming that causes the robot’s arm to move. A change in the programming will automatically change the functionality. It’s the same with people: our behaviors merely carry out what our internal programming (our human system, as I call it) dictates, regardless of the problems that result or the efficacy of a solution that might adjust them.

CHANGE IS A SYSTEMS PROBLEM

Each of us operates out of a unique, unconscious, human, adaptive system of rules and goals, beliefs and values, history and foundational norms that enable us to show up every day and operate in our own unique way. Our personal system is our status quo. It represents who we are and the organizing principles that we wake up with. It’s habituated, normalized, accepted, and replicated day after day, year after year, including what created and maintains our potentially flawed behaviors. It’s who we are, the identity and internal rules and Beliefs from which we derive our politics and religion and opinions; and we’ll do whatever it takes to maintain it and remain congruent – operate daily as who we know ourselves to be. The problems – the bugs, inadequacies, bad habits, quirks and personality traits – are baked in; we adopt clever, idiosyncratic workarounds to maintain them because, well, they’re part of our system and we adapt: gaining weight? Buy a bigger size. Coughing a lot? Suck on lozenges.

When we offer patients suggestions that haven’t been incorporated into their system, we’re actually threatening who they are and how they see themselves; regardless of their need to change or the efficacy of the offered solution, we’re actually asking people to

act incongruently,
change without giving them the means to,
take on new actions that have not been programmed in to their system,
get buy-in from the very rules that created the problem to begin with.

Of course we offer healthy options. But that’s not the point; their resistance is unconscious. Until or unless someone recognizes that a proposed change won’t cause permanent disruption to who they are, AND can discover how their beliefs, goals and routines can safely, congruently expand to include new behaviors, AND manage any fallout in a way that leaves the system butter-side-up, people will not change regardless of their need or your solution.

PATIENT EXAMPLE

Here’s a very simple example. Years ago, my neighbor Maria came over crying. It seems she was just diagnosed as pre-diabetic and had to change her eating habits including discontinuing her beloved tortillas. As a Hispanic woman with a very large family living nearby, she was known as Tortilla Abuela and supplied tortillas for all family functions. There were kids and grandkids around all the time seeking tortillas; Abuela was constantly at the stove making them. I’m not sure I ever saw her without her apron on. Of course she and her husband Joe ate them at every meal.

I brought her to Whole Foods and we found healthy non-grain flour and types of healthier shortening, but we knew it wouldn’t be the same. Maria gallantly tried for two weeks but she and the family were miserable; she finally gave up and went back to the lard and starch. “What can I do? It’s who I am.” she said.

I posed a Facilitative Question to help her figure out how to make change and still remain compliant with her Beliefs and status quo:

Facilitative Question: What would you need to know or believe differently to be able to provide your family the food they depend on you for, and still eat in a healthy way so you’ll be cooking for them for a long, long time?

Answer: I’d need to find a new way to get them tortillas that taste like mine, replace what I can’t eat with healthy options that my family will still love, and still be the one they depend on for favorite foods.

Now we had a direction to go. Food and tortillas were part of her core identity – baked in to her system, and necessary for her to maintain her role as family nourisher. We set about finding a route through to health AND food AND family. On reflection, Maria recognized her daughter Susanna made tortillas almost as good as hers, and, aside from her famous tortillas, her family loved her green enchiladas (sans tortillas, they were healthy and compliant with her doc’s suggestions) almost as much as her tortillas.

Her workaround was quite creative, one that I, as an outsider to her family, could never have conceived. She invited everyone over for dinner and served her famous enchiladas. Then, in grand presentation fashion complete with a bow, formally handed the tortilla implements to Susanna. She announced that because of her new health issues that kept her from eating tortillas, Susanna would now be Tortilla Tia but she’d still be making the green enchiladas for every family function. The family would get their tortillas and their enchiladas, and have a healthy Abuela.

WHAT TO ADD TO HEALTHCARE APPS

In our passion as healthcare providers we forget that regardless of our bona fides, the patient’s need, or the trust we’ve acquired, we’re outsiders: we cannot effect change for the patient; they must design their own path to congruent change.

When we design apps that offer patients our choices, ask patients for information we need, and don’t include an ability for them to design their own path to compliance in line with their own system of Beliefs, rules and experiences, we’re overlooking the need to facilitate patients through their change process.

Over the past decades, I’ve developed a Change Facilitation model I’ve taught to sales people, coaches, and leaders that facilitates their internal, personal decision path through to congruent change. In the sales industry, I’ve trained Buying Facilitation® for the past 35 years to many global corporations – around 100,000 people in companies such as IBM, Kaiser, Cancer Treatment Center of America, Morgan Stanley, KPMG, DuPont, California Closets, etc. – to results that far exceed those achieved by the sales model alone (In pilot studies, we’ve consistently achieved close rates of 40% using the same list that the control groups closed 5%.); we teach potential buyers – regardless of the price/complexity of a solution – how to organize themselves around the change of adding a new solution before we sell. In other words, this model has already been tested.

It involves several skills to facilitate unbiased guidance to help people make their unconscious more conscious, including 1. a new type of question that acts as a GPS to guide people along their own normalized, idiosyncratic route of change; 2. stops along each of the 13 change steps that all human systems traverse to make congruent change. Here’s a brief overview of two of the skills involved with the process:

Facilitative Questions: a new form of question that uses specific non-biased words in a specific sequence to lead people through their own internal, congruent, change process, to avoid resistance and advance discovery. They’re not information gathering, pull, manipulative, or biased by the needs of the Questioner; it’s a sort of GPS that efficiently moves people, without bias, through their own largely unconscious systems to design a path to congruent change while creating trust along the way [Note: especially on an app, it’s important to establish a ‘trusting relationship’ with users.]. Usually asked within a series, here’s a very simplistic example of a Facilitative Question.

How would you know if it were time to reconsider your hairstyle?

As a contrast, here’s a simple conventional information-pull question that matches the needs and biases of the Questioner (and note: all conventional questions are information-pull, driven by the [biased] needs of the questioner):

Why do you wear your hair like that?

It’s possible to design Facilitative Questions in a generic fashion that can

traverse the sequence a patient’s brain uses to
recognize the norms that must be addressed,
adapt the status quo, add and routinize new behaviors congruently,
facilitate buy-in, Belief change, and compliance with new programs

as an add-on to healthcare apps. Additionally, it’s possible to message our questions and requests – patient intake forms and surveys, search for patients who will remain compliant during the length of a study, the incorporation of family to support the change – so patients can respond without resistance.

Change Facilitation: although patients know there’s something wrong and probably should do something differently, they can’t permanently change until their system

recognizes how, when, and where to change without anhialation or disruption,
doesn’t feel threatened or resistant and achieves buy-in from the effected parts,
designs a route between the old and the new in a way that maintains Systems Congruence.

Our apps can add a front-end feature that employs Facilitative Questions in the right sequence, to lead patients through their own idiosyncratic steps of change so they can plot a path that matches their own Beliefs, rules, and life experience. We can enable healthcare apps to first facilitate patient buy-in, highlight their potential points of resistance as the change progresses, and help them design a route through to congruent, enduring compliance, regardless of the change desired – routinized exercise and food regimens, patient retention, patient engagement, and data collection for example.

I’d like to help be part of the effort that affords patients the ability to choose health, positioning providers to be true Servant Leaders. I look forward to working with the healthcare industry to optimize patient engagement.

____________

Sharon Drew Morgen is an original thinker, inventor, and author of a NYTimes Business Bestseller (Selling with Integrity) and two Amazon Bestsellers (Dirty Little Secrets – why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell, and What? Did you really say what I think I heard?) as well as 7 other books and 1700 published articles.She is the inventor of Buying Facilitation® and Change Facilitation models that help influencers help their clients to manage congruent change. Sharon Drew founded The Dystonia Society while living in the UK, during her stint as the founder of a tech start up in 1983. Sharon Drew lives on a floating home, on the Columbia River in Portland OR. Her blog award winning blog, www.sharondrewmorgen.com, features original essays on sales, leadership, communication, systems, change, and influencing. sharondrew@sharondrewmorgen.com

Sharon Drew Morgen January 22nd, 2018

Posted In: News

The hot new sales tool is Opportunity Management automation. Just another in a long list of New New Things that seem like THE answer to THE way to efficiently close more sales. But is it? Over the past 10 or so years you’ve tried Buyer Personas, Understanding Need, marketing automation, Relationship Management, Trusted Advisor, Challenger, Sandler, SPIN, and lots of technology to push content. All hoping hoping hoping that THIS is ‘the one’ that will help you close more. But you’ve ended up with the same 5% close rate you’ve had for decades (It used to be 7%, remember?), regardless of the approach or the way an opportunity is managed.

Don’t get me wrong: opportunity management apps help sellers optimize their time and track results. But to what end? The tools can’t close more sales if the opportunity itself is flawed. What if you could find more viable opportunities by expanding your definition of ‘opportunity’?

WHAT’S AN OPPORTUNITY?

As I’m sure you’re aware, an ‘opportunity’ is often not an opportunity at all, or has only a small chance of being one. What if buyers aren’t your target audience? What if the larger opportunity is in a different place along the buying decision journey?

With the sales model based on entry points of ‘buyer’, ‘need’, Buyer Personas, and ‘need/solution’ match it’s impossible to close anyone but the low hanging fruit – buyers seeking a solution. This definition

restricts your close rate to those people or groups who have gotten themselves ready to bring in an outside solution (5% with sales outreach; 0.00059% of online marketing outreach) and are ready, willing, and able to buy;
assumes that those with a seeming ‘need’ is a prospect (They’re not. ‘Need’ does not equal ‘Buyer’ – but you know that by now);
focuses questions, content, and relationship-creating skills with a bias toward placing a solution (ignoring the vital non-solution, systemic, change management, Pre-Sales steps that have no relevance to, but precede, buying anything);
doesn’t sort for differences between someone who is strategically en route to becoming a buyer vs someone you’ve determined SHOULD buy and has a 95% chance of NOT buying;
uses tools to pushpushpush what YOU want to sell (into a prospect’s private, personal, closed system of cultural norms and givens that outsiders aren’t part of), and closing merely 5%;

and restricts you from finding those who WILL close, aren’t quite ready, and could use your help efficiently getting there. The confusing part for sellers is that these folks – these real, potential buyers – are off your screen: they aren’t buyers, aren’t seeking a solution, haven’t determined they want to buy anything yet, haven’t yet fully determined the scope of their need, aren’t attracted by your content.

And therein lies the rub: before people become buyers they merely want to resolve a problem in the most efficacious way and their route to competence is initially not directly related to what you’re selling. Before people become buyers, before there is a sales opportunity, they must first conclude there is absolutely no route to resolving their problems with known resources AND have a route through to congruent change – internal adoption, buy-in, Systems Congruence, and change management. The last thing they want to do is go outside their system to buy anything – they never start out as buyers until they run out of options to fix a problem themselves. By putting on a wholly different hat, we can find and facilitate the ones who will BECOME buyers and vastly increase our pool of opportunities. But we can’t use a ‘sales’ hat to find them.

CHANGE MANAGEMENT PRECEDES BUYING

A buying decision is a change management problem first before it’s needs- solution-based. Buyers are merely people who have gotten to the point in their change management procedures when an external solution (i.e. making a purchase) is their only viable alternative to Excellence. The fact that people have a ‘need’ that your solution can resolve does NOT mean they are, or will ever be, ready, willing, or able to buy. There is a 95% chance that those who seem like buyers aren’t buyers at the point where your content finds them. And sadly, your content won’t get them there: they won’t even notice it because they’re not yet looking for it even though they may eventually seek it.

It’s possible to shift the ‘opportunity’ criteria to people who WILL be buyers but aren’t ones yet – and know how to recognize real buyers from ‘tire kickers’ on the first contact; there are far easier entry points into a buyer/seller dialogue than what might seem to the outsider like a ‘need’.

Before becoming a buyer, or having a fully defined need, people traverse a specific path (I’ve spent decades coding and defining, training and testing, the 13 steps in a buying decision path, as explained in www.dirtylittlesecretsbook.com) between recognizing a problem, assembling the proper stakeholders to buy-in, managing any negative consequences of change, and deciding to make a purchase; they become buyers only at step 10 once they agree that making a purchase is their best option.

In other words, there are 9 non-buying change management (Pre-Sales) steps people take as they figure out how to congruently solve their problem and manage the change an external factor will cause. Using a Change Facilitation lens, with a bias toward the steps of congruent change, we can enter earlier to efficiently facilitate real prospective buyers and be part of their system as they begin the buying process. It’s possible to expand your criteria and tool kit to connect along different stages of the decision journey and recognize/facilitate exactly who WILL become buyers but aren’t there yet. But your initial focus must be systemic change, not selling. Different questions, different listening.

Using ‘need’ and ‘solution placement’ criteria, the only way to attract an opportunity is to find those relative few who have gotten to the point of recognizing they cannot resolve their own problem. Until then, they cannot buy: they haven’t fully defined a ‘need’, don’t have their full Buying Decision Team (BDT) in place, haven’t gotten buy-in, and aren’t actively seeking to buy anything. Selling is tactical: buying is strategic.

WHO IS A BUYER?

Think along with me for a moment. A person or group doesn’t become a buyer unless they’ve determined they cannot fix their problem themselves with familiar resources AND they are set up (environment, culture, technology, implementation, buy-in) to manage any fallout from having a foreign element (a purchase) enter their system. Maintaining Systems Congruence is vital; the last thing, literally, that a person wants is to buy anything due to the possibility of disrupting their status quo that is functioning ‘well-enough’. Indeed until they

have a plan to manage their strategic, idiosyncratic, private activities and are convinced they will end up with Systems Congruence;
have assembled their full complement of stakeholders and understand their full complement of buy-in and change issues (including ‘need’);
are congruently ready to seek purchasing options;

they’re only ‘people’ meandering through a confounding route to Excellence, facing political issues, personnel/personal issues, buy-in issues, tech integration issues, etc. They’re not buyers regardless of what you consider to be an ‘opportunity’, how many appointments you make, or how well the folks like you. And the way sales is implemented and biased toward solution placement, the questions posed, the answers sought, you’re only seeking and attracting those who have already reached step 10 and consider themselves buyers.

What’s the difference between an ‘opportunity’ and one that’s NOT an opportunity?

There’s no opportunity to place a solution with a prospect until they’vea. fully assembled their entire BDT including ‘Joe’ in the back office who you never get to speak with but who’s a huge influencer,
b. tried workarounds to fix the problem themselves with familiar resources,
c. fully recognized the change management issues that would potentially cause a breakdown should they bring anything in (buy something) without appropriate change management and
d. determined that the cost of a purchase is less than continuing their status quo.

With a bias toward placing a solution, you try to ‘get in’, ‘find a need’ and ‘have a relationship’ based on your desire to sell, gathering biased, wrong or incomplete data, leading to false assumptions of Buyer Readiness. Until they’re buyers, they haven’t fully defined their need or what it would take to fix (although BDT members might research your solution or reach out to you to gain knowledge).
When you make an appointment to ‘begin a relationship’ and the full BDT is not present, you are neither connecting nor starting a relationship. What portion of the BDT does the person you’re meeting with represent? Where are they along their decision path? How do you know the rest of the full BDT agrees with that assessment? How will they use, or convey, the data you present? Are you pitching what THEY need to hear to address their internal change problems?
Until the prospects recognize they cannot fix their problem with known resources AND have a strategic plan to implement any necessary change that a new solution might cause (even for a cheap, or personal, or small, item), they’re not buyers. Just because you think there’s a need doesn’t mean they will end up buying anything.
On route to fixing a problem with known resources, people often have a plethora of choices that you’re not familiar with that may provide them with a congruent outcome that does NOT include a purchase. I can’t say this enough; the last thing people need is to bring in an unfamiliar vendor/product: the cost of disruption may not be worth the price of a fix.

Your identification of an ‘opportunity’ is currently based on your biases, assumptions, conversations with a fraction of the full BDT, assessments, research, etc. based on the fit that YOU perceive between what YOU’VE determined (or that one outlier from the BDT) they need – and your solution. What you think is an opportunity most likely isn’t. Otherwise you’d be closing more than 5%. Data collected from my control groups when I train show it’s possible to close about 5X more than you’re closing now by entering earlier along their change path and using a Change Facilitation skill first. More on this in a moment.

WHAT AN OPPORTUNITY SOUNDS LIKE

Here’s what you’ll hear when there is a real opportunity (and yes, even on the first call, using a Change Facilitation skill set focus):

All stakeholders are on board already. When you speak with someone who still needs approval, or hasn’t assembled the full complement of stakeholders yet (and even your prospects often don’t know the full complement of stakeholders). Note to sellers: you cannot ask someone specifically if their BDT is fully on board – they won’t know , and can’t offer, an accurate answer until near the end of their journey. But you can help them assemble the right people quickly – just not with the sales model. They always forget ‘Joe’ and HR, for example, and then must go back to the beginning;
All change management elements are recognized with a plan to move forward. I.e.: the users are developing their criteria for a new piece of software, and the techies have a specific integration and implementation plan; participants for a training program are ready to interview you to see if you meet their criteria, etc. In other words, they’re aware of their stumbling points and are already in the process of handling them;
The prospect wants to set up a meeting with you and the rest of the Buying Decision Team to discuss their expectations and criteria for choosing you.

When you make an appointment with only one or two people you don’t have a real opportunity. If the person you’re speaking with thinks s/he has a need but hasn’t gotten team buy-in yet, or doesn’t know the complete set of potential disruptors that need managing, there’s no opportunity. If your prospect is going to take your information back to the boss/manager, there’s no opportunity. If a prospect calls you for information, there’s most likely no opportunity (although you can use this time to begin the Change Facilitation process).

I don’t consider a 95% failure rate success; you’ve just convinced yourself that this is the way it is for your industry. Let’s change it to be more successful. Instead of running after people once they become buyers, why not find those who are already en route to buying, use a different focus and new skill set such as Buying Facilitation® (the model I’ve developed to handle Pre-Sales Change Facilitation) or some change management tool to enter earlier in their change/decision journey, quickly facilitate them through their change, and THEN sell.

It’s not rocket science. You’re current selling/solution-placement modality restricts you to fighting for those who have defined themselves as buyers. People really need help determining how to change congruently. But the time it takes them to do so is the length of the sales cycle. You’re wasting your time chasing the 5% and ignoring the 80% of prospective buyers who WILL buy within two years of connecting with you but can’t until they’ve got their ducks in a row. But you can hasten their journey by first becoming Neutral Navigators doing a Change Facilitation process and THEN wear a ‘seller’ hat. Then you’ll stop wasting time and resource with those who aren’t buyers and truly serve those who WILL buy become buyers much quicker. But no amount of content, relationship, or Opportunity Management will force those who aren’t, or who will never be, ready. You’re waiting while people do this anyway. Help them. Close more. And have more opportunities to manage.

____________

Sharon Drew Morgen is the developer of a Change Facilitation model used in sales (Buying Facilitation®), coaching, leadership, healthcare, and management. She’s been running Buying Facilitation® and How Buyers Buy training programs in global corporations since 1985. She is the author of the NYTimes Business Bestseller Selling with Integrity, and the Amazon bestsellers 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 has trained over 100,000 sales people globally, and is currently running Listening programs to facilitate unbiased listening. Her blog is consistently ranked in the top 10 of all sales/marketing blogs. Sharon Drew is considered an original thinker and thought leader, doing keynotes, coaching, and consulting to enable servant leader skills. She can be reached at sharondrew@sharondrewmorgen.com.

Sharon Drew Morgen August 28th, 2017

Posted In: Change Management, News, Sales

Part 1. Do you know the difference between how you sell and how buyers buy – and why the difference matters? After a conversation with my colleague Erik Luhrs I’d like to expand the definition of ‘buying’. But first, a question:

Would you like to enter, influence, or understand your buyer’s buying process earlier in their process?

To do so, it will be helpful to better understand the differences between how you sell, and how buyers buy.

SELLING VS BUYING

Let me start with a made-up story:

Background: Pretend you’re a sales person selling smartphones in a big box store. You know your product well and are great at selling it. When buyers come in you carefully pose questions to understand their problem and need, and then position your answers accordingly to help them choose their solution.

A buyer comes in. She has performed some or all of these by the time she meets you:

She thought long and hard about replacing a phone she loved, and somewhat reluctantly decided it might be time to buy a new one; she had been resisting due to her comfort with the (limited) functionality she enjoyed.
She called friends to find out the upsides and downsides of what they liked about their phones and providers, to add to her list of considerations and comparisons.
She went online to gather data from what she learned from friends and ads she’d seen.
From her thinking and online research, she put together her list of buying criteria she’d need to have before being fully comfortable with any change: the pluses and minuses of changing phones, functionality, models, and/or providers; the ease of learning a new phone. Also, she included the trust factors she’d need to consider for new providers.
As per friends’ advice she contacted her current provider to learn of any deals for the models she was considering; she looked up prices on Amazon, Best Buy, etc. to compare prices and functionality. She weighed all of her criteria and made a decision.
Choice/decision made, she went to the store to purchase the phone with the help of the seller.

Until Step 5 this buyer had not fully defined her problem or her complete set of needs (some of which having nothing to do with a specific solution). Understanding the specifics of her problem or one phone over another was only a portion of her many decision criteria.

Until Step 5, her activities were idiosyncratic, criteria-driven, not fully formed, and independent of a specific solution, and included other ‘decision makers/influencers’ (her friends).

If a seller had entered before Steps 5, asking about needs would ignore some of her most important decision factors and not address her ability to define her personal criteria, not factor in her friends’ recommendations, or her ease and resistance to anything new as per her current phone.

To summarize, by the time this customer shows up to buy, she has

gone through an idiosyncratic, personal discovery process
to understand and get comfortable with the range of criteria she wants to meet
to decide whether or not to buy a new phone and
researched and considered all angles of all types of solutions and providers
before finally deciding to buy.

To clarify jobs and roles:

Seller: meticulously understands the product he is selling; differentiates his solution and brand from the competition; works with buyers to gather data, understand needs and underlying problem, place the appropriate solution. THIS CONSTITUTES SALES.

Buyer: figures out her emotional- and values-based criteria for buying something and for making a change; figures out what, when, if to buy; gets references from friends on several possibilities; does research; contacts current vendors; compares prices and solutions. THIS CONSTITUTES BUYING.

THE BUYING DECISION PROCESS IS ONLY PARTIALLY SOLUTION-DRIVEN

You do some of the same things during your buying decision process. We all do. Our prospects and clients do also. No one begins at the end – the point of choosing a solution. No one (especially the more complex B2B sales) begins by knowing their full landscape of considerations. Usually others are involved with defining the full range of unique criteria. Always, there are hidden aspects of historic considerations that come into play. And all this must happen well before defining solutions. That means buyers cannot know the full complexity of the problem or need at the point sellers usually attempt to gather information.

I would hereby like to (re)define the term Buying Decision (a term I coined in 1985) to mean: The process a buyer goes through to get their ducks in a row to manage all of the factors involved prior to, and including, making a purchase.

Is there a case to be made for assuming all buyers – regardless of the solution they seek – go through some form of ‘Pre-Sales’ decisions? That Steps 1-6 (there are 13 steps in B2B sales) are part of the Buying Decision Path – and not just step 6 in which the sales person and specific solution are involved?

Is there something to be gained by entering and influencing the Buying Decision Path before buyers have clearly defined their problem? If so, the sales process is not the best way to begin: it limits sales people to finding those buyers who have gone through their pre-sales processes already.

Part 2 (next week) explains what happens when we sell too early, and introduces a way to facilitate each stage of the pre-sales, criteria-based buying decision path. Right now, sellers close approximately 5% of their prospects (starting with first call) because the sales approach is directed toward understanding problems and placing solutions before they have been fully formed. But we can get much better results by entering earlier. We just can’t do it with the sales model alone.

__________

Sharon Drew Morgen July 31st, 2017

Posted In: News

After years of living in Austin, seeking ways to shield myself from the arrogant people and the blazing, constant heat, I decided it was time to move (For those thinking of moving to Austin: Don’t. Or call me before you do so I can tell you why you shouldn’t.). Given that it would most likely be my last move (You begin thinking that way when you’re old. Sort of creeps up on you.), I had to figure out the criteria I needed to have for the living style I wanted to espouse for the rest of my life.

After much deliberation, I ended up with these criteria: community, proximity to cultural choices, a 1500 book library AND a library ladder (This is true. Number 3 criteria.), open plan (no walls) with interesting features I could play with, room for office (open plan if possible), 2 bathrooms, someplace to sleep and eat, and no lawn to care for. Hah, you say?

First I had to decide where I wanted to live. Since I didn’t need to limit my choices in any way, I began whittling down my options using my number one criteria: community. I’ve been to 63 countries and countless hundreds of cities, but I’ve only felt deeply comfortable in a handful, so started considering those first. After coming up with a short list, I decided to live in my favorite village in Peru for a month, and then live in Portland OR for a month, which I’d never spent any real time in, but had heard is the nicest city in the world. “Oh. You’d love Portland. You’re kinda town,” I heard hundreds of times. How could I not try it?

I went to live for a month in Pisaq, Peru, where I had travelled several times over the years. There’s this amazing Waldorf School (Kusi Kawsay) that the local people built out of clay from the mountain (and is totally sustainable), got national funding to get 10 indigenous teachers trained in Lima, and taught classes through to high school, sending kids on to U.S colleges. This was no easy feat: the students had to walk 2.5 hours through the mountains to get to school, and 2.5 hours back. And they came. I helped this amazing school get online, create a website, use Facebook, design ways to raise money, and find and connect with local experts to maximize their sustainable agriculture practices.

During my visits, I’d become friendly with the fun, kind teachers and became the butt of their soft teasing. They, and the village, called me La Gringa Loca (literally, The Crazy White Woman), but were there for me when I needed them. I was in a café one day when a young woman – a tourist – came in with the tightest, shortest shorts I’ve seen since outside of Venice Beach. Since this village was still steeped in history, and their religious values were quite Christian, tourists were usually culturally sensitive and dressed appropriately; this young woman was most likely offending many of the locals. As is my wont, I walked near her table and said, “Tomorrow you might want to rethink your clothing choices to be a bit more culturally sensitive. You look adorable, but it’s not quite right for this community.” She stood up, flexed her bicep, and said, “You b**ch wh**e. I’m going to get you. Mind your f-ing business or I’ll hurt you.” I stood there, having no idea who else was in the café or who was behind me, and I pointed blindly behind me and said, “I think these people might have something to say about that.” She looked behind me, then magically sat down. I turned around, and all of the other inhabitants of the café had gotten up to stand behind me. The village wouldn’t let anyone hurt me. I belonged.

What a pleasure to live there. Like walking around in cotton candy. Fresh mountain air. Beautiful mountains and rivers. And the stars! Have you ever been up high in the mountains – really high in a pitch black night, with every star in the sky sparkling? I cried regularly at the beauty.

Every morning I ate breakfast at the market: some sort of broth with a bit of goat, and a vegetable and yucca. The local women brought their yummy soups down from the mountains, cooked early in the morning, and carried for 2.5 hours, to make enough money to buy food for the family, and then walk back another 2.5 hours in the dark, at 13,000 feet. And charged 30 cents a bowl.

I got to know many of the villagers: the people in the market – the flower vendors and weavers, the tourists; the group of Americans of all ages who came for a year or two and frequently partied – bonfires with great music and everyone dancing together, large pot luck dinners with 100 people; the locals who invited me to their Andean ceremonies; the teachers who invited me to school functions with parents and kids. The mix of people was always exciting, with easy laughter and a profound sense of community. I was happy happy.

But – you’re waiting for the ‘but’, right? – I forgot to put a few basics on my original list. Like electricity when you need it, ditto water. To get clothes washed, there was a woman about two miles away who had a washing machine and dryer; I had to take the tuk-tuk each time I needed to wash clothes and had to make sure EVERYTHING had my name written on it because I never knew what I was going to lose. [More than once I noticed someone in town with a familiar T-shirt that I had somehow lost at the laundry. And I always got surprises back as well. I suppose it ended up even.] But the hardest to handle was the inconsistency of internet connections. There would be no way to be in touch with the world. Sadly, I decided I couldn’t live there.

Next was Portland. By the time I arrived at my BnB, I knew I was home. The air seemed to fit my lungs. And the norm of living matched my identity. I felt an acceptance, an embrace. And everyone extended it to one another. In fact, it was so different from anywhere I’d ever been that it took me a week or so to ‘get the rules.’ I was walking around a few days after Halloween one evening and noticed a young man in a fabulously strange costume. “Excuse me,” I went out of my way to say to him, “Why are you still dressed up for Halloween? I adore your costume. Did you make it yourself?” to which my friend grabbed my arm and pulled me away. “This is Portland,” he whispered. What did that mean? “People just wear whatever they want to. Here everyone just expresses themselves the way they want to, and everyone accepts each other.” And Portland immediately became choice #1.

So I began a search for a place that had the rest of my criteria. I chose an area of Portland (Portland is broken up into very specific neighborhoods with their own personalities and demographics.) and began hunting – lofts, co-ops. Nowhere could I find room to take care of my #3 criteria and I became annoying. My constant question became: “But Kevin, where am I going to put my 1500 book library and library ladder?” In the bathroom?? Shelves along hallways? Were they wide enough? (Seriously. Who does this!?). Just before going back to Austin, and wondering if I’d consider changing my criteria for the next time I came back to look, Kevin called. He had the keys to a houseboat that he was told was ‘really cool’ but he hadn’t seen pictures of it. A houseboat? As a ‘mountain person’, I have no affinity to water. What? OK. Show me the house.

Surprisingly, the drive from downtown to this neighborhood (Bridgeton, on the Columbia River in North Portland) took 8 minutes. When we arrived, I saw a mile-long community of unique floating homes. But the biggest surprise came when we walked into the house. There, before my eyes, was a huge 3 story open space and balcony, no walls, with 6 foot windows all over, and on the left, into the middle of the room, a spiral staircase went up to a – wait for it – a 1500 book library with a library ladder!

And that’s how I got to this floating suburbia of eleven home owners who are all, in their own unique way, nuts, but with a very strong bond of community. People may not like each other, but help each other out. One day I went out to my deck and one of my outside dining room chairs was right in front of my door instead of at the table. As I began wondering how it travelled there, my neighbor yelled out, “Get your chair? We saw it floating down the river and decided you probably wanted it, so we got into the boat and chased it down.” Who does that!

But what is really insane is living on a river. My desk is in front of a huge window that looks on to the water. I’ve learned to notice when the water is high or low and why (usually it’s the dam). Neighbors discuss the state of the water all the time: “Looks like we got some water last night.” I still ask a lot of questions to learn about this strange environment. Why would the dam give us water now? (The salmon are running.) Why is the water getting lower if it’s been raining so much? (The dam took some back. Or something with Montana [I never understood that one.]). I’ve even grown to appreciate the occasional gentle rocking I feel when the water is running fast and my house is sort of going along for the ride (not really).

I’ve watched sea lions honking down river, geese and their families of au-pairs train the goslings to swim and manage the current. I wait each spring for the Osprey to come back to their annual nest, wait for the eggs to hatch, and then watch them feed their babies. We even have our own heron. He’s The General. He comes for several days, then disappears for a few. He’s very old, with lacey, wispy feathers. One of the neighbors, now dead, used to feed him, and so he returns regularly. Lately, a new, young one started showing up. She’s tall and proud and sleek and dainty. I began calling her Dorothy. And now the name has stuck! Yay!

So here I am, with my own green kayak (Kermit), and friends to join for the full moon ceremony when we all paddle downriver, hold onto each other’s boats to form a line across the river and watch the full moon rise.

The river is soothing and gentle, strong and fast and always surprising. I get up in the mornings and sit outside, even in the rain, and feel part of something bigger. I’m more creative than I’ve ever been, carry a softer heart, and am terrifically happy. Not a bad place to live for the rest of my life.

____________

Sharon Drew Morgen is a Change Facilitator, enabling buy-in, congruent decision making, and collaboration for sales (Buying Facilitation®), coaching, leadership, communication, and management. She is the author of 9 books, including 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 works largely in banking, healthcare, technology, and fund raising. She is the thought leader in facilitating buy-in for buyers, and enabling coaches to facilitate permanent change, using her unique facilitation model that enables people to discover their own excellence. Sharon Drew lives on a houseboat in Portland, OR.

Sharon Drew Morgen June 19th, 2017

Posted In: News

Dear Friends:

Lately, everyone I know is complaining about how busy they are. It’s really beginning to annoy me. So I thought I’d write you this personal note – a rant, I suppose – to let you know how I feel when I hear you’re too busy to speak or return a call. No, wait. You did return my call recently when you heard I was ill. Do I have to be dying to hear from you?

What does it mean, exactly? Too busy to prioritize your time differently? Too busy being overwhelmed with over-promises, or fixing stuff that broke from poor management (through lack of time)? Too busy to make room for me, certainly.

Where is the You I used to know, when we’d solve the world’s problems over a nice bottle of wine, or share ideas on a phone call? Or when you’d call excited about a film (Are you still going to the movies?), or book. When did DOING become your sole criteria for living?

What are you getting for all this busy-ness? Money? Success? Ego enhancement? Whatever it is, it must be worth what you’re giving up in authentic connections, dream time, and possibility.

Seems I’ve slipped down your ‘time allotment’ hierarchy. I’m trying not to care. Really. I am. But since I can’t tell if it’s something I’ve done, you just being nuts, or your work life that keeps you fighting fires continually (Is everyone too busy to complete anything adequately?), I’m planning on checking you off my list. It makes me sad. And I miss you. But I can’t take it anymore.

So here’s the heads up. If you want to remain my friend or colleague, please show up authentically. Figure out your priorities. If I’m on the list, plug me in so there’s an actual place for me in your busy-ness. If not, let’s just end. I don’t have time for this nonsense.

____________

Sharon Drew Morgen is the author of 9 books, including one NYTimes Business Bestseller (Selling with Integrity) and two Amazon bestsellers (Dirty Little Secrets,and What? Did you really say what I think I heard?). She is an original thinker, and develops Change Facilitation models that enable buy-in in sales (Buying Facilitation®), leadership, coaching, wellness, and training. She has also designed a listening model to facilitate conversations without bias. As a consultant, keynote speaker, and trainer, Sharon Drew has worked with global corporations for 35 years. Working in the UK in the 1980s, she founded The Dystonia Society, and a startup tech company. Sharon Drew currently lives in a houseboat on the Columbia River in Portland OR.

Sharon Drew Morgen June 5th, 2017

Posted In: Communication, News

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

Sales, marketing, and social marketing attempt to place solutions and create relationships by supplying great content, discovering likely prospects, and creating trust. Unfortunately sellers end up closing a small fraction – less than 5% – of those they reach, and marketers and social end up closing even less, wasting a lot of time without meeting their goals. So what’s causing our failure? Our products are terrific, our service and knowledge solid. Doesn’t seem to make sense that we don’t close more when folks need what we’ve got to sell.

PROBLEMS WITH OUR CURRENT THINKING

Here’s a bit of flawed thinking that exacerbates the problems:

Sellers believe prospects are folks who SHOULD buy (those with a ‘need’) rather than those who WILL buy (those who achieve consensus and are ready and able to buy regardless of need). It’s possible to know very early if the prospect CAN buy;
Marketers believe that content is king, that offering the right content at the right time enables a buying decision. But we don’t know the role the reader plays on the Buying Decision Team, how or when the content is being used, and if it’s making a difference in the buying decision (i.e. it might be just a resource);
Social believes that by engaging in relationships over time and developing trust, followers will come back when they are ready. But because we can’t know their decision path or if they have yet assembled the associates who would need to buy-in to any change (and any purchase represents some level of change in the buyer’s status quo), or if their internal political issues have been resolved to be ready for a purchase (the steps they must handle prior to buying), we can’t know if we are spending time wisely.
‘Need’ should indicate a buyer. But ‘need’ isn’t the issue. Buyers are merely seeking excellence; a purchase is the last thing they want, and they’ll seek internal solutions, or consider maintaining the status quo before seeking to buy anything.

We can facilitate buying decisions by employing different thinking to avoid:

Wasting time seeking, chasing after, and waiting for the low-hanging fruit (those 5% who are finally ready to buy, regardless of the efficacy of your solution);
Wasting time assuming if we play nice or offer good content people will buy or take action;
Neglecting actions we can take to facilitate the decision steps buyers and followers take much earlier in their decision path, before they are ready to make a choice.

It’s time to add some new thinking to what we’re doing.

WHAT I LEARNED IN THE TRENCHES

Because of the focus on placing solutions, sellers fail to take into account the change management and consensus issues buyers must manage internally, outside the purview of needs or solution choice, before they can consider buying anything:

People have complicated internal people/policy/status quo issues to handle before they can buy or change;
Figuring out the full complement of people to include in any purchase or change decision is complex, but necessary. Each participant in the Buying Decision Team brings their unique criteria – problems, fears, unique needs – into the mix creating the buyer’s voice and change management issues they must consider before they’re ready to make any change (including a purchase). It’s useless to ‘gather information’ until this occurs;
Given politics, internal relationship issues, history, and future plans, it’s challenging for buyers to get buy-in from everyone involved. But the buy-in is necessary to ensure the status quo doesn’t implode with a new purchase or change.

I learned this as both a sales person and an entrepreneur. When Merrill Lynch hired me a stockbroker in the 1970s, I became a million-dollar producer my first year. But I couldn’t figure out why everyone with a need (especially those I had a great relationship with) didn’t always buy what I thought they needed. Where did they go?

When I started up my tech company in London in the 80s I realized the problem: as a buyer myself, my direct needs were often superseded by the social, political, organizational, and relational considerations I had to manage. When sellers came to pitch they worked hard to understand my needs and gave fine pitches but had no way to handle or understand the fights I was having with the Board, or the issues the distributor was having with their sales force.

Nor did the sales folks who visited me even try. But until I figured out how to handle those things, until I got buy in from everyone who would end up touching the final solution and heard their voices, I couldn’t buy or there would be damage to relationships and my business. And if these sales professionals had helped me figure out my confounding issues, they would have facilitated me through to a purchase.

The sales model, I realized was not designed facilitate the behind-the-scenes non-need-related issues I had to manage before I could buy anything. I realized that all the great content, all the lovely relationships, all the ‘needs’ I had that matched their solutions, were worthless if I couldn’t manage the off-line, ‘Pre Sales’ issues that would be involved if I purchased anything. So, “Yes” to need; “No” to Buyer Readiness. And the sales model has no way to address this outside of placing solutions, relegating sellers to finding the low hanging fruit – those who have already completed this activity without us.

I then developed a facilitation approach (Buying Facilitation®) for my own sales team to add to the front end of the sales model to first facilitate Buyer Readiness – the steps buyers had to take anyway: we began all selling and marketing by facilitating the stages and steps of the internal change management process first, instead of finding buyers with a ‘need’ or who were ‘ready’. After all, until they determined if they COULD buy they could never be buyers regardless of need.

Rule: the time it takes buyers to manage their off-line, idiosyncratic, systemic change issues is the length of the sales cycle. Once we entered first as facilitators to help buyers get their ducks in a row and manage their Pre-Sales and Buyer Readiness change issues, we were then able to get onto the Buying Decision Team early, lead buyers quickly through their unique decisions, and became great relationship managers. We were also able to end contact immediately with those who could never buy, find 50% more who could buy, and become true Servant Leaders. Our sales tripled and the time to close was reduced by two thirds.

The takeaway here for marketers and social is the recognition that we are largely ignoring the hidden, systemic issues going on within our buyers’ environments that are not available to outsiders yet fundamental for any change – or purchase – to happen. That is our Achilles Heel. And it doesn’t have to be. There are actually specific steps every group/person must take prior to being in a position to consider any purchase – and sellers, marketers, and social marketing can meet our buyers at any of these steps (so long as we eschew trying to sell anything).

WHAT’S THE ROLE OF CHANGE MANAGEMENT?

Buyers and followers don’t know their journey to change when they begin and hence take longer than necessary to figure it out. But figure it out they must. And we canhelp them, and make our value proposition our ability to be their GPS.

There are two elements of Buying Facilitation® that can be added to create a ‘pull’ that’s change- and decision-focused.

Enter as a change facilitator. Instead of coding, noticing, tracking details that will help us guess at who’s reading, who’s a decision maker, where they might be in their sales cycle, etc. let’s begin listening for, and designing, tools to facilitate the movement along the decision path that change decisions goes through; let’s ensure the right people are all involved (some not so obvious) and address consensus-building. Currently we now listen for what we want to hear rather than listening for issues with decision making, change or the buyer’s protective need to carefully manage their status quo.
Guide buyers through change management. Regardless of the type or size of the solution, buyers cannot buy until they are ready internally, and sales doesn’t have tools to handle systemic change management without bias. Facilitative Questions are a type of criteria-recognition and choice format I developed.

It’s possible to develop assessments, questionnaires, intelligent contact sheets, CRM tools that provide the capability to lead buyers and followers through the full complement of steps they must take, making it possible to send out just the appropriate data at the right point in the cycle, and facilitate the consensus and buy-in as they ready themselves for change. We can add these to the sales, marketing, and social models to truly serve our buyers and followers and close more. It will be an addition, and the results will enable stronger relationships and more conversions.

The problem has never been your solution – your products and services are great. The problem is in the Buying Decision process, not with the sales process: we overlook Buyer Readiness – helping buyers address their unknowable change issues (independent of need, and based on people, rules, relationships, history, etc.) so they can get their ducks in a row to buy anything. They have to do this anyway, with us or without us. So it might as well be with us, instead of us sitting and waiting for them to show up. By adding a facilitation tool directed at managing change before we try to sell, we can find more clients, and sell more, faster. And we can become true servant leaders.

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Sharon Drew Morgen is the developer of Buying Facilitation®, the generic change management/decision facilitation model that teaches Others how to buy, change, collaborate, negotiate, and implement with no resistance, with full systemic buy in, on their way to making a buying decision. She has trained 100,000 people worldwide, in global corporations (IBM, FEDEx, Morgan Stanley) and consulting firms (KPMG, Unisys). She adds this model to the front end of sales, change, decision analysis, leadership, and influencing. Sharon Drew is also the author of the NYTimes Business Best seller Selling with Integrity and 7 other books on sales. Read more articles on:www.sharondrewmorgen.com

Read two free chapters of her book What? on how to hear others without bias: www.didihearyou.com. She can be reached at 512 771 1117 or sharondrew@sharondrewmorgen.com

Sharon Drew Morgen January 16th, 2017

Posted In: News

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