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

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?

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

Every year, with the best will in the world, we make New Year’s resolutions to make some sort of change, like exercising more or eating healthier. We start off with great gusto and determination, yet by February we begin making excuses to avoid the gym, or convince ourselves pizza would be great for dinner. What happens? We’re approaching change in the wrong way. But we can easily make it right.

BELIEFS DEFINE BEHAVIORS

Here’s the problem. Within each of us, within each person, family, team, or group, are long-held rules and experiences, values and history, that make us who we are. This system, as I call it, is unconsciously created and maintained by our personal belief structure and determines how we respond to, and hear, others; how we choose our friends and jobs; our politics and religion.

This belief structure represents who we are and is made operational through our behaviors. In other words, our behaviors are primarily beliefs in action and we rarely behave, communicate, or decide in ways that offend our beliefs: we won’t buy cigarettes if we believe smoking is unhealthy.

Over time we create unconscious habitual behaviors that allow us to get through a day in a way that’s comfortable and acceptable to our system. When we attempt to change a behavior without first getting buy-in from the beliefs that created that behavior, we are in fact pushing a foreign element into our system, endangering our habits and status quo and creating resistance. This is why seemingly good decisions can’t be executed, why people seem to change their minds, and why implementations fail: to maintain our equilibrium, our status quo, our unconscious sabotages the change.

WHY NEW YEAR’S RESOLUTIONS FAIL

New Year’s resolutions seek behavior change with no accompanying belief change, potentially disrupting our equilibrium and causing resistance over the long term, regardless of the efficacy of the requested change. In other words, when we determine to stop eating potato chips, or go to the gym, or start meditating, we are forcing our status quo to make a change it has not agreed to. And the results aren’t pretty: implementations are sabotaged, we don’t meditate/work out/eat healthy for more than a few weeks, we don’t buy something we need.

Here’s a rule to take with you over this New Year: change cannot happen without buy-in from our beliefs or we face resistance from our status quo that is avoiding disruption. It’s never so simple as just doing one thing differently. And regardless of the need, or the efficacy of the solution, until there is agreement to change, any shifts in behaviors will be short-lived.

I suggest that it’s imperative to begin with a belief change, then discover the behavior that matches it and note what else must shift along the way. When coaching clients, I help them understand their baseline beliefs and get internal – unconscious – agreement from the system to add acceptable behaviors that will match those beliefs.

Here’s a personal example: As a healthy person (belief) one of my modalities toward health is exercise. But I hate hate hate the gym (Did I say I hate the gym?). Thankfully I found several classes and a weights regime that I can tolerate. So I get 10 hours a week of exercise and remain congruent with my beliefs: I am a fit, healthy person. But on a behavioral level I hate it.

I’m aware that there are many models that show how to work with resistance, or behavior change through repetition. Yet it’s possible to avoid resistance altogether by first enabling agreement from our beliefs and only then adding behaviors – working from within first, and avoiding ‘push’ and the corresponding resistance. Then we can maintain our New Year’s resolutions.

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Sharon Drew Morgen is the NYTimes Bestselling author of Selling with Integrity, and the Amazon bestseller What? Did you really say what I think I heard? She is the developer of Buying Facilitation®, a change management/decision facilitation model that gives sellers additional tools to first help buyers manage their Pre-Sales systemic change issues. Sharon Drew has trained Buying Facilitation® for 30+ years to sales teams in many global corporations She teaches listening programs to corporations seeking tools to hear each other and clients without bias or misinterpretation. Her award winning blog is www.sharondrewmorgen.com. She can be reached for sales coaching, keynotes, training, and consulting at sharondrew@sharondrewmorgen.com.

Sharon Drew Morgen January 4th, 2017

Posted In: News

As sellers we are taught to find prospects with a need that matches our solution and then find creative, professional ways to pitch, present, entice, push, market, or somehow introduce our solution to enable them to understand how our solutions will fix their problem.

Unfortunately, we fail to close over 90% of the time (from first contact) regardless of how well their need matches our solution. And it’s not because of our solutions, our presentations/pitches, or our professionalism. It’s because the sales model does not include the skills to facilitate the largest component of buying decisions – those systemic, idiosyncratic, behind-the-scenes, change-management decisions that comprise their Pre-Sales processes, exclude outsiders, and have absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with buying anything.

Until they go through this process and walk through each stage of managing their unique change management issues, until everyone who touches the final solution agrees to a change, until the entire team is assembled and lends their voice to ideas, problems, solutions, and fallout, they cannot buy regardless of how much they may need our solution. They must do this – with us, or without us. It takes much longer without us, hence a protracted buying decision and closed sale.Without appropriate change management, they cannot buy. And the sales model doesn’t address this, causing sellers to spend most of their time finding ways to get in – and missing the route in because of their focus on solution placement. The route is change management.

FACILITATING CHANGE IS NOT SELLING

I’ve spent the last few decades coding and designing new tools to promote buyer readiness and help sellers facilitate buyers through their Pre-Sales decision path that buyers go through without us and is not focused on buying/solution choice. My model, called Buying Facilitation®, gives sellers the tools to be Facilitation/Change Consultants to get onto their Buying Decision Team, facilitate their change-management decisions, lessen the time between decision making/close, and differentiate from the competition. It’s a model that works with sales, but focused on enabling our buyers to congruently manage their systemic change, which has always been done outside of our purview until now.

Here’s the question to ask yourself: do you want to sell? Or have someone buy? They are two different activities, necessitating two distinct skill sets. Sales merely handles one of them. Buying Facilitation®works with sales to first help buyers manage their consensus and change issues to ready them to buy.

Using Buying Facilitation® first, then sales, will immediately enlist those who can buy, and immediately get rid of those who will never buy. After all, we all know too well that when buyers buy there doesn’t seem to be a direct line between their need or the relevance of our solution: it’s about their ability to manage their environment to make the necessary decisions that will lead them to congruent change and to their best possible outcome – which may, or may not, be to buy anything.When we speak with prospects to discuss need, we have no idea if the information we’re being given is the takeaway from all assembled voices, if the group has already agreed to buy anything, or what stage of the decision path they’re on. Are they merely gathering data for options? To bring back to the team? To compare with competitors?

Here are the steps I’ve discovered that buyers – all change – must address. As you read them, note that facilitating change is not sales, and includes some unique skill sets, goals, and outcomes.

Idea stage. Someone has an idea that something needs to change and discusses his idea with colleagues.
Assembly stage. Colleagues meet and discuss the problem, bring ideas from online research, consider who to include, possible fixes, and fallout. Groups formed.
Consideration stage. Group meets to discuss findings: how to fix the problem with known resources, whether to create a workaround using internal fixes or seek an external solution. Discuss the type/amount of fallout from each.
Organization stage. Organizer apportions responsibilities, or hands over to others.
Change Management stage. Meeting to discuss options and fallout. Determine

a. if more research is necessary (and who will do it),
b. if all appropriate people are involved (and who to include),
c. if all elements of the problem and solution are included (and what to add),
d. the level of disruption and change to address depending on type of solution chosen (and how to manage change),
e. the pros/cons of external solution vs current vendor vs workaround.
f. possible workaround and if they are sufficient.

6.   Addition stage. Add needs, ideas, issues of new members; incorporate change considerations.
7.    Research and change stage. Everyone researches their portion of the solution fix (online research—webinars, etc., call current vendors or new vendors etc.). Discussions include managing resultant change.
8.   Consensus stage. Buying Decision Team members meet to share research and determine the type of solution, fallout, possibilities, problems, considerations in re management, policies, job descriptions, HR issues, etc. Buy-in and consensus necessary.
9. Choice stage. Action responsibilities apportioned including discussions/meetings with people, companies, teams who might provide solutions.
10.  Meet to discuss choices and the fallout/ benefits of each. Discuss different solutions and vendors.
11. Vendor/solution selection. Meet with possible vendors.
12.  New solution chosen. Change management issues incorporated with solution choice.
13.  New solution implemented.

The sales model handles steps 10-13. Marketing, marketing automation, and social marketing may be involved in steps 3 and 8, although it’s not clear then if the decision to choose an external solution has been made, the full fact pattern of ‘needs’ has been determined, what the marketing content is being used for, or if the appropriate decision makers and influencers are included. Buyers muddle through this but we can enter earlier and help them transition through their steps, so long as we stick to our initial roles as facilitators and not try to sell or manipulate.

BUYING FACILITATION® IN ACTION

I started up a tech company in London 1983-89 and developed Buying Facilitation® to teach my sales folks to navigate buyers through their decision path, change management, and buy-in BEFORE they began selling. We increased sales 5x within a month. I’ve been teaching this model in sales and coaching to global corporations since 1989 with similar results.

My book Dirty Little Secrets: why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell discusses these steps and how Buying Facilitation® can work with sales and marketing to enter the buy path earlier, and to help coaches, leaders, and negotiators facilitate congruent change. It’s truly a change management skill that makes a seller a real consultant and uses entirely unique change facilitation skills: Facilitative Questions, Listening for Systems, and Choice. Remember, needs/solutions are irrelevant until buyers understand how any change will affect their status quo. The sales model isn’t designed to handle this Pre-Sales change management function. Read the book 🙂

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Sharon Drew Morgen is the NYTimes Business Bestselling author of Selling with Integrity and 7 books how buyers buy and the Amazon bestseller Dirty Little Secrets: why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell. As the developer of Buying Facilitation® she trains sellers to help buyers facilitate their change management, Pre-Sales buying decision issues. She is a sales visionary who coined the terms Helping Buyers Buy, Buy Cycle, Buying Decision Patterns, Buy Path in 1985, and has been working with sales/marketing for 30 years to influence buying decisions.

More recently, Morgen is the author of What? Did you really say what I think I heard? in which she has coded how we can hear others without bias or misunderstanding, and why there is a gap between what’s said and what’s heard. She is a trainer, consultant, speaker, and inventor, interested in integrity in all business communication. Her learning tools can be purchased: www.didihearyou.com. She can be reached at sharondrew@sharondrewmorgen.com 512 771-1117. www.didihearyou.com; www.sharondrewmorgen.com

Sharon Drew Morgen November 28th, 2016

Posted In: News

I’m regularly flummoxed when I hear people question climate change, or when folks actually believe that people of color are ‘different’ and worthy of being insulted, underpaid, ignored. What’s up with Congress and why can’t that many smart people find grounds for compromise? And why do women still only earn a fraction of what men earn? Are we not smart enough? Worthy?

With our unique, subjective stances, we attempt to change the opinions of others to concur with us: Liberals attempt to change Conservatives; races try to engender diversity; sellers attempt to convince buyers their status quo is flawed; techies/engineers/scientists/doctors believe they hold the Smart Card of Right/Knowledge/Rationale and work at pushing their opinions accordingly. Yet rarely do we make a dent. Others are ‘stubborn’ ‘stupid’ ‘irrational’ ‘ill-informed’ while we, of course, hold the high ground.

CORE BELIEFS MAINTAIN OUR LIVES

The problem that causes all this ‘stubbornness’ and difficulty achieving alignment is the difference in core beliefs. Developed over our lifetimes via our experience and life path and forming the core of our subjective biases, they embody our Identity. And as the foundation of our daily decisions and status quo, it all feels just fine. It’s who we are, and we live – and restrict – our lives in service to these beliefs: we choose jobs, newspapers, neighborhoods and life partners accordingly. While researching my new book What? on the gap between what’s said and what’s heard, I learned we even interpret what others say to maintain our subjectivity.

Every day we (our companies, families, etc.) wake up congruent; we work hard to maintain our status quo, aided by our habits and memory. Every day, in every way, we regenerate our biases; in service to maintaining systems congruence, we filter in/out anything that causes us to question status quo. Anything that threatens this faces resistance and conflict as part of self-preservation. Why would anyone disrupt their stable internal systems just because something from outside that attacks our core beliefs tells us to? When pundits say our behaviors are ‘irrational’ they ignore the fact that all of our beliefs are rational to our systems. Everyone seeks to maintain their status quo at all costs. Literally.

And when we hear others spout ideas that run counter to our beliefs and potentially challenge our views, opinions, habits and norms, we feel challenged and set about finding ways to convince others to believe as we do. But our attempts to change minds must fail

Because our ‘relevant’ information, carefully culled from studies, pundits, target intellectuals or politicians to prove we’re Right, is biased according to our own subjective beliefs and likely not the same studies, pundits, target intellectuals, or politicians that our Communication Partner would believe.
Because we’re arrogant. We’re telling others I’m right/you’re wrong.
Because information doesn’t teach anyone how to change, and it can’t even be heard accurately, unless they are already prepared to do so.
Because we cause resistance.

AGREEMENT REQUIRES BELIEF MODIFICATION

As outsiders we will never fully understand how another’s idiosyncratic beliefs create their opinions. Nor do we need to. We just need to find agreement somewhere; we must eschew the need to be Right. We must enter each discussion as a blank slate, without a map or biases, with the only stated goal being to find common ground.

Imagine if you believed (there’s that word again) that you had no answers, no ‘Right Factor’, only the ability to facilitate an examination of a higher order of beliefs that you can both agree on.

Instead of trying to match your own beliefs, find a belief you can match. Maybe you can agree that maintaining climate health is valuable, and merely disagree on causation or cures and move on from there. Here are some steps:

Enter conversations without bias, need to be right, or expectation.
Enter with a goal to find a higher order of agreement rather than a specific outcome.
Chunk up to find a category that’s agreeable to both and fits everyone’s beliefs.
Begin examining the category to find other agreeable points.
Use the agreeable points to move toward collaboration where possible.

I’m a Buddhist. I’ve learned that there is no such thing as being Right. But I’ve also learned that I don’t need to disrespect my own beliefs or undermine my own tolerance level to be compassionate and recognize that everyone has a right to believe as they do. Of course sometimes I’m willing to lose a friend or client if another’s beliefs are so far outside my identity that I feel harmed. But I understand that my stance, too, is most likely biased and defensive. I, too, might have to alter my beliefs to be more amenable to collaboration.

Here is the question I ask myself at times I feel the need to change someone’s opinion: Would I rather be Right, or in Relationship?

___________

As a visionary and thought-leader, Sharon Drew Morgen has spent 35 years developing change facilitation models to enable congruent change in sales, coaching, leadership, and communication. She is the NYTimes Bestselling author of Selling with Integrity and Dirty Little Secrets, as well as What? Did you really say what I think I heard? She is the developer of Buying Facilitation®, a consultant, trainer, speaker and coach. Sharon Drew is the author of one of the top 10 global sales blogs with 1700+ articles on facilitating buying decisions through enabling buyers to manage their status quo effectively. She can be reached at sharondrew@sharondrewmorgen.com or 512 771 1117.

Sharon Drew Morgen November 14th, 2016

Posted In: Communication, News

PROBLEMS WITH OUR CURRENT THINKING

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

Sellers believe prospects are folks who SHOULD buy (those with a ‘need’) rather than those who WILL buy (those who achieve consensus and set up a way to manage any change a purchase involves, and are ready and able to buy regardless of urgency of need).
Marketers believe that content is king, that offering the right content at the right time enables a buying decision. But we don’t know the role the reader plays on the Buying Decision Team, how or when our content is being used, and if it’s making a difference in the buying decision (i.e. it might be just a resource);
Social believes that by engaging in relationships over time and developing trust, followers will come back when they are ready. But because we can’t know their decision path, or associates who need to buy-in to any change, or internal political issues, we can’t know if we are spending time wisely.

We can facilitate buying decisions by employing different thinking to avoid

1.   Merely guessing at, or manipulating, our conversations or offerings without knowing where along their decision path our buyers are, and how many of their Buying Decision Team are on board;
2.   Playing a numbers game to find and pitch those with a supposed ‘need’, assuming our content persuades buyers to buy or take action;
3.   Neglecting possible actions that can facilitate a buyer’s off-line decision steps.

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

WHAT I LEARNED IN THE TRENCHES

By focusing on placing solutions, we’re missing the first 9 specific steps in a 13 step buying decision path that have nothing to do with our solution:

People have complicated issues (personal, systemic, organizational, and all criteria-based) to handle before they can buy or change. They only buy when all issues are managed regardless of need (systems congruence trumps need);
Buying includes change; change means disruption; consensus helps manage the disruption before it’s a problem; each person involved brings unique criteria and voice and shifts the buying criteria (i.e. until the entire Buying Decision Team is formed, weighs in, and agrees, there is no way to accurately define ‘needs’).
Given politics, internal relationship issues, history and future, it’s challenging, but necessary, to design a route through to change (in this case a purchase) that includes the people, rules, relationships, and group outcomes to avoid resistance and fallout.

When I started up my tech company in London in the 80s I realized the problem: as a buyer myself, my direct needs were often superseded by the social, political, organizational, and relational considerations I had to manage. When sellers came to pitch they worked hard to understand my needs in the area their solution served, and gave fine pitches, but as outsiders had no way to handle or understand the fights I was having with the Board, or the issues the distributor was having with their sales force. Nor did anyone even try.

The sales model, I realized when faced with great pitches and lovely sales folks, was not designed facilitate the behind-the-scenes non-need-related issues I had to manage before I could buy anything. I realized that all the great content, all the lovely relationships, all the ‘needs’ I had that matched their solutions, were worthless if I couldn’t manage the off-line, ‘Pre Sales’ issues that would be involved if I purchased anything. So, “Yes” to need; “No” to Buyer Readiness. And the sales model has no skills that address this problem because it is personal, idiosyncratic, and systems-based, and lie outside of the focus of placing solutions. I’ve heard it said that 80% of buyers you’re following now will buy a similar product (not yours) within 2 years of your connection; that’s the time it took them to make decisions that wouldn’t disrupt – the time of the sales cycle.

I then developed a facilitation approach (Buying Facilitation®) for my own sales team to add to the front end of the sales model to first facilitate Buyer Readiness – the steps buyers would have to take internally anyway and without Buying Facilitation® take a helluva lot longer. My team then added a new focus, and entered conversations as change management facilitators first, then selling when/if buyers were ready (more were ready, and much, much quicker, with no chasing around and we were able to disengage very early from those who could never buy.). After all, until they were able to determine if they COULD buy (and still maintain systems congruence) they could never be buyers regardless of need (the reason folks with a real need don’t buy). I continue to pose this question: do you want to sell? Or have someone buy? They are two different activities, and the sales model only handles the sales end; the buying end is change management.

Rule: the time it takes buyers to manage their off-line, idiosyncratic change issues is the length of the sales cycle. We were then able to get onto the Buying Decision Team early, lead buyers quickly through their unique decisions, and became great relationship managers, not to mention servant leaders. Our sales tripled and the time to close was reduced by two thirds; our relationships with clients were cemented and we avoided competition and price issues.

The takeaway here for marketers and social is the recognition that we are largely ignoring the hidden, systemic issues going on within our buyers’ environments that are not available to outsiders yet fundamental for any change to happen. We keep pushing content, hoping and praying that it will reach the right people at the right time. So long as we continue to focus on solution placement, we lose sales that we needn’t. That is our Achilles Heel. And it doesn’t have to be.

WHAT’S THE ROLE OF CHANGE MANAGEMENT?

Buyers and followers don’t know their journey to change when they begin and hence take longer than necessary to figure it out. But figure it out they must. And we can help them, and make our value proposition our ability to be their GPS, so long as our focus is to facilitate change, not push or manipulate to make a sale. Plus, it’s an entirely different skill set.

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

1. Enter as a change facilitator. Instead of coding, noticing, tracking details that will help us guess at who’s reading, who’s a decision maker, where they might be in their sales cycle, etc. let’s begin listening for, and designing, tools that facilitate each step of the movement along the decision path that change decisions goes through; let’s ensure they discover the right people to be involved (some not so obvious) and help them build the necessary internal consensus. Currently we now listen for what we want to hear rather than listening for issues with decision making, change or choice. I’ve developed a new way to listen (Listening for Systems) that is non-biased.

2. Guide buyers through change management at the start of the sales process. Regardless of the type or size of the solution, buyers cannot buy until they are ready internally, and sales doesn’t have tools to focus to handle systemic change management without bias. Facilitative Questions are a type of criteria-recognition tool that facilitates thinking using Servant Leader thinking. Conventional questions are biased in favor of the seller; Facilitative Questions are biased in favor of the buyer.

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

The problem has never been your solution; the problem is that we overlook the idiosyncratic stages of Buyer Readiness that are not involved with using our solutions – helping buyers address their unknowable change issues (independent of need, and based on people, rules, relationships, history, etc.) so they can get their ducks in a row to buy anything. By adding a facilitation tool directed at managing change before we try to sell, we can find more clients, and sell more, faster. And we can become true servant leaders.

__________

Let’s connect. I can help you develop content, tools, training or questions that will enable a buyer’s buying decision process, as well as speak at your next conference. Or I can train or license Buying Facilitation® for your team to add to their sales skills.

Sharon Drew Morgen is the developer of the generic change management/decision facilitation model that teaches Others how to buy, change, collaborate, negotiate, and implement with no resistance, with full systemic buy in. She has trained 100,000 people worldwide, in global corporations (IBM, FEDEx, Morgan Stanley) and consulting firms (KPMG, Unisys). She adds this model to the front end of sales, change, decision analysis, leadership, and influencing. Read more articles on:www.sharondrewmorgen.com

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

Sharon Drew Morgen August 22nd, 2016

Posted In: Communication, News, Sales

I recently purchased dysfunctional products/services from three vendors who were unwilling to go outside company rules to fix the problems they caused. How can we take part in the Trust Economy if our corporate rules preclude us from taking care of customers? Too often there’s a divergence between company rules and customer needs.

I’ll use my vendor issues as a starting point:

Wheaton International Movers. After researching a big cross-country move, I picked Wheaton. But it was a nightmare: their driver was drunk on both ends of the move; boxes were lost; an expensive sculpture was broken by their packer. Getting reimbursed was a 4-month nightmare: I was ignored, lied to, and finally only paid a fraction of what I deserved even though they accepted responsibility. I was regularly told: “Well, unfortunately Ms. Morgen, that would go against our rules.” No one ever apologized; I’m still missing a favorite painting and important office paperwork; my sculpture is gone.
CVS online pharmacy. These folks sent a bottle with crushed pills. I fought for weeks to get the pills replaced but I was told I should send them the offending bottle first (the post office is in a different town). “I understand your concern, but we must operate according to company rules.” Rules before my health?
Fitbit. I purchased a broken Fitbit from an online vendor. Fitbit said they’d send a replacement I never received; the replacement from the online vendor was also broken. Reps at Fitbit actually said they received hundreds of calls a day about the problem but weren’t allowed to do anything about it until their ‘fix’ was ready. What?

As a consumer, I trust I’ll receive what I pay for, and be cared for if there’s a problem. Yet each company above took care of their rules before taking care of me. They put the DOing before the BEing.

RULES

When companies construct internal rules that are juxtaposed with customer needs they ignore the consequences

Without customers, there’s no need for rules.
Customer’s complaints go viral.
Hurting, cheating, disregarding, and ignoring customers always, always loses business.
For each customer who doesn’t feel fairly treated, companies lose unknown-hundreds of prospective clients for an uncertain time moving forward.

Too often companies confuse their rules [the DOing – regulations, results, performance] with a customer’s needs [the BEing – values, feelings, requirements]. Too many companies make it binary – company rules OR customer criteria – rather than Both/And. How do we design customer service scripts and training, how do we instill a primary focus on serving customers, to achieve Both/And and win/win?

The difference between DOing and BEing is Heart – heart, being one of those ‘soft’ ‘feminine’ words that assumes it’s not possible to make money and make nice (While training Buying Facilitation® at Morgan Stanley I heard they were conducting ‘closing’ training the following week. What? Why do you need both training programs? “Because BF is ‘soft’ and we need ‘hard’ skills to close.”). Isn’t it time to meld heart and head and DO-BE-DO-BE-DO? To make money AND make nice? All research shows the BEing is more profitable.

HOW TO PUT CUSTOMERS FIRST

There’s a way to put customers first AND take care of corporate rules. A few examples:

Use an impossible customer request as a means to create a life-long partner.

“I hear you’d prefer if we were able to X. Unfortunately we aren’t able to do that, but we want you to be happy. Is there anything else I can do to get you what you deserve? Let’s see if we can get creative.”

Years ago while working with Bethlehem Steel during a trucker’s strike, I had my clients actually purchase steel retail from Pittsburg Steel to make sure Mazda wouldn’t have expensive downtime. We took the hit on cost to keep the customer happy. Well – to keep the customer!

Use customer’s feelings to exhibit your dedication to them. During month 4 of my Wheaton ordeal, someone said “If you don’t stop shouting I’ll hang up on you!” Seriously? The rep should have been taught to grow a pair and not take it personally:

“Wow. Sounds like you’re really upset. I can imagine how annoyed you must be. I’m so sorry.”

Make sure each Rep owns the problem. Nothing makes customers more angry than having to call back again and again (and be on hold forever) to find someone to help them, or having to repeat repeat repeat the same complaint to each new Rep. Assign the first Rep to own the problem to resolution.

MAKING MONEY AND MAKING NICE

To operate effectively in this new world of connection, workarounds, visibility and competition, your main differentiator may be how you take care of employees and customers.

Design company rules that put customers first. So, instead of ‘Send us the damaged pills first [so we can fix any internal problems here]’ it would be, “That prescription is important to your health. I’ll send you an entirely new bottle and include a return mailer so you can send the bad ones back at your convenience. I’m sorry.”
Trust that customers aren’t your enemies: they pay your bills.
If you broke it, it’s yours. If you send a bad bottle of pills, a bad Fitbit (twice), or break a sculpture, fix it easily. Don’t take your costs out on the customer.
Make sure that every customer is happy by the end of each interaction. An unhappy, screaming customer cannot be passed on.
Create a vision statement that includes the words ‘Customer Service’. So: We are a Customer Service company that designs CRM software.
Employees are customers. Happy employees take care of customers. I’ve never heard of a company that’s loving, kind, and respectful to their employees and mean to their customers. It’s that BEing thing again. I want to share a story that embodies the Truth of this.

Years ago a client sent a new employee to one of my Buying Facilitation® public training programs to get him caught up with the team I already trained in-house. This man, call him Glen, was angry, rude, mean, and dismissive of everyone around him. I called my client: Who is this mean person? He’s making everyone cry. Why did you hire him? “Do whatever you have to do to break him. I hired him because he’s got potential.” So I went into action on Day 2 and facilitated Glen through the outcomes he was causing. On Day 3 he came to class like a saint – supportive of others, kind, gentle, fun. What happened? Here’s what he said:

Every day, I’ve had to leave my house for work and put my ‘mean’ suit on. I was told I had to convince prospects, push closes, bias discussions about our products to promote a sale. I hated it: I had to shift my personality to ‘Do’ this manipulative, insensitive person. I told myself I had to become a shark. I’ve been miserable and my family has suffered; I didn’t know any other way to keep my job except to follow their rules and be miserable. Now I’m learning it’s possible to make money AND make nice; now I can be my real self and do my job successfully.

As a testament to his change, he got a huge – huge – tattoo of a shark on his back the evening he had his realization. He came to class the next day with the tattoo stating “I’ve put the shark behind me.”

To determine if you need to rethink your rules, to be part of the Trust Economy, consider these questions:

How will you know that the rules you have in place are customer-centric? If you need several layers of customer service to handle angry customers, or you regularly read negative Tweets or Yelp comments about you, there’s a problem.

How can you tell if you’re putting employees first? High turnover might be an indication.

How often do customer problems get escalated? Have you trained every level of staff to seek win/win results?

If you put people first, how would your rules change? And what beliefs would you need to reconsider?

What skills do employees have to achieve win/win when a problem occurs? Remember the mythical customer service rule Nordstrom was famous for? “Use your best judgment.” Of course that changes your hiring criteria. So be it.

I realize regulations are necessary to run a company. But so are customers. It’s possible to do the DOing and the BEing in a way that promotes income and care. What’s stopping you?

____________

Sharon Drew Morgen is an original thinker and visionary who designs communication/choice models for sales, coaching, customer service, and leadership. She is a keynote speaker, trainer, coach, and consultant. Sharon Drew is the developer of Buying Facilitation® and author of the NYTimes Business Bestseller Selling with Integrity, and the Amazon Bestseller What? Did you really say what I think I heard?as well as one of the top 10 bloggers in sales/marketing (www.sharondrewmorgen.com).
Contact Sharon Drew to help you review your regs and design people-centric rules that support customers. sharondrew@sharondrewmorgen.com

Sharon Drew Morgen June 27th, 2016

Posted In: Communication, News

Do you attempt to follow up with prospective buyers because they haven’t contacted you when you thought they should? Do you know what is stopping them from contacting you? Or where they are along their decision path – their steps from idea to consensus, from change to choice, that buyers must address – while we sit and wait, hoping they’ll close?

With a focus on understanding need and placing solutions, you may have no idea what stage they are at: did you originally connect when they were first considering possibly fixing something? Or when they were comparing your solution to an internal workaround or their favorite vendor? Were they just seeking information to share at a planning session? I bet you don’t have all the data on this.

BUYERS DON’T WANT US EVEN WHEN THEY NEED OUR SOLUTION

We tend to think buyers need our solution, but that’s only a part of the issue. They don’t really want to buy anything, merely to solve a problem. And they always start out by trying to find a way to fix the problem themselves (When we think they are stalling, this is what’s going on that we don’t see.); it’s only when they realize that a workaround isn’t sufficient, or their internal folks can’t resolve the problem, or their regular vendors aren’t around, or or or… are they willing to buy.

But they have work to do before they are ready – and cannot not buy, regardless of how great a fit your solution is with their need, until these steps are completed (and all sizes/types of solutions require some form of these):

1.They must assemble anyone who will touch the final solution, (not obvious)
2. get buy in and consensus from both decision makers and influencers, (not easy)
3. manage any change a solution will bring. (complicated, even with a small sale).

Price is not the issue. Competition with other providers is not the problem. The problem is how they will manage the internal change your solution incurs (separate from the benefits of your solution). Read my article on the complete list of steps buyers must take before they can buy.

If you want to facilitate their decision making, and your prospect is aware they need your solution and they seem to be stalling, call with these questions:

What would you and your decision team need to address to manage the types of change that would be required by purchasing our solution?
How will you and the decision team know that an external solution might be more effective and efficient than an internal workaround?

I’ve developed Buying Facilitation® to use in conjunction with the sales model to give you the tools to help buyers manage the necessary steps to be ready to buy your solution. Use your follow up contact to help them figure out how to resolve any of these issues that might cause them to be stuck. Your solution is perfect for them; they just need help getting their ducks in a row so they can give you the order.

____________

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

____________

Sharon Drew Morgen is the NYTimes Business Bestselling author of Selling with Integrity and 7 books how buyers buy. She is the developer of Buying Facilitation® a decision facilitation model used with sales to help buyers facilitate pre-sales buying decision issues. She is a sales visionary who coined the terms Helping Buyers Buy, Buy Cycle, Buying Decision Patterns, Buy Path in 1985, and has been working with sales/marketing for 30 years to influence buying decisions.

More recently, Morgen is the author of What? Did You Really Say What I Think I Heard? in which she has coded how we can hear others without bias or misunderstanding, and why there is a gap between what’s said and what’s heard. She is a trainer, consultant, speaker, and inventor, interested in integrity in all business communication. Her learning tools can be purchased: www.didihearyou.com. She can be reached at sharondrew@sharondrewmorgen.com 512 771 1117 www.didihearyou.com; www.sharondrewmorgen.com

Sharon Drew Morgen June 3rd, 2016

Posted In: News, Sales

I’ve been writing a lot lately about how we lose sales and forego success because we enter and conduct conversations through our biases and assumptions. Here is recent dialogue with a potential partner that gives a terrific example of possibility lost.

The representative of a sales/marketing blog called to discuss republishing my articles. Sounds great, right? But the hidden agendas, assumptions, and lack of collaboration ruined what might have been possible.

Here’s the story – and I’ll call my Communication Partner Bill.

DIALOGUE

Bill: Hey Sharon Drew. We love your content and would love to make it available to our 100,000 readers. Are you interested?

SDM: Sure. But I notice you’re a ‘sales’ blog, and my stuff is not exactly sales. Do you know the difference between Buying Facilitation® and sales?

Bill: I’d like to say yes, but I probably don’t.

SDM: Should I explain it? And if you still like what I’m doing we could see if your readers would like it too.

I then proceeded to explain my change facilitation model.

Bill: I hadn’t known all that. Good stuff. So we can repurpose your articles, and then you can use social media to link back to us?

SDM: What do you mean, Repurpose?

Bill: I just sent you links to 5 articles we’ve already repurposed so you can see. We reserve the right to change 25% of our contributor’s articles to enhance Search capability. Take a look. We haven’t published them yet and are awaiting your approval.

SDM: Wait. You want to rewrite one quarter of what I’ve written, possibly without fully understanding what I’m saying, and then use my name as the author? How do you know what you’ve changed imparts the same message?

Bill: Well, we hope we get it right.

SDM: You hope? So you rewrote some of my article to suit your needs, didn’t ask me to do it myself so it would line up with my intended message, didn’t understand Buying Facilitation® before you changed it, and spent hours rewriting my stuff before getting my approval – and still want me to have my name on stuff I didn’t write so your site can align with my brand?

Bill: Well, yes. But we have 100,000 readers that you’d then have access to.

SDM: Do you know how long those articles take me to write?

Bill: No idea. A couple of hours?

SDM: 10-20 hours. I’m a writer! Each word is carefully chosen to mean exactly what I want it to mean; a specific flow that I carefully create. No one – no one – touches my articles! Even my editor just writes me notes, like ‘Too wordy’ or ‘This is in the wrong place.’ And you want to rewrite 25% of my articles? And you were so sure that I’d be ok with this that you already rewrote 5 articles? That’s quite an assumption, not to mention time waste.

Bill: We didn’t mean to annoy you. Other bloggers are happy to have 100,000 eyeballs reading their stuff.

SDM: My blogs have plenty of eyeballs. But that’s not the point: why would I put my name on something I didn’t write and may not represent my thinking accurately? I find your assumptions infuriating and arrogant.

Bill: How ‘bout if instead you just share links to some of our articles with your social media connections?

SDM: The mainstream reader isn’t my audience. Did you know that? Did you ask who my readers were?

Bill: Oh. I didn’t know that. How ‘bout if you wrote an article just for us?

SDM: Sure. Any thoughts on how you might compensate me for my time and ideas?

Bill: We can’t pay you.

SDM: If you think of any way to compensate me, let me know.

Bill entered the call with biased expectations and assumptions based on his needs – access to my readers and the use of my name and content. His assumptions absolutely infuriated me, stepped on my beliefs, my ego, my professionalism, my time/hard work/ideas. I felt disrespected, abused, and annoyed that he merely wanted to meet his own goals, hadn’t done his homework, and assumed that his ‘product’ (100,000 eyeballs) met my criteria of a ‘win’ (It didn’t.). Unethical and out of integrity. If he had entered by assuming that between us we’d find a ‘win’ we could have found a way to serve us both.

A DIALOGUE USING BUYING FACILITATION®

Sellers lose sales when entering with biased, self-serving assumptions that limit possibility. Conversations that might have proved fruitful end up inadvertently annoying buyers, miss real prospects, and only connect with those having the same assumptions and biases. Here is what the conversation, and a partnership, could have been using Buying Facilitation® (and a bit of homework).

Bill: Hey Sharon Drew. I’m calling from X blog, and we love your stuff. I wonder if there is a way we could share your ideas with our readers in a way that would enable Google search for us both? From reading some of your articles, it seems that your target audience are early adopters and we might have some in our database.

SDM: Cool beans. Thanks for the call. How do you generally enhance search capabilities in your author’s articles?

Bill: We change about 25% of the content to use the most productive search terms. We might have to discuss if the same terms work for you also. How would you know, before we begin, that it’s possible to add search terms that could maintain the integrity of your message while effectively reaching the right audience?

SDM: As a professional writer, I don’t allow anyone to touch my writing. But I’d be happy to discuss search terms that would work for us both, and add them into the article. Does that work?

Bill: I’m sure between us we could find the right words. Worth a try. Another thought: maybe you could write an article for us? Since we couldn’t pay you money, do you have some ideas about something we could do together to make it a win for both our readerships?

By entering with the goal of win/win, by entering without self-serving assumptions that biased the entire conversation, we could have found a creative win for both of our readerships.

I don’t know what might have been. Maybe we could have created the largest sales blog in the world together. Or co-authored a book on the arc of the past and future of sales. Maybe we could have started a podcast series and invited disparate professionals to speak. Maybe. But we’ll never know. And that, my friends, is how you lose sale.

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Sharon Drew Morgen is the author most recently of What? Did you really say what I think I heard? as well as self-learning tools and an on-line team learning program – designed to both assess listening impediments and encourage the appropriate skills to accurately hear what others convey.

Sharon Drew is also the author of the NYTimes Business Bestseller ‘Selling with Integrity’ and 7 other books on how decisions get made, how change happens in systems, and how buyers buy. She is the developer of Buying Facilitation® a facilitation tool for sellers, coaches, and managers to help others determine their best decisions and enable excellence. Her award winning blog
sharondrewmorgen.com has 1500 articles that help sellers hep buyers buy. Sharon Drew recently developed 3 new programs for start ups.
She can be reached at sharondrew@sharondrewmorgen.com 512-771-1117

Sharon Drew Morgen May 2nd, 2016

Posted In: Communication, News

I’d like to set the record straight. In 1985 I coined terms that I’ve written extensively about in best selling books, magazines, and hundreds of articles. Unfortunately, when finally adopting them, the sales field defined them differently than originally intended, causing important concepts to be lost. This article presents the intended definitions and explains how I came to coin the terms.

In 1979 I became Rookie (stockbroker) of the Year at Merrill Lynch with 210 accounts (the market was 777). I couldn’t understand why prospects who ‘should have’ bought didn’t buy. When I started up a tech company in London in 1983 and became a ‘buyer’ I realized the problem and developed a new skill set to migrate it. Here’s how I figured it out.

HOW SALES IGNORES BEHIND-THE-SCENES BUYER’S REAL ISSUES

As an entrepreneur with needs, I invited sellers in to pitch me. But regardless of their professional skills or my potential need, I couldn’t decide what or if to buy before

the people involved shared their thoughts and concerns, and bought-in to any changes a new solution would involve,
we discerned any fallout to the company, relationships, people, policies etc. that change would incur and figure out ways to minimize it
we tried workarounds and determined we couldn’t fix the problems with known resources.

Even though we were only a $5,000,000 company, I had a closely knit team and flourishing business to consider before bringing in anything that might rock the boat with my employees, investors, clients, company strategy, bottom line, brand, daily routines and systems. With a focus on placing solutions and ‘understanding’ needs (impossible to answer accurately until we all comprehended the scope of the givens) the sellers pitched solution data I didn’t know how to consider responsibly and potentially lost me as a buyer. That’s when I realized the problem I had had with buyers not closing:

The sales model focuses on placing solutions (seeking folks with a ‘need’ who ‘should’ buy) and ignores the confounding human-, policy-, and system-specific issues buyers must handle before a purchase could even be considered (folks who ‘will’ buy). By entering only during the final element of choice (vendor, solution), sellers squander the ability to influence the major portion of a buyer’s decision process which has little to do with needs or purchase.

Indeed, the sales model promotes the cart before prospects even know if they have a horse or have mapped out a destination, ensuring only those who have their cart ready to go (knew the obstructions, route alternatives, and danger signs) would buy. Promoting solutions, and asking questions in service of a sale, merely captures the low hanging fruit – those ready, willing, and able to buy – and ignores the possibility of influencing, enabling, and serving the early, Pre-Sales components in the decision-making path (whether selling/marketing online or through customer contact) – not to mention loses untold amount of business.

I realized all buyers must do this; and as I seller I had been sitting and waiting while buyers did this on their own, without me. Indeed, the time it took them to complete this was the length of the sales cycle. I figured if I could facilitate the buyer’s decision path, I could accelerate their decisions to ‘buy’ or ‘not buy’, stop wasting time, close more sales (quickly) and really serve. So I coded the entire change/decision arc (13 Steps, 9 of which [70% of the decision process] are outside the scope of how/what we sell), learned how systems make decisions to change, coined some new terms and developed some new models for questioning and listening without bias, and built this into a front end to sales so I could enter, facilitate/serve, and influence, earlier. I named this process Buying Facilitation® to denote the difference in focus between ‘selling’ and ‘buying’ and help buyers do the initial stuff they had to do anyway, but without sellers:

assemble all appropriate stakeholders ((Buying Decision Team) to get their input;
get consensus for types and levels of change manageable;
research options;
discover easy, economical workarounds where possible;
decide how to identify handle any disruption a new addition would cause;
weight risks with stakeholders to discern the efficacy of buying anything (Buy Cycle);
choose solutions and vendors.

To be fair, the sales job has never been about facilitating change, using a restrictive ‘solution-placement’ model since its inception without recognizing the low close and enormous time wastage is anything more than a problem finding buyers. This singular focus has been so endemic that sales hasn’t accounted for either the idiosyncratic issues buyers must address prior to buying anything (even for inexpensive items) or the opportunity to influence and serve buyers much earlier than the final point they might reach to buy, believing that if they find creative ways to offer content earlier it will mitigate the problem. But it doesn’t.

The industry close rate of 4% has always been an indication of a problem: the centuries-old bias toward placing solutions (How can we accept a 96% failure rate [from first contact] as standard?) ensures all sales models, including Challenger, create resistance, potentially turn off real buyers who need your solution (80% of prospects buy a similar product within 2 years of your interaction), and ignore the ability to influence 70% of the Buying Decision Path.

Indeed, buyers don’t want to buy anything, they just want to resolve a problem congruently, without major disruption to that which works well. Indeed a purchase happens only when there is no alternate resolution; and we haven’t had a skill set that blends with the sales model to help: except for visionary areas within the global companies I’ve trained over the last 30 years, the sales field found my ideas and newly coined terms pointless. But sellers who added Buying Facilitation® to their sales activities experience upward of a 6x increase in sales as they truly facilitate buying decisions. My dream has always been that Buying Facilitation® be taught as part of sales training for all sales professionals.

BUYING FACILITATION® FACILITATES 70% OF BUYER’S DECISIONS

I taught my sales team how to add Buying Facilitation® to their current sales skills; we quickly experienced a 40% increase in sales (from first call) and I only needed half the sales staff. My tech team used the material to involve all the right people immediately and extract the most vital information quickly, making programming and implementing more efficient, and insuring early project completion and no ‘user errors’. I began teaching the material to clients, coaches, and managers.

Approximately five years ago my terms began entering the sales field. But, as happens when a new idea enters mainstream, the terms were not defined as I defined them, but re-defined to be a part of the very concepts I was fighting against.

TERMS DEFINED

I have no illusions that the mis-definitions will continue and some mainstream sellers will think they ‘do this’ already. Hopefully some folks will seek to learn the material (and training is required as the model employs entirely different thinking and skills). But just for my own piece of mind, I’m offering the definitions of the terms I coined in 1985. They include some form of the word ‘buy’ to denote the disparity between the act of buying and the process of selling. And the underlying belief is that as sellers we should be using our unique positions as corporate representatives and knowledge experts to be servant leaders and truly serve buyers to discover their own path to excellence, hopefully, ultimately, with our solution (But if not, we end quickly and gently. Otherwise, we close in half the time.).

Buying Facilitation®. A generic change management model for coaches, sellers, managers, etc.) that enables efficient, congruent change, that employs a specific type of listening (Listening for Systems), and new form of question (Facilitative Questions – not information gathering), used in a specific, coded sequence, for facilitators to enable excellence through congruent change. It manages all of the unconscious, upfront, endemic change issues that would have to accede for change to happen. Until buyers (or anyone) know how to manage this, they cannot agree to change/buy, hence the length of the current sales cycle.

Helping Buyers Buy. The term comes from the first Buying Facilitation® training I delivered in 1988 to KLM. By ‘helping buyers buy’ we facilitate the full Pre-Sales Buying Decision Path.

Buying Decisions/Process. The outcome of resolving all of the change/decision issues into an action: consensus of all stakeholders who will touch the new solution; the route forward to change without disruption or resistance; deciding to move beyond their workaround; AND THEN the solution/vendor choice issues. The term is being misdefined by sales to merely include vendor/solution choice issues.

Buying Decision Path. 13 steps that traverse the elements of change management: starting with an idea (Step 1) through to a purchase (Step 13). It includes people, systems, implementation, resistance, workarounds, relationships – and comes well before any decision is made to buy anything, and quite separate from any ‘need’. The sales field uses this term erroneously to denote how buyers choose one vendor/solution over another, line up the funds, etc. – a usage dynamically opposite to the original definition.

Buy Cycle. The entire set of givens necessary for buyers to end up with excellence (either internally or with a purchase). Again, it’s not only the solution/vendor choice issues.

Buying Decision Team. The full set of stakeholders – some not obvious, some not ‘decision makers’ – who will touch the final solution and need to add their ideas, concerns, knowledge, and feelings to the discussion. Usually sellers (or change agents) aren’t privy to the internal machinations necessary before a purchase (or any change) can happen. Hence the 4% close rate.

Buying Patterns. The way the buyer has traditionally bought/changed in the past. Do they always use known vendors? Will they never take cold calls or meetings with sellers? Sellers traditionally use their comfortable selling patterns and cannot connect with buyers with divergent buying patterns.

Marketers currently use the term Buyer Persona to denote ‘influencers’ who will enable a sale. This ignores most of the early decisions buyers make and keeps marketing from entering effectively much earlier. Using different types of content it’s quite possible to influence different points along the Buying Decision Path.

TIME FOR CHANGE

Think about it. Are you happy with your low close rate? Your horrific waste of time and resource running around after people who will never buy (and who you could know on the first call weren’t buyers) or responding to RFPs that fail? The time waste seeking prospects who will take an appointment only to have one person on a data gathering mission show up – and then you never hear from them again (not to mention the hours planning for the meeting!)? Have you never wondered where buyers go when YOU think they have a need?

The current sales model closes a fraction of people who need your solution, and costs much more than necessary on wasted resources (large sales forces, presentations, proposals). The problem isn’t finding the buyers; the problem is facilitating those who can buy. As an example, using Buying Facilitation® at Kaiser, sellers went from 110 visits and 18 closed sales in a month, to 27 visits and 25 closed sales, an increase of 600%, not to mention the time saving.

I go back to the original question I posed decades ago: Do you want to sell? Or have someone buy? They are two different activities. And I’ve developed terms that help sellers think through the steps that help buyers buy. Maybe it’s time to begin learning the ‘how’ of helping buyers buy, the ‘what’ of the buying decision path, and the ‘who’ of the buying decision team. Let’s begin using the terms properly and stop ignoring such a large piece of the puzzle.

____________

Sharon Drew Morgen is the creator of Buying Facilitation®. She’s written 7 books on the topic including one NYTimes Business Bestseller. Sharon Drew has trained and coached in companies such as Unisys, IBM, KPMG, Kaiser Permanente, Morgan Stanley, Wachovia, HP, GE, Bose, etc. To find out more about how buyers buy, go to www.dirtylittlesecretsbook.com. To peruse 1600 articles on the subject go to www.sharondrewmorgen.com. To find out about Buying Facilitation® training go to
www.buyingfacilitationtraining.com To contact Sharon Drew: sharondrew@sharondrewmorgen.com
or 512-771-1117

Sharon Drew Morgen March 14th, 2016

Posted In: Listening, News

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