News – Page 7 – What? Did You Really Say What I Think I Heard?

On 5/13/2022 I received an apology from Gordon Hogg for plagiarizing my work. For several years he lifted my exact words from my writings that explain my original thinking on sales, listening, questioning, and training in his own articles, website, posts, and client offerings. Below you’ll find Hogg’s apology to me and the sales community. Note: it does not contain his continued belief that any published content is freely available for anyone to copy.

I’m heartbroken. Not only did Hogg crib my original IP that I worked tirelessly over hours, years, decades to write, invent, and develop, but he misconstrued my innovative thinking, specifically my Buying Facilitation® model, to be used as a sales ploy rather than the change management, servant-leader front-end I intended.

I ask that Hogg’s readers visit www.sharon-drew.com where I explain and offer the original material with the accurate intention.

Sharon-Drew Morgen

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To the sales industry:

Many years ago, I came across a number of books and articles written by Sharon-Drew Morgen who is an original thinker and inventor of systemic brain change models that are often used in sales as Buying Facilitation®. Sharon-Drew has spent the past 40 years developing, inventing, writing, thinking, testing, and trialing, to create Buying Facilitation® and get it published into books, articles and delivered in corporations. I was fascinated by the sheer brilliance of how Sharon-Drew articulated, and developed, models to assist the buying process.

There is nothing like it in mainstream business. I have been involved in sales and marketing for as long as Sharon-Drew has been developing her material. I have always struggled with trying to explain why salespeople are so out of sync with how their buyers buy but could never find the right words to explain why sales merely tries to push their products rather than enter at the other end to first help people go through their decision process to become buyers. I found Sharon-Drew’s words and insights could help me convey the right message.

Unfortunately, while developing a message to salespeople, I plagiarized Sharon-Drew’s words, slogans and phrases directly from her articles, books, titles and neglected to attribute them to Sharon-Drew. And unfortunately, I misunderstood the true import of her original thinking and misappropriated her concepts as an improved way to get people to buy, totally overlooking the change focus (i.e. instead of buying focus) and the spiritual nature of Sharon-Drew’s intent, to truly serve people in making the decisions needed to actually become buyers.

This misunderstanding caused Sharon-Drew’s decades of work to also be misunderstood and misappropriated as I used her exact words with a different intent. As a small example, I misappropriated her terms buying patterns, helping buyers buy, steps in the buying journey, traversing the 13 steps of change, workarounds and stakeholders, selling doesn’t cause buying, the ‘cost’ of change, change management. While some of these words are words in common usage, in her writing Sharon-Drew defines them uniquely, in a narrow definition of how brains make decisions and I used them in service to selling solutions.

I wrote blog posts using her words and ideas directly from her blogs (including words that she used to define her Buying Facilitation® thinking, and the new forms of question and training she invented), including titles from her already published articles.
I have misinterpreted her words to explain the failure in sales processes rather than their original intention as a model to facilitate systemic change.
I plagiarized words and phrases in her change facilitation material as a way to overcome deficiencies in sales model rather than their original intention of facilitating the steps of change which Sharon-Drew has laid out so sellers can lead people through them before trying to sell.

I now wish to make clear that the goal of what Sharon-Drew has pioneered for decades as an original thinker and servant leader has been to truly (and singularly) facilitate change; when used with sales, a purchase might result as an output; when used in generic coaching and leading, a congruent, permanent decision results.

Plagiarizing any of her work without any attribution to get the attention of salespeople was wrong and for that I apologize. Sharon-Drew deserves to be properly credited. The writing, the developing, the inventing of the material I plagiarized has been Sharon-Drew’s life’s work. She often spends 50 hours writing the articles that I so carelessly plagiarized.

Sharon-Drew has invented additional brain-based models from which I also plagiarized:

Learning facilitation: a new form of training that uses brain function. I plagiarized some of her writing and thinking when I mentioned how I would train salespeople.
Facilitative Questions: a unique form of question that enables others to find their own answers and excludes information gathering. These are used in Buying Facilitation® to lead people through their change steps. I not only plagiarized her words used when explaining these, but I offered this new skill set in the form of Enabling Questions.
The 13 steps of change: the stages everyone must go through before becoming buyers. I plagiarized some of her steps in both articles, posts, in illustrations as a tool to help sellers position sales pitches, rather than the brain change steps that facilitate good decisions.

While my site claimed to offer clients a ‘new form of training’ and a ‘new form of question’, those were taken directly from Sharon-Drew’s inventions. I will no longer be offering services re any of the original material Sharon-Drew has invented.

I also had a 73 page sample assessment on how buyers buy that plagiarized many of Sharon-Drew’s words and ideas directly from her books and articles.

I apologize for plagiarizing and misrepresenting her work. As I did this over the course of years, I hope the people who have read my articles will go back to Sharon-Drew’s work on www.sharon-drew.com and read the ideas as they were intended. Sharon-Drew’s concepts on helping buyers buy and Buying Facilitation® are wholly original and needed in the sales industry.

I am truly sorry, Sharon-Drew.

Gordon Hogg

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Sharon-Drew Morgen is a breakthrough innovator and original thinker, having developed new paradigms in sales (inventor Buying Facilitation®, listening/communication (What? Did you really say what I think I heard?), change management (The How of Change™), coaching, and leadership. She is the author of several books, including the NYTimes Business Bestseller Selling with Integrity and Dirty Little Secrets: why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell). Sharon-Drew coaches and consults with companies seeking out of the box remedies for congruent, servant-leader-based change in leadership, healthcare, and sales. Her award-winning blog carries original articles with new thinking, weekly. www.sharon-drew.com She can be reached at sharondrew@sharondrewmorgen.com.

Sharon Drew Morgen June 20th, 2022

Posted In: News

Have you ever tried to change one of your behaviors and failed? Well, not failed, exactly. Maybe you were successful for a week or three, but then reverted back to the old behavior. Do you know why you reverted back? It’s your brain’s fault: behaviors don’t happen merely because you desire them.

There’s a universal myth that behaviors are… well, they just are, somehow removed from any source or trigger that would instigate them. We assume because we ‘want to do’ something, it will happen. But behaviors don’t just ‘show up’; they are a response to an electro-chemical process in our brains. Certainly out of our direct control.

In this article I’ll attempt to instigate your curiosity and offer my theory. I understand I’m going against mainstream thinking, that the perceived wisdom says behaviors stand alone and can be changed through determination and discipline (i.e. Behavior Modification). But read what I have to say. I might just provide some new thinking.

THE BRAIN EQUATION

Behaviors are part of a neurological process, the outputs of a series of brain connections that get triggered to act, brain connections formed through time from what we learn, how we live, what our parents and neighbors and jobs taught us. I call these our Mental Models.

In other words, behaviors are the visible display of who we are – so as a pacifist, you would expect me to not buy a gun. As a vegetarian, you would be surprised if I ate a steak. My behaviors express who I am at that moment in time (even when seemingly incongruent).

I believe, therefore I behave.

Take a look at the scientific graphic for how brains end up triggering specific behaviors, a simple equation that takes an incoming thought (an instruction, an input), through to action, a behavior (an output).

INPUT ➡️ CUE ➡️ CEN ➡️ OUTPUT

Inputs trigger outputs. See what it looks like once I add in where Beliefs and Mental Models sit so you can see how they instigate the behaviors:

INPUT (words/internal request=vibrations) –> filters (Beliefs, Mental models etc.) –> CUE (vibrations –> signals) –> CEN (dispatches signals automatically to ‘similar enough’ circuits for translation) –> OUTPUT (behaviors)

As you see from this equation (There are also electro-chemical processes involved, including dopamine.), once a message enters as an input, it gets filtered by specific Beliefs that then select signals that ‘match’ the input signals and go through brain sequences that end up as an output/action. There is no way for a behavior to occur without the signals that instigate them and without circuits that translate the incoming vibrations into meaning.

And yet when people attempt to make a change they address only the outputs and fail to start from the source – the stimuli, the initiators, the triggers – that triggered them. It should be obvious that with a different input, a different output will result. So

“I need to go on a diet.”

will conclude with someone’s brain seeking out the historic superhighway for ‘diet’ and produce the same results as previously. But if the input instructions are changed to

“I am a healthy person who will research best nutritional choices for my body and eat what will produce my best weight that I can maintain over time.”

The results will be different, a new ‘superhighway’ will be created, and it will be far simpler to reach, and maintain, optimal weight.

I contend a behavior is a Belief in action, the output that results from the brain processing an input. I believe that who we are and what Beliefs, values norms, and history define us, determines our behaviors.

Everything we do, everything we say, is a visible sign, an indication, of who we are. And I strongly believe that without new input, it’s not possible to change the output/behaviors.

If you wish more in-depth knowledge, watch my video explaining the elements of brain change: http://buyingfacilitation.com/blog/courses/the-how-of-change-sample/?lesson=62

BEHAVIORS ARE BELIEFS IN ACTION

Think of something you did recently, something simple, like go grocery shopping. The driver is your belief that it’s necessary to buy food to stay alive, that you’re running out of bananas. Simple.

But what about the type of words you use in conversation? Or who you vote for? Everything we do and say is a result of a Belief in action.

Recently a student of mine from Pakistan had a problem with her boss. She wanted to tell him that he was rude and disrespectful and he was trying to demoralize her. What’s your underlying Belief, I asked. “He’s a mean person who hates women and it’s time someone told him he’d better clean up his act.”

I asked her what she would say if her Belief was “No one willfully harms another and he may not realize I feel disrespected from his interactions, that because he’s from Pakistan his verbal habits might be cultural.” Oh! With that Belief change, she eventually called him and said:

“I’d like you to know how disrespected I feel during some of our conversations and it cuts off my creativity. I know you don’t speak to me this way intentionally, but I want us to work together in a constructive way so that together we can make a difference in the world. Is there a way we can communicate in a way that makes me feel more respected?”

He instantly became apologetic, said he hadn’t realized he was speaking disrespectfully, and he hoped she could forgive him, that he valued her, that he would work at speaking with more respect. From then on, their relationship and her creativity flourished. He even made her a close colleague, asking her opinion on several things he was working on and brought her in to meetings as a ‘leader’.

If she had acted on her originating Belief, she would have ended up being fired for being disrespectful. Instead he now sees her as management material. Change the Belief, change the behavior.

UNCONSCIOUS BELIEFS

I have a story of a Belief change of mine and how it helped a neighbor.

My neighbor Maria came over one day crying. Seems she had been diagnosed with Pre-Diabetes and given a standard diet to lose 30 pounds. She was frightened that she’d end up dying from diabetes like her Mom did. I took her to Whole Foods and we purchased healthy versions of what she ate at home. She ended up losing 10 pounds by the time I left to train clients in India. When I returned 3 weeks later, she came over crying again. She had put the weight back on and remained scared that she’d never lose it and end up dying.

That’s when I realized that I had chosen to ‘do’ something (behavior) to help her, wrongly believing (Beliefs) that I could get her on the right path; that eating the ‘right’ foods (i.e. a behavior change) was the answer. But I hadn’t helped her create new circuitry so she could figure out her own change. I shifted my Belief to: Maria must be responsible for her own choices (behaviors) and I can help her create new Belief-based inputs.

I used my Buying Facilitation® process (a generic belief -> behavior decision facilitation model I’ve trained in sales for decades) on her:

SD: What has stopped you from being comfortable following your doctor’s diet?

M: If I did, I wouldn’t have the love I get from my family.

Wait, what? How did her family get included in this? I thought it was about food! [Note: Beliefs are often unconscious and outsiders rarely know what instigates them.]

SD: So I hear you saying that food, family, and love are tied together for you.

M: Right. Every morning I make 150 tortillas and put them in bags for my kids and grandchildren. Every morning they all come by, and I stand out on the curb handing out bags for each of them. Then Joe and I eat the rest. Tortillas are not on my diet.

SD: And you’d miss seeing your family every day if you didn’t hand out the tortillas!

So her Beliefs were based on something entirely different from anything food-related, and these are what prompted her behaviors. Unconscious. Automatic.

Maria and I put together a plan of action that would incorporate her Beliefs with her doctor’s orders. She had a large dinner party during which she handed her daughter Sonia her beloved tortilla pan wrapped up in a big red bow.

M: I am having health issues and can’t eat or make tortillas anymore. From now on Sonia will be the new Tortilla Tia (auntie) and will make them and hand them out every morning. On Fridays, I’ll make you enchiladas and you can come by here!

By discovering her unconscious Beliefs Maria was able to change her behaviors to lose her 30 pounds – and keep it off because she changed her eating habits permanently.

SERVING OTHERS

Obviously, outsiders cannot know someone’s unconscious Beliefs – even they don’t always know them! Yet in order to make congruent changes they must. As coaches, parents, managers, and for yourself, it’s necessary to get to the Beliefs to add or change a behavior. Here are some questions to ask yourself:

What would I need to know or believe differently to be willing to shift my own belief about behaviors and consider they are instigated by my Beliefs?
What would I need to do or know differently to enter influencing relationships with a desire to help them discover their own underlying Beliefs without trying to influence them toward my own biases?
What skills would I need to learn in order to enter all influencing relationships with Beginner’s Mind and be as devoid of my own biases as possible?
How will I know, what will I notice, to recognize if/when my own biases got in the way of Another finding their own unconscious beliefs?

I’ve been developing belief-based behavior change models for decades, starting with my Buying Facilitation® model that leads Others through their unconscious Beliefs and systems so they can quickly make good decisions (used in sales, leadership, coaching), through to my How of Change model that actually teaches how to create new neural circuitry.

With so much of neuroscience focusing on ‘behavior change’ and omitting the need to begin with Belief change, we are withholding real support. Doctors could be facilitating ill people through to real behavior change and health; coaches could be helping people quickly discover their own answers with no bias from the coach; managers and parents and influencers could truly serve Others to find their own solutions.

I’m happy to share my knowledge with you. sharondrew@sharondrewmorgen.com. Or go to my site www.sharon-drew.com and read about some of my inventions. I look forward to us all learning exactly HOW to make a difference.

_____________________

Sharon Drew Morgen March 14th, 2022

Posted In: News

My friend Jack’s boss recently visited his team berating them for the output of their year-long project undertaken at his behest – and then walked out. Feeling disrespected and unmotivated, the team became despondent. As a senior manager Jack was left with the responsibility of re-incentivizing and inspiring the team and getting them back on track. But no one was there to incentivize him. After several such situations he began putting his creative energies into a beloved personal project.

I asked Jack what happened once he’d had a private word with the boss to discuss how his actions impeded the team’s creativity. Nope. No discussion. Jack said it happens all the time and he would have faced rebuke had he mentioned it.

Jack would have been the one censured?? Why would an upper manager wittingly disincentivize the team? Why would an entire culture be willing to disincentivize their employees? Why was disrespect condoned?

I believe that employees are a company’s first customer; why would companies prefer to not serve their employees as respectfully as they served paying customers?

WHY?

No one takes a job thinking they’ll experience verbal abuse that causes

Impeded creativity
Diminished loyalty
Reduced innovation
Anger and resentment
Distrust for management
Disincentive to learn and grow.

Indeed, we spend a large chunk of our lives working; we choose jobs where we can be our happiest, most creative and engaged selves. And yet here is one of the world’s great tech companies systematically mistreating the very people they hired to help them grow and carry their brand as global innovators.

Not only is this morally offensive, it’s profoundly stupid, akin to shooting your sled dogs for an infraction during the Iditarod. Why would you want to damage your lifeline to success?

Of course this isn’t the first company that treats their employees like scrap. But for the life of me I cannot understand why anyone would want to disrespect an employee (or anyone, for that matter).

The cost is so high, engendering less innovation, more turnaround and higher hiring/training costs (if anyone even wants to work for them once word gets out), bad press, and unhappy employees that go on to inadvertently treat the company’s customers with less respect as natural fallout. Not to mention they eventually fall behind companies with Servant Leader practices that work on win/win, respect, and integrity.

In the 1980s I set up my tech company so everyone could explore their dreams, ideas, and the excitement of possibility. And except for moving, no employees left during the 5 years I was there. Competitors told me at conferences that they offered to pay my folks double but they wouldn’t leave. “What’s your secret? What are you doing over there?” they’d say.

What I did was pretty simple: I took care of them. I respected them. I removed ‘vacation days’ and told them to take off the time they needed to stay refreshed (I had to make them leave a few times a year – I couldn’t get them to take time off.). As per company policy, everyone took one day off a month to do volunteer work; anyone wanting a newly created leadership role got a 2 week trial run to see if they wanted the job before I hired in a stranger (Most folks went back to their job so they’d have more time with their families.); I took the field techs to a pub monthly to keep connected; I hired a ’make nice guy’ to make sure the outside team had a dedicated person for both technical and client relationship support.

And it was part of the culture to be as creative as they liked so long as they got my help 3 feet before falling over the edge. I remember my surprise (We’re doing WHAT?) when my training director signed a one-year lease for 1,000 sq ft of extra space to create a new set of programs that became so popular we doubled our training business in a year. They even got me to train a management course! I would never have thought of it. My employees were Customer #1 and I trusted their ideas.

CONDONING DISRESPECT? DENIAL?

So it makes no logical sense to me why companies condone disrespect when they depend on their employees for their success. Maybe:

Weak leadership from the top;
Fear of upsetting the status quo;
Denial;
Ego;
A good-enough culture;
Normalization of disrespect among the leaders themselves;
Old-fashioned top-down power dynamics.

There’s just no ‘win’ in it. Years ago I was hired by a franchise owner to visit 11 of his companies around Europe to see what was going on. When I returned with my 75-page report, he had a check ready for me saying the job was done. But given the problems I unearthed, we had loads of work to do. What happened?

Peter: See that pond out there? Before you left the water was sparkling. Since your visits and the questions you posed to the companies, I can’t even see the water anymore. All the junk that was on the bottom is now on top.

SD: And your choice is to clean it up or get rid of me and let it sink back down so it goes back to being hidden.

Peter: Correct. It’s all been working well-enough, and I can’t tolerate what it would take to fix these problems.

SD: You really need to read my report because you’ve got a few serious problems. Paul is methodically stealing all your customers.

Peter: I’m sure it will be fine. I’ve been Paul’s mentor for years. He wouldn’t steal from me.

Six months later he went bankrupt when Paul took the customers. I assume Peter never read the report. Ego. Denial. Status quo. No ‘win’ in it at all.

NO, REALLY. WHY?

For a corporate culture to maintain standards that allow the sort of maltreatment that disincentivizes staff and decreases output, the entire leadership team must buy-in to abuse.

Given that people (employees!) thrive on kindness, respect, and positive attention – my goodness, even our brains experience increased well-being with the raised oxytocin from positive attention – why would a company prefer to continue discouraging the very people they need for success?

No, really. Why?

I’m going to pose some questions here in the hopes that companies make sure they notice and minimize any sort of practices that are less than encouraging, inspirational, supportive, and honest:

How will you know when anyone on the management team is lacking the skills to truly serve their reports in a way that inspires them to thrive? What is going on within the culture that protects managers who are less than respectful or inspirational?
What rules or standards are built into the company culture that give people permission to be less than respectful and supportive?
What is the risk if you create a culture that serves all and makes it undisputable that disrespect is not tolerated? What laws/rules must you put in place to foster respect, collaboration, and true leadership? And how do you encourage buy-in of these laws/rules?
How do you encourage whistleblowers and make sure they get heard without retribution? So folks understand that breaking the rules of respect and integrity will prompt quick dismissal?
How can you make sure that integrity is built into your hiring practices? Into supervisory skills?

I don’t have answers here, folks. I have no place in my brain that would understand why anyone would want to do that to another person, let alone a senior manager with reports he’s dependent on to expand their brand.

For now, let’s just think about the questions and start a conversation. Let me know your thoughts: sharondrew@sharondrewmorgen.com

_____________________________

Sharon Drew Morgen February 28th, 2022

Posted In: News

I hate unrequested ‘feedback’. Personally, when I want to better myself, I seek feedback from folks whose opinions I trust. But sometimes, when I do something that annoys someone else, they take it upon themselves to offer me ‘feedback’ to tell me what I did ‘wrong,’ too often based on beliefs we don’t share.

Given we could all benefit from positive feedback once in a while, I would like to propose ways to offer respectful feedback as part of a servant-leader model.

I’ll begin with a story. I recently shared an annoyance with a group of friends and was quite surprised to be met with silence. I did get one helpful comment afterwards:

“If the time comes you ever want to learn how to get the group’s attention in a way that they can hear and respond, I’d be happy to offer suggestions. I’ve been a member of the group for a long time and they have a certain pattern to their sharing. I’m here if you need me.”

To me, that’s great feedback. Gives me information and choice, not to mention a great resource to learn from; no blame, no insult, no assumptions, no bias. And he trusted me to discover my own timing for learning. Win/Win/Win.

SOMEONE IS MADE WRONG

These days it seems acceptable for one person (the Giver) to tell another (the Receiver) how to improve when acting in a manner deemed ‘unacceptable’ to the Giver. Indeed, books on feedback explain how Receivers can ‘overcome’ their ‘lack of perspective’ – obviously a biased, insulting judgment that assumes

the Giver is right (and the Receiver wrong),
the Giver has the moral entitlement to judge the Receiver,
the Giver’s viewpoint is accurate (and the Receiver should heed it),
the Giver has THE answer (based on his/her idiosyncratic beliefs),
the Giver uses the best verbiage to be understood accurately, without incurring resistance or hurt,
there is no bias involved,
the Receiver doesn’t have the tools, skills, or understanding to do what’s ‘right’ on their own.

Everyone has the right to speak their mind of course. But I don’t know anyone who welcomes what might be spurious comments based on Another’s biases.

The idea of someone telling Another that they have a problem and the Giver has THE answer, assumes it’s ok for the Giver to use their own biases to try to convince the Receiver they’re wrong and they need to change. And that is well outside of my personal, moral beliefs.

I’m aware that often a boss needs to help an employee make adjustments, or a parent needs to modify a teenager’s unsuccessful choices. But the baseline remains the same: No one has the right to proclaim a moral high ground, to expect anyone else to change because of personal feelings, biases, and assumptions, to assume the Receiver has no say, no unique judgment, no relevant thought process that could become part of an agreeable solution.

TWO MINDS BETTER THAN ONE

Of course, because nobody is perfect (although we each think we are), we sometimes need a reality check. For those times, there’s a way Givers can create feedback that will enable win/win conversations and excellence. Here are several issues that must be overcome:

BIAS: The assumption that feedback is needed is often based on a Giver wanting a Receiver to change as per the Giver’s unique beliefs and values. Sure, if there is a danger involved, a Receiver must ultimately choose new behaviors. But in general, when a Giver assumes the ‘right’ road without identifying a path to partnership, or recognizing there might be a specific reason the Receiver made their choices, any discussion becomes win/lose.

WRONG ASSUMPTIONS: Too often a Giver’s feedback assumes the Receiver is wrong, or doesn’t possess the skills or tools to do it better, and goes forth pushing their own agendas. With these assumptions, any feedback will most likely be ignored, especially if it offends, insults, or in some way harms the Receiver. This certainly doesn’t set in motion a path to positive behavior modification.

RIGHT VS WRONG: What makes one person right and one person wrong? Just asking. While it might be clear in the Giver’s mind, it’s often up for interpretation.

WRONG LANGUAGING: How does the Giver know for certain that their approach to instigate change is the best approach? My book What? Did you really say what I think I heard? discusses how brains misunderstand, mistranslate, and misinterpret incoming information based on the listener’s mental models and brain synapses – nothing whatsoever to do with the facts or content coming in. Unfortunately, we all assume our speech is ‘easily understandable’ and others should hear what we mean. Nope.

ME VS YOU: Why should I listen to you, or make changes in my normal behavior patterns, when I don’t agree with you and you make no sense to me?

WHO’S OUTCOME IS IT?: Sometimes the Giver is working from different, hidden, or unconscious outcomes. Why would the ‘offender’ heed the feedback if s/he is meeting her own outcomes? And how can a Giver understand differences between them with a goal or bias that restricts the ability to listen or be flexible enough to go through discovery together?

Are you getting the point here? Feedback is biased; people are all doing the best they can do at any given moment; the only people who will be compliant are those who are already on the same page (and those folks don’t usually need feedback) or those fearful of consequences. And fear is a poor motivator.

WHAT TO DO

Before you offer feedback, consider the distance between what someone is doing/saying vs what you believe should be done/said. Is it merely an opinion they should do something different, or will it actually resolve a problem? Is there a way to mutually discover a solution to accomplish this without causing fear, distrust, and annoyance?

When a problem occurs that needs to be fixed, a collaborative discussion will enable the Receiver to discover their own route to change.

1. Enter the conversation with curiosity:

I noticed X was occurring and find it problematic (for the job, for our relationship, for the outcome). Would you be willing to discuss it with me to figure out if there is actually a problem or there’s another way to look at the situation?

2. Be prepared to drop biases, expectations, needs, and opinions and clearly state intentions. There’s no place in a collaborative communication for any offense:

I find I’m having reactions to what happened, but come with an openness to finding the best route to excellence. If you feel like I’m being biased or disrespectful, I’d like to hear your thoughts so we end up on the same page with the same goal. It’s not my intent to disparage you in any way. I just want to find the best way to both feel comfortable going forward.

3. Tell your side of what you feel about the incident, without further commentary, and clearly state your need for the conversation:

When X happened, it seemed to me your reaction caused [a bigger problem/unexpected fallout, etc.] and it scared me. I wonder if we could discuss both our needs and assumptions and see if there is a path to end up with something we can both live with and neither of us considered.

4. Listen without bias. Make sure you repeat what you think you heard as it’s quite possible your brain might have misinterpreted what was said:

Let me see if I heard you accurately. I heard you say X. Did I get that right? Or am I misunderstanding something? Please correct my interpretation. I want us to be on the same page.

5. Discuss your needs in relation to what you heard, and begin creating a plan:

Sounds like you and I have similar outcomes but different ways of expressing it. That’s what I had the problem with, but now see your choices were just different from mine. What do you think about doing X as a middle path? I think that might meet the goals. What do you think? Do you have any other ideas to suggest?

6. Put it all together:

I think we’ve reached a route that we’ll both benefit from. Is there anything you need from me going forward to make sure we collaborate through to excellence?

I recognize there are times when the Giver is a boss, a parent, a leader needing specific results. But if there’s no collaboration, if there’s bias about right and wrong, if there’s no way to hear each other, neither Giver or Receiver can be the driver toward excellence. Use feedback as a route to excellence.

__________________________

Sharon Drew Morgen February 14th, 2022

Posted In: News

As someone with Asperger’s, I’ve always experienced the world from a different set of rules than those used by ‘normal’ people (neurotypicals (NTs)). Occasionally I get in trouble, even with friends. I remember once my neighbors Gus and Randy came over to watch TV and brought an ugly (ugly!!), cheap glass ashtray as a ‘visit’ gift – a gift to watch TV? The next day I brought it back.

SD: I’m never going to use this, and I hate it. Maybe give it to someone who will appreciate it.

Gus: (Laughter) You’re returning a gift!?

Randy: (Silence. Anger. Annoyance.)

SD: Randy, are you mad at me because I returned this? Do you want me to keep it? You seem to be mad at me. I don’t understand why.

Randy: (Silence. Silence. Silence.)

Gus: Oh, come on, Randy! It’s a cheap ashtray! We can use it as a Secret Santa gift.

Randy: (Staring at me with intense eyes. Silence. Staring.) WHO DOES THAT!!!!

SD: I do.

Because I experience the world so differently, I often neglect assumed, and apparently innate, conventional social rules. For survival, I developed others that make more sense to me. The good news is that using my own atypical rules and reasoning, I’ve spent my life resolving curiosities about choice and decision making that didn’t seem to have answers in standard thinking and yet make a difference.

With my atypical brain, I’ve invented values-based systemic brain change models (used in sales, decision making, leadership, habit formation, behavior change) that I’ve trained world-wide and have written several books on.

The bad news is that because my ideas have no precedent, the path to adoption is challenging. And yet, I’ve mostly figured it out.

In this article I offer what I’ve learned to help those troublemakers out there with great ideas that go against convention. After all, without troublemakers nothing changes.

RIGHT RULES DON’T CAUSE INNOVATION

At the start, I’d like to say that my innate rules aren’t wrong, they just operate from a different mindset than the perceived wisdom, enabling me to create out-of-the-box concepts. I don’t even realize they’re outside the box until I get pushback.

Eventually, the right people show up with curiosity and excitement. Once I was training my change model with a graphic on systemic brain change that took me 3 months to figure out. A woman raised her hand. “Where did you get that graphic? I’m a neuroscientist and that part is missing from the field. Where did you get it! Can I use it?” Music to my ears.

I’ve always known my ideas are to be shared and used by others. But how could I disseminate them when such a high percent of a reading audience uses more traditional thinking? To learn how, I had to learn the principles of ‘normal’ discourse and expectations. I had already learned that using my own unique communication process, the ideas got rejected out of hand.

Early on I recognized I had to show up as ‘normal’ if I wanted to share new thinking. When I was 11 I began taking notes of normal conversations; eventually I noticed patterns that offered new rules I could teach myself. I had to learn basics, stuff most two-year-olds know, like saying ‘Fine, thanks, how are you?’ when asked ‘How are you?’ To this day I don’t understand why that’s a valid response.

By now, and armed with probably half a million rules in my brain, I show up as NT most of the time, albeit a bit ‘charming’. I still get people annoyed when I over-share or interrupt even when I announce at the beginning of a conversation that I’m an Aspie.

But I’ve learned some rules that helped me share my models and innovate change.

10 RULES FOR INNOVATORS

To start, because my ideas are different from the perceived wisdom, folks who seek convention are initially opposed and I get ignored, or worse. But I’ve learned it’s just what happens to folks who break the rules. Rule #1: don’t expect to fit in. Be willing to be overlooked or ignored.

Over time, I’ve figured out who to share new ideas with; mainstream isn’t the place for me to start. Certainly, early adopters are more curious, accepting, and less judgmental.

So that brings up a few questions: who do I share my ideas with so they’ll garner acceptance and adoption? How much am I willing to dumb down a new concept to help it be understood? Should I just seek folks who easily understand? Am I targeting the right audience? How can I test my message so I don’t frustrate those who might understand with just a bit of help? Rule #2: choose who to share the ideas with.

I always work hard to understand the rules in a particular environment so I’ll have an idea which ones I’m breaking. It makes it easier to know where rejection will come from: if I don’t know where I’m at, I can’t get where I’m going (I’ve got a bunch of fun one-liners in Morgenisms you can enjoy.). But given I’m offering wholly new thinking, I understand I may first be ignored, made wrong, or not believed. Indeed, according to the norms, I AM ‘wrong’! Rule #3: don’t take it personally, it’s part of the process.

It’s important for me to know if an idea is worth spending time on. For the times I have a ‘wonderment’ (like in, “Hmmm. I wonder why people can’t hear each other accurately?” which was the start of my book on how to listen without bias), I’ve created a trigger to alert my brain to a circuit I’ve labeled ‘Wonderment’ where I have unfettered curiosity. Once I find myself immersed in questions, and in the middle of confusion, I know I’m on the right track. Rule #4: choose ideas that seem endlessly stimulating and you’re willing to devote a lot of time and energy on.

Frustration, curiosity, dead ends… during my process everything changes, even when it takes years; there are no ready answers and limitless places to look for new ones. I don’t even know all the questions to pose until I’m finished. So I keep stimulating my brain for just a smidge of a thought, a slice of a wonderment.

I make sure new inspirations flow in: Books. Podcasts. Plays. Hiking. I stay away from talking heads with conventional ideas that promise if you do X you’ll be successful. I just read a book on how New York City sanitation trucks get scheduled! I read ezines on topics I have no knowledge of. I travel to unusual places with unknowable rules to learn new patterns: I’ve spent a week with the Shuar Indians living in a mud hut with creepy things crawling up the walls (Pretty, but ewwww). I’ve spent a week in Uruguay living on a sheep farm failing badly at training a Border Collie.

I never know when new ideas will emerge but keep my brain stimulated to spark them. Rule #5: be infinitely flexible.

Time to think is crucial. I schedule specific hours every week to do nothing but think. I keep 20 pads of paper and pens scattered around the house to catch idea. I collect them at the end of the week to see what I’ve got. I never know what will work or what new ideas will go with what. So I try and try, fail and fail, scribble, and fail, and try, and…. Until one Eureeka moment when I know I’ve got it, when all feels settled. Rule #6: make ‘thinking’ a tool of your profession and devote specific time for it.

Get your brain in shape as if you were an athlete. I get plenty of sleep, no longer drink (sometimes a beer on a Saturday) because it muddles my brain. I remove drama as much as possible. I work out (walk 2 miles a day, one hour of weights in the gym 2x/week) and eat really healthy. With no exercise and bad food, I get logy. Rule #7: get yourself in brain-shape so you have the clarity necessary to innovate.

Mistakes are wonderful things. I make loads. And sometimes I revamp something that took me months or years to design. You must be ok with getting it wrong often. If you’re a perfectionist or need to be ‘right’ all the time, breaking rules and developing new ideas isn’t for you.

But each failure, each error, each dead end, eventually opens a path to an answer. There’s a lot of passion, self-trust, and self-discipline involved. I just have to keep going even when it’s a mess, when I’m confused, when it seems all wrong and going nowhere. After all, if there were a place I could learn it, it wouldn’t be anything new. So I’ve learned to trust the process.

It took me 10 years to create a new form of question. I began with wondering how it was possible to get into my brain to find stuff when I kept thinking just one way and I knew there were others. Eventually I developed Facilitative Questions that enable brains to discover where their best answers are stored. I’ve taught these to about 100,000 people! Rule: #8: be humble; failure and confusion are part of the process.

For me, I get impaled with an idea that I cannot shake and it rumbles around my brain every waking moment, even in my dreams. When you’re new at this, be stubborn: don’t acquiesce to the thoughts of Others who tell you you’re doing something impossible, or you’re wrong. You ARE! Get over it and keep going. Rule 9: be stubborn; being wrong is right.

The persistent problem is how to message the new ideas so they’re accepted. Left to my own devices, I can explain a concept in a sentence or two. But no one would understand me, so I’ve learned to incorporate industry idioms, styles of speech, regularly used phrases, and accepted knowledge.

The biggest challenge is inspiring curiosity instead of rejection. It’s a brain thing: incoming sounds (including words) get translated into meaning only when they’ve been sent through habitual, unconscious brain circuits (neuroscience books call words ‘puffs of air’). So people automatically think according to their historic assumptions.

The trick is to help trigger folks from an assumption to a curiosity. Some people automatically become curious when an incoming idea seems confusing; most people ignore it or reject it out of hand when it goes against a belief.

We’re never told that information, in and of itself, doesn’t cause new thinking unless it’s being sought (i.e. there’s a place in the brain waiting for that specific data); unless I get my ducks in a row and choose the right message to the right people and generate new brain circuits, I’m wasting my breath.

So how can you initiate curiosity so your new ideas get accepted? Just because you’ve got a great idea doesn’t mean it will be heard or accepted. But you must figure it out. Rule #10: Try several approaches to sharing new ideas, including questions, storytelling, personal examples, initiating sharing to understand Another’s thought process; develop outreach to fit the messaging to the audience.

So it’s a process. A very humbling process.

GETTING NEW IDEAS HEARD

What would you need to know or believe differently to begin your own wonderment program? To believe that your ideas are worth disseminating? That you can make a difference?

With so much change occurring – in business, technology, media, management, climate change, etc. – we’re all going through shifts in thinking and are open to change. It’s the perfect time to break rules and develop new models, new ways of working and thinking and communicating.

Obviously with your new ideas in hand, you must get them accepted and disseminated. So how? Do you want to make a difference in your personal sphere – for yourself or your family? Do you want to make a difference in the world? In your company?

The big hurdle to get over is how to help Others understand you; they have no brain circuits to translate your ideas. What will you figure out to resolve this problem?

It’s the problem all innovators and inventors must solve. Tesla never figured it out. Neither did Cezanne. Did you know he only sold one painting during his life – to Matisse who wanted to learn from him? Did you know it took 40 years for broad adoption of the telephone after it was invented? People continued using Morse Code to communicate! And remember how long it took folks to believe the world was round? Had nothing to do with the science, or truth.

It’s a complex issue. To break the rules in a way they’ll be adopted, you must not only change your own beliefs but facilitate others in changing theirs. Without belief change new ideas aren’t accepted. To break rules, you’ll need to help folks supersede their comfortable, automatic beliefs and message the new in a way that doesn’t offend.

When Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone, he didn’t explain the engineering or coding; he used a huge screen with visuals, showing each component and simply showing the functionality of that component. Suddenly those things you secretly wanted were at your fingertips and had a name. He used what you already knew and believed and took it to the next logical step.

Breaking the rules to generate new innovations is a dark and lonely road. But it’s possible, and it’s necessary. The question is: are you willing to make a difference?

____________________________

Sharon Drew Morgen January 31st, 2022

Posted In: News

It’s time for a rant. After decades of writing books and articles explaining why we close such a small percentage of prospects and how, exactly, to facilitate the Buy Side to close much more, I’m going to say what I really think.

I’ll begin with my surprise: why do sales and marketing largely ignore the change management component of the Buy Side even in the face of very low (<5%) close rates? That the 95+% of prospects NOT buying (even in the face of the massive efforts) indicates that a focus on need or solution/product placement is imperfect? That maybe pitching/pushing content is the wrong strategy? My goodness, you wouldn’t even go to a hairdresser with a 95+% failure rate, let alone get on a plane or go to a doctor. Isn’t it clear that something is wrong?

DO YOU WANT TO SELL OR HAVE SOMEONE BUY?

For me the answer is obvious: both sales and marketing ignore the path folks take to become buyers and overlook a group of highly probable prospects who actually need support handling their unique change management issues. Because they’re not buyers yet, you’ve overlooked them. But you’re ignoring a huge opportunity to serve, differentiate yourself, and close more.

Here’s my question: Do you want to sell? Or help someone buy? Your answer is obvious: ‘I want to sell and I don’t care whether anyone buys.’ That’s what you’re doing! Selling, even though such a small percentage are buying! It’s the wrong answer. If you really wanted people to buy you’d be doing something different.

Both marketing and sales ignore the Buy Side, focusing on solution placement/product sale, while restricting the purchasing audience to those relative few – the low hanging fruit – who finally show up. And making a purchase is the very last thing people do. Before then, they’re merely people trying to figure out their best route to solving a problem.

People don’t want to buy anything, merely solve a problem at the least cost to the system. And until they understand the ‘cost to the system’ (how their culture and norms will be affected) they can’t buy. They don’t even recognize a ‘need’ until then. They certainly aren’t seeking an external solution; nor do they consider themselves buyers! Hence they pay no heed to your selling or marketing content. And yet you persist on doing the same thing even in the face of failure.

It’s possible to recognize folks who WILL be buyers on the first call, then facilitate them efficiently through their Pre-Sales (i.e. Pre-Buying) change management steps. But not with the current solution placement/product sale model.

Sales and marketing were designed to sell solutions. But sticking to the historic solution placement/product sale focus, they ignore the real Pre-Sales buying decision journey folks take first and overlook the possibility finding folks who will soon be buyers but don’t self-identify as such yet.

Sales and marketing overlook the much larger group of folks on route to becoming buyers but not ready yet, focusing instead on anyone – anyone with a name that shows up somewhere, anyone who will sit still long enough to read or listen, anyone who has any semblance of a ‘need’ as per a biased interpretation. Anyone.

FACILITATE BUYING BEFORE TRYING TO SELL

Sales can begin by recognizing, finding, and leading people through their team– and culture-based detection and buy-in activities; marketing can use change-focused content to guide folks through their unfamiliar steps of change. All it takes is a focus on facilitating change – the necessary steps involved with ‘buying’ – as the first activity rather than beginning with selling. And by ‘facilitating buying’ I mean the process of change, nothing product-purchase related.

By overlooking the change folks must take before identifying as buyers, you’re limiting your audience to those relative few who completed their internal decisions and have their ducks in a row; you’re missing a huge opportunity to beat your competition and be a change facilitator – a role folks really, really need you – as one aspect of your sales and marketing strategy.

With a shift in perspective to first find folks seeking change in your area of expertise and facilitating their necessary change management Pre-Sales Change Path BEFORE trying to sell, you’ll find folks very early in their decision journey (before they even recognize they might be buyers) and use your new change management thinking to help them figure out what they need to figure out. Then more will be ready to buy, and buy quicker.

Here’s an example of two responses to a Facilitative Question I posed to begin a prospecting call. Notice that they both have ‘need’ but only one is a real prospect [Hint: the willingness to change is the identifier.]:

SD: How are you and your decision team adding new sales skills to their already successful strategies, for those times you’re seeking to shorten sales cycles?

Response #1: every year I read 6 popular sales books. I choose my favorite, buy 1500 copies for the teams, then have the managers discuss one chapter a month. I’ve been doing it for years and my folks love it.

SD: Sounds like you are happy with your strategy.

#1: Love it.

Response #2: every year I offer some type of sales training. But I must be doing something wrong – it doesn’t seem to help and our close rates and the sales cycles don’t seem to change much.

SD: sounds frustrating.

#2. It has been. But I don’t despair. I keep seeking a way to fix this problem. Shouldn’t be so hard.

Both #1 and #2 need to learn my Buying Facilitation® model. But only #2 is actively seeking change and actually bought my training 2 weeks later. When starting by seeking folks on route to change (instead of seeking those with need), you’ll find people with a good chance of becoming buyers once they’re ready.

SALES IS AN OUTDATED MODEL

When designed 100 years ago, sales and marketing only needed a reliable product, a charming personality (Have you ever met a seller who wasn’t charming?) and folks with a need. Easy. Even buyers had an easier time: with a simple buying process, far fewer solution choices, and fewer bits and pieces to organize, buying involved maybe two or three available solutions; marketing content provided data they couldn’t get anywhere else; sales reps were a necessary and accepted part of a buying decision.

Times have changed but neither sales nor marketing have changed with them. Close rates have gone from 8% when I began selling in 1979 to well under 5% now (closer to 3% if tracked from first call). When I told someone recently that the sales model closed less than 5%, he disagreed:

F: We’re closing 15%

SD: Starting from where?

F: Starting from a visit! (Question: how many not-yet-ready-buyers did he get ‘nos’ from as he attempted to get an appointment?)

SD: How many would you close if you started counting when you get a name?

F: Less than 2%.

Isn’t this an indication that something is wrong? That you must do something different? A <5% close rate is 95+% failure! And yet it’s called success! But what if you said, “Hmmmm. Such a small percentage close rate is failure, especially after all that effort and outreach. What are we missing here?”

With fewer people needing your help to make a purchase, more folks involved in a buying decision, and more people buying online, why are you using the same process, the same thinking, you’ve always used? With a blank slate and all possibilities available, even the new apps continue the same failed thinking!

With technology to organize a seller’s time, grab names from unpredictable searches, cause company names to come up in search engines, push out content, combined with the separation of the technology into cost centers that hide the real cost of a sale, the only people making money are the groups selling these new technologies to salespeople!

It’s time to consider first finding folks on route to change and facilitating their non-buying change management process before trying to sell.

DOING THE SAME THING IS INSANITY

The continued belief that with the ‘right’ content/message, the ‘right’ technology, the concept ‘if you find them they’ll buy’ is a foundational flaw.

Think with me here: You’re spending more and more money to find more and more names and spending more and more time on folks not even real prospects. The hope, the promise – that once people notice you, appreciate your solution, believe they need your solution, and trust/like you, they’ll buy – is moot. There are several issues involved;

The focus on solution placement/product sale, and finding folks with ‘need’, misses the real opportunity:

the unique process each person/group people goes through before becoming buyers;
when, why, how people become buyers (Seriously. I’ve trained 100,000 sales folks and not one – not one! – knows their market’s Pre-Sales buying decision/change management process!);
the role of change in the buying process;
the possibility of finding folks on route to becoming buyers on the first call;
how to facilitate folks through their preliminary non-solution change decisions;
how to use marketing to progress the buying decision path.

By restricting sales and marketing to solution placement/product sale, the real process people go through on route to becoming buyers has been overlooked. Think about it for a moment. If you want to convince your spouse to buy a 2-seater $350,000 Lamborghini, would you want them to sit down with a decision facilitator or a Lamborghini sales rep?

What would you need to believe differently to begin your sales/marketing outreach with a change management criteria?

The industry presuppositions as to targeting ‘buyers’ are specious:

Please read the remainder of the article here.

For a printout of the entire article, click here.

________________________________

Sharon Drew Morgen January 17th, 2022

Posted In: News

What, exactly, is the job of a manager these days? With folks now working between office and home, meetings with people in different venues, one third of all adults suffering from depression, and work-life imbalance from our new work situations, our jobs as managers need an upgrade.

Until now, a manager’s job was akin to the job of a Chief of Staff where people, tasks, timelines, and outputs were determined by the company culture. Now the culture must address both emotional issues and leadership coming from within instead of top-down.

Managing is no longer as simple as being a good leader; it now holds the key to a company’s success and strategy. Certainly a factor in inspiring creativity and supporting well-being.

Are you noticing any issues showing up for any of your staff? Do folks need support coping with health issues? Emotional crises? Work-life balance? Are they doing the same level work they did pre pandemic? Are they as creative? Reliable? Happy?

I suspect there might be subtle differences showing up given the havoc we’ve been through. Here are a few ideas to help.

SKILLS TO SERVE

Given the new givens, folks might be a bit off balance. Here are a few ideas to help you serve them:

Enhanced listening

Because work has generally been a ‘doing’ place not a ‘being’ place, folks may gloss over what’s going on for them personally. But that doesn’t mean you should. How do you include the personal? Should there be separate meetings for those with work-life balance issues? For folks dealing with depression? What is the best approach to personal sharing so the group can serve each other and still do the business at hand?

Folks can seem ‘fine’ – put on a happy face, tell the Zoom group all is well – but listening with an unbiased ear will highlight the unspoken stuff, notice differences between their normal communication patterns and disparities showing up now.

But listening without bias is easier said than done; our brains weren’t set up to hear what someone actually means. When writing my book on how to close the gap between what’s said and what’s heard (WHAT?) I discovered an alarming fact: we have little chance of accurately understanding what’s said to us!

It seems all sounds (including words) enter our ears as meaningless vibrations, or ‘puffs of air’ as they’re called in science books. Through a series of very fast (five one-hundreds of a second) electro-chemical calculations in our heads, these vibrations eventually get translated into meaning according to ‘similar enough’ historic, automatic brain circuits that we’ve uniquely created during our lives and represent our mental models. Obviously, there’s a chance they might not be ‘similar-enough’ to the intended message!

And it gets worse: our brains discard some of the incoming signals that don’t match the existing ones! So I might say ABC and your brain tells you I said ABL – it never tells you it deleted D, E, F, etc. – and your brain never tells you the difference!

In other words, if there are no circuits to accurately translate what someone is saying to you, it’s possible that you may not be understanding the message according to their intent.

Put it all together and what you think was said is some percentage different from the intended message. Use my Listening Assessment to monitor your own patterns.

Meaning aside, it’s possible to hear differences between someone’s historic communication patterns and current ones. Physiologically, there might be an edge in their voice, shorter words used, a lower tone, distracted communication. To make sure you get it right, check with them: “I think I hear you say X/I think I’m noticing Y. Is that accurate?”

Here are guidelines to consider:

Notice differences – differences in voice, tone, volume; differences in content sharing. Does the person seem distracted? Quieter/more talkative than normal?
Listen for how the group handles personal issues. Is it open to adding the personal? How will you address this going forward?
Are some folks hearing more accurately? How will you intervene if you hear biases?
When something important is said, make sure to say: “I want to tell you what I heard to make sure I’ve got it right. Please correct me where I got it wrong.”

Once the team is alerted to listen for differences, set up norms going forward to help those in need. Ignoring is not an option.

Group process

How’s the group doing? When they’re in different settings are they working together effectively? Anything obvious showing up? Differences in working relationships? Is work being done efficiently? Are there communication issues? Is creativity at the same level it’s always been? Is the personal accepted? How will you handle those in the group who stick to tasks and ignore the personal?

Set up a discovery meeting. Here are a few questions to pose:

How can we be most efficient when not all folks in the same place?
How can we make sure all information is available to everyone? (Hint: this is bigger than merely sending out emails. Sometimes ‘water cooler’ chatter is important and omitted from the group discussions. How can you compensate for this?)
How do we ensure that everyone has what they need for each meeting, each initiative? That all information – personal and professional – is shared so everyone is working from the same data set?
How do we include personal issues in our meetings? Does the agenda change? Is there a time set aside?
How can we make sure everyone who should be involved is involved? Or share necessary data that only two people have discussed?
How can we discover fallout before it becomes a problem?

Until everyone who should be involved is in the meeting, no action can go forward congruently; no ideas or strategies can be complete.

I suggest meetings be rescheduled if someone can’t make it – their unique voice, feelings, creativity and observations are necessary. Without doing this, plans end up needing to be reconfigured; egos might be bruised and relationships compromised; good ideas will go unspoken. Meetings must include the full stakeholder team or there will be glitches, resistance, or non-compliance going forward.

Information Gathering/Idea Generation

Given people may not be in the same room, or they’re distracted as per their time/health/childcare issues, getting information collected and brainstormed might be untidy. But it’s important everyone is on board and buys in to actions and goals.

How will meetings be led and advanced? Will one person always do it? Will there be a rotation?
Who sets the meeting agendas? Can anyone add to them?
Who will supervise the collection of data, drive initiatives, follow up?
How will the group know when it’s collected the full data set, when there is buy-in for a new idea, when all ideas have been considered?

Managers have done a lot of this work, but with folks dispersed and communication potentially compromised, with leadership, strategy and new ideas coming from the teams, it might make sense to update old meeting styles.

Supervision

Must people be in person to be supervised? There has been a prevailing belief that face-to-face is best. But there might not be a choice now. How will you manage this? I suggest you sit down with each report and figure it out together:

What is the best way for me to supervise you now? What type of flexibility do I need to best serve you?
What should I be looking for in case you’re going through a bad patch and don’t notice you need some support?
What would my support look like for you? What would I be doing, saying, not saying, offering, to help?
Is there anyone on the team who might have your back if there’s a work promise you can’t complete on time?

Your job is to serve your folks. Figuring out what this looks like must be collaborative.

Peer Coaching

Since you’re not always around, but folks on teams often connect with each other, set up peer coaching so everyone has a buddy and someplace to go if they need extra support. Especially in these times when emotions might be present, it’s important to set up ways for folks who know each other to serve each other.

It’s time for new skills to serve, new ways to think. The job of the manager now is a pivotal one: help get our folks through this confusion we face. Success and excellence depend on it.

I’m a fervent believer that people have their own answers when they’re going through stuff. Even if they tell us of a problem, we can’t know all the issues involved or how, specifically, the person is really coping. But we can help them find their answers so long as we stay away from trying to resolve them.

If your company seeks any support to help your managers recognize and learn new skills, I’d love to help. sharondrew@sharondrewmorgen.com.

________________________

Sharon Drew Morgen January 10th, 2022

Posted In: News

I got to the gym yesterday only to find that my regular treadmill had been replaced by a new-fangled computer machine. I asked the young woman next to me how to start the damn thing as it wasn’t obvious. Here was the conversation:

SDM: Where’s the start button on this thing?
Woman: Over there. You’ll want to start on 2.3 miles and…
SDM: Thanks for showing me. I’m good now. Thanks.
Woman: You’re starting too high! Plus, you’ll want to put it at an incline of 1% to start, then …
SDM: No. Really. I’m good.
Woman: I’m telling you the right way to do this! I’m a professional trainer! I know what I’m talking about!
SDM: I’m sure you do. But I’m good. Thanks.
Woman: What’s your problem, lady??? You asked me for my advice! I’m just responding to your question! I’M A PROFESSIONAL!

That woman converted my simple request into a request for her expertise and she couldn’t hear my attempt to disengage from the conversation – three times! But we all do this sort of thing. And it’s our brain’s fault.

BIASES

Far too often, we interpret what someone says with the filters of what we’re listening for and end up limiting the scope of what’s possible. We actually inadvertently restrict our listening in most conversations as our unconscious biases filter out what doesn’t match. Let me introduce you to some of the more common ones out of the hundreds of recognized biases:

Confirmation bias: we listen to get personal validation, often using leading questions, to confirm to ourselves that we’re right; we seek out people and ideas to confirm our own views and maintain our status quo, and unwittingly mistranslate what’s been said according to our beliefs.

Expectation bias: we decide what we want to take away from a conversation prior to entering, causing us to only notice the bits that match and disregarding the rest; we mishear and misinterpret what’s said to conform to our goals.

Status quo bias: we listen to confirm that we’re fine the way we are and reject any information that proves us wrong.

Attention bias: we unconsciously ignore what we don’t want to hear – and often don’t even hear, or acknowledge, something has been said.

Information bias: we only gather the information we’ve deemed ‘important’ to push our own agendas or prove a point. When used for data analysis, we often collect information according to expectation bias and selection bias. (This biases scientific and social research, and data analysis.)

And of course, we all have a Bias Blind Spot: we naturally believe we’re not biased! And anyone that doesn’t believe we’re Right is Wrong.

OUR BRAINS BIAS AUTONOMOUSLY

When researching my book on how to close the gap between what’s said and what’s heard, I discovered that our brains only allow us to understand a fraction of what others mean to convey (Note: the fraction depends on familiarity, triggers, history, beliefs, etc.).

Here’s what happens: Sound enters our ears as puffs of air (literally!) that get turned into signals that then seek out similar-enough circuits that will translate the incoming signals as per the content already there (i.e. subjective, biased, restricted to what we already know).

The bad news is that where the incoming signals don’t match the old circuits, our brains discard what doesn’t match – and doesn’t tell us what it has discarded! And we’re left ‘hearing’ what our brains tell us – some fraction of what was said! So the woman in the opening story actually heard me ask her for advice.

I believe our success is regulated by our listening biases and our ability – or not – to recognize when/if our biases are getting in the way (I wrote a chapter in What? that offers a skill set on how to do this). Certainly our creativity and opportunities, our choices of jobs, mates, friends, etc. are restricted. The natural biasing we do is compounded by the tricks our brains play with memory and habit, making the probability of factual interpretation pretty slim.

If we can avoid the trap of assuming what we think has been said is accurate, and assume that some portion of what we think we heard might contain some bias, we could take more responsibility for our conversations.

At the end of each conversation, we’d check in with our Communication Partner and get accuracy agreement.
Whenever we hear something that sounds like an agreement or a plan, we’d stop the conversation to check that what we think we heard is accurate.
At the end of meetings, we’d check in that our takeaway plans and their outcomes are agreeable.
When we hear something ‘different’ we won’t assume the other person wrong, but consider the possibility that we are the ones who heard it wrong.

Knowing the difference between what we think others are saying vs what they actually mean to convey takes on great importance in meetings, coaching calls, negotiations, doctors, and information collection for decision analysts.

Let’s get rid of our egos. Let’s put our need to collaborate, pursue win/win communication, and authentic Servant Leadership into all our communication. Otherwise, we’re merely finding situations that maintain our status quo. And we lose the opportunity to be better, stronger, kinder, and more creative.

________

Sharon Drew Morgen October 25th, 2021

Posted In: Listening, News

What if

you could find real prospects early in their Buying Journey?
you could discover non-buyers immediately while leading real prospects efficiently through their Buy Side steps?
none of this involves sales, product details, need, or pitch?

How can you promote buying without “sales, product details, need, or pitch”? I believe that by relying on these concepts exclusively you close less sales than you deserve given your efforts and the quality of your solution.

I suggest that by adding new thinking and tools that facilitate and enable buying from the Buy Side – wholly different from Sales Enablement that facilitates the Sell Side – you’ll not only find people on route to becoming buyers, but you can help them be ready to close. Let me explain.

SELL SIDE VS BUY SIDE

All current technology in Sales Enablement, marketing, and ABM is biased toward the Sell Side with a focus on finding, enabling, and engaging folks with an assumed need to ultimately make a purchase. But we overlook an audience of potential prospects 50% larger; our current tools overlook the differences in goals, steps, considerations, decisions, and activity that occur as people try to resolve a problem on the Buy Side.

Sure, we track ‘buying’ but, generally, only in terms of product sale – the Sell Side – and overlook the change management activities that people must address before they’re even buyers.

People don’t start off wanting to buy anything, merely resolve their problem at the least ‘cost’ to their system. They begin by figuring out how to congruently manage change.

Indeed, a buying decision is a change management issue well before it’s a solution choice issue. Because sales tools are aimed at how sales and marketing define ‘buying’ and only apply to the Sell Side, folks in the process of possibly becoming buyers but aren’t there yet, won’t heed our messages trying to sell them anything.

Until people understand the entire fact pattern of what and who’s involved and know what any change means to them, they can’t have a full understanding of a need. They certainly don’t read unsolicited marketing material or take appointments, regardless of a need or the efficacy of a solution.

But take heart! By holding off on conventional sales and marketing until these folks are self-identified as buyers, there’s a way to not only find them but facilitate them through the process they must manage, making it easier for them to buy and for us to sell: those who would never buy fall out, those who become buyers will do so faster, and their names can be handed over to Sales Enablement, ABM, or a sales professional as real prospects.

MY JOURNEY AS A BUYER

As a million-dollar producer on Wall Street in the 70s, I thought buyers were incongruent. We called them ‘stupid buyers’ because they didn’t ‘understand’ what we believed they needed.

In 1983 I became a tech entrepreneur in London and recognized the problem I had had as a seller: Before I could buy anything, I had stuff to do internally that had nothing to do with making a purchase. I certainly wouldn’t consider buying anything until I had no other options. To resolve my problems, I had to

understand the full problem set by hearing everyone’s thoughts on how they were affected and what they considered a solution;
try available fixes to resolve the problem internally;
understand the ‘cost’ of doing something different;
get buy-in from those who would connect with the solution;

and, once I understood what the change would entail, determine if the problems were worth fixing. Obviously if a fix caused more problems than leaving things as they were, it wasn’t worth solving. But we couldn’t know that until the end of our considerations. Honestly, I didn’t even understand my real ‘needs’ until I had done all of the above.

There seemed to be unknown implications in doing anything different, necessary to take into account beforehand. I certainly hadn’t realized how much disruption was involved, that making any change (all problem-solving involves change) had to be first considered via thoughtful change management assessments and buy-in, to make sure we ended up ‘butter side up’.

Eventually we fixed some of our problems internally. Indeed, I didn’t start off wanting to buy anything, merely wanting to fix problems as simply and congruently as possible. Buying anything was the very last thing on my mind. Last thing.

CASE STUDY

After leaving my company I became an author of the first NYTimes Business Bestseller on sales (Selling with Integrity) and inventor of Buying Facilitation® that taught sales professionals how to facilitate the Buy Side change management process – the process the sales model ignored because it had little to do with ‘need’ or solution placement.

‘Need’ is a big one in sales; it’s assumed if need can be ascertained, the person should buy. Yet there’s a case to be made that ‘need’ is not necessarily a precursor to buying. Here’s an example of a client with a need who ended up not buying because of what it would ‘cost’ to change.

Years ago I ran a pilot Buying Facilitation® training at Proctor and Gamble, in hopes that if successful I could train the other 15,000 sales folks.

The program was tremendously successful – 15% increase over the control group’s 2% which in this instance potentially increased sales by billions of dollars annually. Good, right? But the ‘costs’ ended up being higher than they wanted to ‘spend’. To implement Buying Facilitation® internationally, they’d need to

bring in new machinery to manufacture products faster,
get more trucks and drivers to transport products to outlets faster,
pay more shipping and air rate costs,
reorganize their management structure,
bring in more assistants, customer service reps, etc.

They calculated it would cost almost $2,000,000,000 (That’s billion.) and take years to recoup, not to mention explain it to their shareholders.

It had never occurred to me to consider what the ‘cost’ of success would be for them. Neither did they. My client said if she’d realized how much more they’d sell and how much faster, she wouldn’t have done the pilot. Confounding.

In this case, they needed the training and loved both me and my ‘solution’ but couldn’t handle the cost of the change. Need, as I learned, had little to do with buying and is actually quite subjective. And outsiders can never factor the private equation.

CHANGE MANAGEMENT BEFORE SELLING

As an entrepreneur I was responsible to staff, solution, and clients. I had to address problem solving as a change management issue and make sure all voices were heard and everyone bought into change.

But as a seller, I never considered the point of view of change. Everything I did, created, or thought was on the Sell Side. I was taught product knowledge, how to listen for a way ‘in’ so I could mention my solution in their context, pose questions that implied a need, start a ‘relationship’ so they’d like me, and assume every ‘need’ or ‘problem’ should be resolved with my solution. As if the Sell Side were the only side.

But how much time I wasted finding and seeking ways to influence folks who weren’t, and might not ever be, buyers! Creating marketing materials to entice would-be buyers who were in process but not ready – certainly not eager to read unsolicited articles on something they didn’t yet know they couldn’t handle themselves.

And how much opportunity I overlooked facilitating would-be buyers to more efficiently figure out what they had to figure out so they would be ready to buy. My ‘Sell Side Only’ practices restricted my audience to those who already considered themselves buyers.

There’s a much larger group of would-be prospects who are not-yet buyers, and won’t be reached with sales assumptions:

those still trying to resolve their problem internally;
those with a problem they don’t want to resolve (now);
those seeking different solutions or from different vendors;
those you’ve mistranslated when they respond to your questions and don’t even have a need.

I now finally understood why buyers seemed so stupid: they weren’t even buyers! All those years assuming my solution, ‘relationship’, and marketing materials would convince, influence, or encourage when I could have been using an additional tool kit to lead them efficiently through their change before trying to sell them anything! We’ve overlooked a potentially lucrative audience.

THE STEPS OF CHANGE

I eventually unpacked each step I took during my decision and buy-in process so I could duplicate the route I took as I became a buyer myself.

Turned out my change management process had 13 steps from which I developed Buying Facilitation® for sales, and trained over 100,000 sales folks globally with an average 40% close rate (against the control group’s 5.4%). But these same steps are markers for marketers as well.

Here are the main elements of the 13 step change management path all people go through before they identify as buyers or even understand their needs:

Recognize a problem
Gather the full complement of stakeholders to understand the full fact pattern that caused and maintains the problem
Figure out how to fix the problem with available resources
Understand the downside, the ‘cost’, of making a change
Get the buy in from the stakeholders to agree to the change
Agree on the criteria that an external solution must meet
Choose a solution that will match their criteria.

If you remember times you bought something, you didn’t begin with the purchase, but could have used help figuring out what you had to figure out – so much of it unknown until the end.

Since the time it takes folks to complete their process is the length of the sales cycle, why not help them? While we wouldn’t be able to sell them anything until the process is complete, we would be selling our services and inspiring trust, and be there as real relationship managers and trusted advisors when they more quickly become buyers. Certainly a competitive advantage.

I suggest it’s time to add technology and new thinking in both sales and marketing to enable the Buy Side to

find and help people going through change in the area the solution can benefit,
efficiently lead them through their steps to problem-solve and make decisions,
gather the right set of stakeholders to involve at each step,
offer the best available knowledge so each step will explore the cost – and resolution – of the change.

By adding a change management component to marketing and ABM (Buying Enablement), it’s possible to

recognize non-buyers immediately, and disengage,
lead would-be buyers through their next steps efficiently,
understand where, exactly, people are along their 13 step change management/Buying Decision Path,
efficiently and very quickly lead those who will be buyers through their core change decisions to the point of being ready to buy,
build trusting relationships through helpful content,
create a competitive advantage as you truly serve,
pass the names of real prospects over to sellers and/or sales enablement to do the sales job.

Selling and Buying are two different activities. Let’s develop two different outreach and facilitation processes that work together to efficiently find, engage, and enable real buyers.

BUYING ENABLEMENT AND SALES

In addition to my Buying Facilitation® model that teaches the process of change facilitation to sales folks, I have developed Buying Enablement for marketing to lead folks efficiently through their steps and then hand over names of in-target buyers to Sales Enablement and ABM for the Sell Side.

In other words, help those on route to buying do what they need to do anyway and stop wasting resource following and pushing content to folks you think SHOULD buy but aren’t yet ready. Then hand over real names to SE and sales.

Buying Enablement enters through marketing to facilitate each change management step on the Buy Side, helps would-be buyers become buyers efficiently, then hands off names of real prospects to sales. Of course search analytics can be used, but they will include new terms and timing. The process addresses these points:

Finding people getting ready to, or in the process of, working internally to resolve a problem that your solution could resolve;
Noting specific markers to send specific content;
Helping uncover elements that caused and maintains the problem;
Facilitating the recognition, incorporation, and buy-in of all stakeholders;
Diagnosing and resolving the actual ‘cost’ of change to the system;
Finding a workaround or simple fix where possible;
Determining sales add-ons – sales enablement, Buyer Personas – to move the activity over to sales.

Buying Enablement makes the Buy Side more efficient. Here’s what I offer:

Buy Side training: For both sales, marketing, and customer service professionals to understand the profound differences between the Buy Side and the Sell Side so all can work in tandem going forward.
Data gathering/report: To understand specifically how your specific buyers buy, I’ll speak with several current buyers to discover

a.   the timing, activity, search, people, and constraints during each stage of problem solving and change management;
b.   what they do and when to understand the full problem set. Includes people, relationship, history, and policy issues and snags encountered;
c.   patterns of (external) factors that bias problem maintenance and resolution, and cause resistance;
d.   the possible workarounds and range of solutions they’re considering to resolve the problem and how they fare;
e.   understand their risks in bringing in something new and how that affects people, policies and solution choices;
f.     the times they go online to research each stage and the search terms they use at each stage and why.

I recommend my book Dirty Little Secrets: why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell to better understand each step on the Buy Side.

Marketing tools, article ideas, and Buyer Personas for each stage. I will suggest best practices and offer article titles along each step, to get folks the knowledge to do what they need to do. Ardath Albee will design Buyer Personas that lead people through each change management stage. With this full tool kit you’ll know

a.   where prospects are in the buy-cycle,
b.   the job titles of those involved,
c.   have a line between marketing -> content -> sales,
d.   offer titles so marketing can personalize the best content for each stage,
e.   be relevant to the specific needs of your audience.

Digital App: My ‘The Decider’ app can be populated with the knowledge learned from the Report to

a.   efficiently lead folks through their decision phases if they need help;
b.   digitally lead site visitors to the pages with data they need from your site and/or your company,
c.   use with sellers in Deal Rooms,
d.   discover which stage of a change decision they’re at to make sure the best content is sent out to them at the right time.

Footers: Since they’re not yet buyers, we must be careful how solution details are offered. Ardath Albee can tie the right words, tone, style, and voice to ensure buyers are engaged personally.
Connect with Sales Enablement: This process will produce probable buyers to hand over to sales and Sales Enablement and continue outreach throughout the length of the customer life cycle.

With our close ratios dropping, and more money being spent to engage it’s time to begin adding Buying Enablement to marketing and Buying Facilitation® to sales. Is it solution related? Nope. But people must do all these things before they’re buyers anyway. We might as well help them.

_____________________________

Sharon Drew Morgen October 18th, 2021

Posted In: News

Until relatively recently, the United States Post Office (USPO) was a universal communication hub. It delivered birthday greetings and Dear John letters (For you youngsters, those were break-up notes – like you use text these days, only nicer.). It transported legal letters, work agendas, and Christmas gifts. It was how we moved information and communication between people and places.

Now we use the internet and social media for most of our communication. And the USPO? It became a relic of a time never to return, used now to send commercial ads and fliers, inundating us, invading us, with the originator’s needs to push data, separate from our need to utilize it. Superfluous to our lives, we discard these, even if the products they’re introducing are respectable.

SALES NO LONGER NEEDED FOR BUYERS TO BUY

The sales model is drifting down the same route. Until relatively recently, sales was universally accepted as a support and service model, representing expertise and products buyers needed. Sellers used their skill and product knowledge to help resolve problems; prospects actually sought meetings to get help figuring out how to improve their environments. And certainly, sellers knew their competition well and positioned themselves accordingly.

Those standards no longer apply.

People can now choose our solutions without any involvement from us: much of the information buyers need is immediately accessible online – our websites, content marketing, and outreach efforts thoroughly explain our offerings, making a seller’s product knowledge expendable.
Outside agencies – Google, social media – rate us independently, without our input, enabling customers to share their experiences of our products, accuracy aside.
Our global competitors are at our door, at the touch of a button and shipped in days, often with lower prices.
Buying decisions get made amongst large groups of stakeholders, some residing in other countries, often with no direct involvement with day to day operations and certainly well outside our scrutiny or touch points.

The sales model as we’ve known it has gone the way of the USPO – largely irrelevant; buyers now have a more extensive buying decision path that defies our standard practices, guaranteeing much is out of a seller’s control.

And yet we continue using the same prism to sell through, the same techniques we used in earlier times, even though our closing rates, now less than 5% for face-to-face and 0.0059% of tech-based sales, consistently decline. Our decades-long focus of placing solutions merely finds the low hanging fruit.

Here are some sales techniques we use that are problematic to the buying experience:

Pushing, offering, promoting content is secondary until all the right people are on board there’s agreement they can’t resolve the issue internally, and any change issues/downsides that a new incoming solution will cause are addressed. Constant receipt of our marketing outreach becomes annoying and we’re blocked and ignored, regardless of the efficacy of our solutions.
Gathering information is useless if offered before all stakeholder agreement. Our questions, biased by our need to match what we guess might be their requirements to our solutions, have little relevance to the complexities of their problem (that we cannot fully understand, as outsiders) and the intricacies of what a chosen solution must include. People buy only what is agreeable to the full set stakeholders (who we can never know, as outsiders); resolving their problem is secondary to staying stable or they would have resolved it already. Net net, they won’t have accurate answers to our questions.
Our research into demographics and need doesn’t necessarily find buyers. Sure, we can uncover ‘target markets’ that would have a propensity to be buyers. But they’re not opening our correspondence and not open to connecting until they are ready, willing, able to become a buyer – someone who has addressed all complexities of bringing in a new solution and has gotten agreement from all internal stakeholders. Continuing to base our research and dissemination on our product assures we only close the low hanging fruit. Because a buying decision is a change management issue before it’s a solution choice issue, we can add the ability to facilitate buying to our goals and reach/convert a larger number of prospects.
Our ‘conversion’ rates are based on a small percent of the total population of would-be buyers, yet we use these to try to convince ourselves that our efforts, our resources, our cost expenditures are relevant. We are not converting potential buyers who haven’t yet become buyers but who will buy once they manage their change. But they are easy to recognize and convert if we shift our prism. Indeed, I’m always curious what those ‘conversion’ numbers represent. Who we seek to ‘convert’ is merely a percentage of those who will/can eventually buy (I hate to keep saying this, but the low hanging fruit.) We miss over 80% of those who will eventually buy: they don’t heed our messages. When you see conversion percentages, ask how much of the potential buying population is being represented. Current conversion numbers are specious.
The focus on ‘understanding needs’ is necessary only once buyers understand their own needs – at the end of their change processes: finding a route through to stability among the stakeholders and company/personal norms (Is the disruption from bringing in a new solution worse than living with the problem?) is paramount to buying anything. Until that’s resolved, they will not buy due to potential disruption. If you woke up tomorrow and decided you wanted to move, the first thing you’d do would NOT be to buy a house. You’d discuss with your family, looking at all sides from each perspective, organizing the full set of criteria that would keep the family stable first. A seller’s historic ‘need to understand’ (especially when using questions biased by our need to place a solution) is moot: until all stakeholders are on board with the specifics of how adding something new will affect them, there is no defined ‘need’, a seller’s biased questions aside.
Our push to make an appointment is stupid: who is the person we seek to meet with? Why are they taking the time to meet with us? Does this person represent ALL stakeholders or just the few trying to push internal change? How does the person we meet with present our data to others? And at what point in the buying decision process? We’re so busy following the norms of selling that we haven’t stopped to think this through. We get rejected for an appointment not because of our solutions, but because they haven’t yet gotten the full Buying Decision Team onboard, because they’re still trying to fix the problem themselves, because they haven’t determined if it’s worth an external fix due to the disruption that might result. Looking through our biased prism of placing a solution, sellers aren’t looking at the entire picture that people must address en route to resolving a problem.
We have a faulty assumption that our solution, data, convincing strategies, etc. will capture a buyer. What is it about the horrific close rates that isn’t registering? Why do we continue to believe if we just have better, faster, improved, advanced content dissemination that we will sell more when it’s a fact that we’re closing less? Why do we continue to assume that with great data, the ‘perfect’ solution, people will buy because WE think it will match what WE consider to be their need? And why is a 5% close rate (i.e. a 95% fail rate) acceptable? Isn’t it obvious there is a problem?

Everything about the selling effort is skewered to finding ways to place our solutions. But we miss the bigger opportunity: we can use our time, our skill, to facilitate Buyer Readiness. That means, leading people through the confusing stages they must – must – manage before they are buyers, before they have needs, before they know if, when, what they’ll buy. We wait on the sidelines while they go through this process; the sales model is not set up to influence this.

I have watched, over the past 35 years, as sales has drifted closer to my beliefs as it attempts to take into account the buying decision and the buyer. But because sales continue to consider buyers ONLY in relation to placing solutions, sales only reaches the low hanging fruit: people in the process of considering how to manage disruption will not have interest (yet) in our content. We haven’t accounted for the entire fact pattern of what goes into a buying decision (i.e. need, problem resolution, and product choice are the final considerations) and overlook the largest portion of buyers: those who will buy but aren’t ready yet.

People really don’t want to buy anything, they merely want to resolve a problem. And the problem is so much bigger than purchasing something. It involves

getting all – all – the stakeholders and influencers identified and on board (often not obvious);
trying to find a fix for the problem that’s familiar, and minimally disruptive;
stakeholder agreement that the cost of a fix is smaller than the cost of maintaining problems (not always obvious) and that they need to go outside for a solution;
recognizing/managing the challenges of melding something new as it replaces the old (not always obvious).

People issues. User issues. Tech issues. Human issues. Culture issues. All unique. As outsiders we can never understand the totality of what’s going on. And yet until all internal factors are managed to assure the least disruption, they are not even buyers.

It’s only when they are out of options AND get buy in AND manage potential fallout, do they become buyers. Making our solutions the focus relegates us to being noticed by those at the end of their change process – order takers – and robs us of our ability to enter at a stage that helps them become buyers.

Indeed, buying is the last thing people and groups do, and only then when there is agreement that an outside fix is their only option and have figured out how to manage fallout from bringing in something new in a way that avoids disruption.

You can’t buy a house without family agreement, regardless of how wonderful the house or how big the need. You can’t bring in a new CRM system unless the users are on board and are willing to use it, unless the tech folks know how to incorporate it into what they’re already using, until they’ve tried to fix what they’ve got, until a user training is developed and scheduled. It’s not about the house. It’s not about the CRM system. It’s about the change process.

So long as we focus on solution placement, we will only find those who have figured it all out. We could be helping them by shifting our focus to first connect via managing their change. Instead, buyers do all this change stuff without us as we wait and call and hope and call and send and hope and wait.

The sales industry has finally figured out that success has at least as much to do with ‘buying’ as it does selling. But it continues to use the prism of placing solutions even here: it has not gone so far as using new skill sets that help buyers manage the change.

SALES HAS A VERY LIMITED SCOPE

For goodness sakes, it’s time to stop focusing first on placing solutions. Why not help those who WILL buy be ready! And believe it or not, once we take off our ‘selling’ blinders and use a prism of facilitating the steps to change, it’s quite easy to use a different skill set to recognize people who WILL buy on the first call.

For this we enter with a different type of question (Facilitative Question) and a different goal: to recognize those who seek change in the area we can support them in, and facilitate them through their Pre-Sales change management activities they must complete before they become buyers.

Buying is a change management issue before it’s a solution choice issue – a process, part of systemic change, not an event. People become buyers only at Step 10 of a 13 step decision process that addresses the elements of recognizing and managing change. Until this is complete, buyers can’t buy and we are wasting a valuable opportunity to facilitate them, of entering earlier where we are now ignored. Let’s recognize that due to the complexity of change, selling doesn’t cause buying:

Our information, website, marketing materials – information – is terrific. Our brand is well positioned, and quality. But from online sales we’re closing 0.0059%. We don’t know why site visitors come to our site. Our wonderful, expensive, information-rich, and creative site is not encouraging anyone but the low hanging fruit to buy.
Our sales folks are well trained in content, relationship management, closing and pitching techniques. But they’re closing less than 5%. Why is this waste of expensive resource ok?
Our marketing folks know how to target the ‘right’ audience, but less than one half of 1% even open our emails.
The only folks who heed our great content are folks at the point of buying and we’re competing with global competitors for the same low hanging fruit.

We have chosen to sit back and wait while they go through their non-solution/buying-related steps. But we can enable Buyer Readiness. The sales model as we’ve known it is insufficient as a stand-alone model. It’s a Tier 2 model. Think about this:

1. People don’t want to buy anything– they merely want to resolve a problem and the last thing they do is bring in something new. People live in environments – systems, if you will – and try to resolve their own problems. It is ONLY when they cannot, AND they have the buy-in from the full set of stakeholders AND can manage any change that a new solution would incur, that they are willing to make a purchase.

When sellers push solution information before people recognize the complexities of the environment they’re seeking to change – they waste an opportunity to facilitate change (which has nothing to do with buying anything). Again, think of that junk you now get in your mailbox.

Buyers don’t even notice our content it until they seek out a solution that will match the intricacies of their buying decision and environment – at the point they are ready to change/buy. It will NOT convince them to buy something they haven’t yet determined they cannot fix themselves. The last thing they do is seek information. In other words, it will be ignored by those you wish to reach, no matter how accurate your demographic data. It’s about the buying, not the selling.

2. Until or unless everyone who touches a new solution is on board with whatever change will occur with a new solution, there will be no purchase. Talking to that one person who claims she has a need does NOT give us the necessary information to know what’s going on. We cannot ever know the internal dynamics. Ever.

3. There is a very specific process that everyone (buyers) goes through before they do anything different (change, decide, buy). It involves the 13 steps to all change, a purchase is a change management decision. The sales model only enters at step 10 when it’s agreed by all that the status quo cannot resolve the problem and everyone is ready to change. Hence, we do nothing more than find the low hanging fruit – and then we all fight over the 5%.

The time it takes for everyone who will touch the new solution and processes that come from it is the length of the sales cycle. Buying Facilitation® starts at the beginning and leads folks through each step, with sales taking over once they’re ready – and already buyers.

4. People become buyers only if they have a route to manage change. The sales model overlooks the change management piece of the equation, although sellers blame buyers for being ‘stupid’ or ‘not understanding they have a need.’ It’s not about the solution or the information or the buying. It’s about change. So long as sellers focus their interactions on placing solutions, they will merely take orders when people are ready to call in and buy.

The folks who use my Buying Facilitation® model enter all new conversations seeking who is ready, willing, and able to change. The prism is CHANGE, not NEED. Until all the elements of change are managed, people don’t even know what their need entails.

5. Until everyone buys in to change, the environment will prefer the status quo; whatever is happening now is baked in to the norm. Need has nothing to do with who buys. The prime focus is to maintain the environment. Until they know how to do that, they won’t buy, regardless of need or solution relevance.

6. We assume that people will understand they need us if we ask the right questions and create the right content, and that folks will wake up and notice of their need as soon as they read it!

We restrict our potential buyers to those who seek that specific information, overlooking their need to integrate information with unique circumstances, their status quo and rules, making much information provided conjecture. Not to mention we could easily reposition the way we discuss the content to meet real needs.

The sales model was designed to place solutions. That’s it. By entering early with a different mindset and skills, we can be closing 40% more sales.

A WHOLLY DIFFERENT SKILL SET

I have written extensively, and trained large numbers of global sellers, around this issue. In Dirty Little Secrets: why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell I introduce a buying-based model (Buying Facilitation®) that explains the 13 steps all people and groups take (even for small individual purchases) on route to becoming buyers. Since the first 9 of them have nothing to do with buying anything but with managing change, it involves a different set of skills – facilitating the right people through their change to buy sooner.

No longer do we begin trying to ‘understand’ buyers, or make appointments, push our solutions, we first find folks who will become buyers and lead them efficiently through their change, and then – only then – offer solution details.

We can’t know anything about the person we’re speaking to, and if they haven’t yet gone through their entire change management process they certainly can’t answer questions about ‘need’.

By knowing each step of change, we can hear where they are along their decision path. Have they collected the full set of stakeholders or are they just beginning? Do they recognize the downside to their environment of a purchase? Are they still trying to fix the problem themselves? Change is complex. People don’t even understand themselves. Here is where we can help. We can facilitate people through the steps of change and convert more people into buyers now.

To shift the focus from selling to facilitating change and the buying decision process, Buying Facilitation® employs different skills:

since our normal questions are biased by our needs, I developed Facilitative Questions to help Others figure out their own change process;
Presumptive Summaries that help them recognize what they’re missing in their thinking;
Listening for Systems as a way to truly hear what’s being said outside of our own biases;
and the 13 steps of change, to lead them through each of the steps they must, must address en route to change.

The entire process is laid out in Dirty Little Secrets.

It’s not a sales process, but works as the front end of selling to help people recognize the elements in their own process that precedes seeking an external solution and teaches them how to become buyers. Because we seek out folks who CAN change rather than seek those who SHOULD buy, we enter their buying decision path and lead them through each step of change – helping them help themselves.

It’s a Servant Leader model that facilitates change, not a sales model that influences solution placement. It’s a very different mindset. I often ask: Do you want to sell? Or have someone buy? They’re two different activities. And sales ignores one of them.

THE COST OF NO CHANGE

The sales industry is like one of those buyers we disparage for not understanding they need us. Since 1987 when I ran my first Buying Facilitation® program at KLM (titled Helping Buyers Buy), I’ve trained about 100,000 sales folks, beginning with pilot programs that always ran alongside a control group selling the same product. Here’s a calculation of the typical results, regardless of industry or price:

The groups I trained generally close between 6x-8x more than the control group.
Buying Facilitators have a very good idea on the first call who will be a buyer, regardless of complexity of sale, eradicating the need to chase folks who will never buy and concentrate their time on facilitating the buying decisions of those who will.
Marketing materials are created in stages of information that match the needs of each stage of change necessary prior to people becoming buyers.
Buying Facilitators don’t try to make appointments and yet quickly are invited to meet with the full stakeholder/buying decision team.
Prospects begin trusting sellers early due to their ability to help gather all stakeholders and figure out how to resolve the problem internally first.
Buying Facilitators don’t discuss their solutions, ask needs based questions, until people have recognized themselves as buyers, usually in 1/8 the time of normal sales.

Kaiser Permanente: went from 110 visits and 18 closed sales to 27 visits, 25 closed sales.

KPMG: selling a $50,000,000 solution, went from a 3 year sales cycle to a 4 month sales cycle.

Boston Scientific: had a 53% increase in close rates and a one call close rather than months of follow up.

IBM: I personally sold $6,400,000 worth of business as I spoke directly with existing clients during the coaching portion of my onsite Buying Facilitation® training.

Sales professionals have told me my results aren’t possible. And I agree: using the sales model, the beliefs and skills of selling, it’s not possible.

SALES CAN MAKE A BIG CONTRIBUTION – BUT NOT THE WAY IT’S BEING USED NOW

With the skills they possess, sellers and marketers can have a vital role in facilitating people through their steps of change to becoming buyers. First they must understand the differences between selling and buying. Here’s what buying entails:

A buyer is someone (or group) who has tried to resolve a problem using their own known resources (People never, ever, start out to buy something first!), has gotten buy in from everyone who will touch the solution, and knows and manages any fallout that the new will cause. A buying decision is a change management problem first, a solution choice issue second.

Instead of assuming a buying decision is a solution choice issue and continuing as it has for millennia to push content, instead of assuming our job is still persuade folks to take action on our content, or place solutions (It’s not. It’s to facilitate buying.), sellers can facilitate the folks who CAN/WILL buy through the steps of change they must manage – and that we sit and wait for them to accomplish. I have written extensively on this. Here are some articles to peruse.

Do you want to sell? Or have someone buy?

What is Buying Facilitation® and what sales problem does it solve?

The Real Buyer’s Journey

Recognize Buyers on the First Call

Influencing Congruent Change

Plus, get ahold of my book Dirty Little Secrets: why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell. It introduces each step of the buying decision process, along with how my Facilitative Questions lead prospective buyers, step by step, through to being actual buyers. It’s time to add the ability to facilitate the full buying decision journey into our sales efforts.

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Sharon-Drew Morgen is a breakthrough innovator and original thinker, having developed new paradigms in sales (inventor Buying Facilitation®, listening/communication (What? Did you really say what I think I heard?), change management (The How of Change™), coaching, and leadership. She is the author of several books, including the NYTimes Business Bestseller Selling with Integrity and Dirty Little Secrets: why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell). Sharon-Drew coaches and consults with companies seeking out of the box remedies for congruent, servant-leader-based change in leadership, healthcare, and sales. Her award-winning blog carries original articles with new thinking, weekly. www.sharondrewmorgen.com She can be reached at sharondrew@sharondrewmorgen.com

Sharon Drew Morgen August 9th, 2021

Posted In: News

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