Sales – What? Did You Really Say What I Think I Heard?

In 1979, with a toddler to feed on a social worker’s salary of $19,500 annually, I decided to ‘go into business’ (whatever that meant) to earn more money. I went to Goodwill, bought a ‘business’ dress for $12.00 and took myself to Wall Street, thinking that was where I would find ‘business’.

Not knowing the protocol I walked into Merrill Lynch, White Weld International on 1 Wall Street. ‘Who’s in charge of hiring people?’ I naively asked a receptionist. ‘You need the CEO. Go up to the 50^th floor,’ she said and pointed to a tiny (four person) elevator.

On the 50^th floor I was greeted by a secretary who asked who I was there to see. ‘The CEO’. She smiled, then walked me into his office. The CEO of Merrill Lynch got up from his enormous desk in a windows-filled, corner office overlooking Battery Park and walked over to greet me. ‘How can I help?’ he asked this brazen young woman who’d just pranced in unannounced in a cheap dress. ‘I want you to hire me.’ He laughed.

CEO: What can I hire you as?

SD: A trainer.

CEO: Let’s make you a stockbroker.

SD: But I know nothing about stocks or bonds. (How I thought I was going to train anything is a mystery!)

CEO: If you could do what you just did, I’ll not only hire you, I’ll train you myself.

And he did.

It was a bear market. The Dow was 777 (Really!) and the brokers were suffering. But once I got trained, I was closing new clients daily. I would cold call people by saying: “Hi. My name is Sharon-Drew Morgen. I’m a broker at Merrill Lynch. This is a cold call. I want to be your broker, and I will most likely lose your money, but I’ll sure try not to.” ‘Oh!’ said the prospects. ‘An honest broker! Everyone else is losing me money and lying to me about it!’ I closed almost every prospect I called and became the rookie of the year.

Looking back, I unwittingly used unconventional standards to get my first job in business. I didn’t know any better: I have Asperger’s Syndrome, on the Autism Spectrum. As a social worker before that, I had no way of knowing I wasn’t supposed to walk into someone’s office (especially the CEO of Merrill Lynch!) and tell them to hire me; I didn’t know I wasn’t supposed to tell people I would lose their money. As an Aspie I’m honest and direct. And very authentic. I was just telling people the truth. I ended up making a ton of money as a result. And yes, I lost everyone’s money.

No one knew what a neurodiverse person was in those days, nor did they care. My invisible ‘disability’ gave me the precise skills I needed to be a successful sales professional: relentlessness, hyperfocus, trustworthiness and authenticity, attention to detail, creativity, loyalty, and honesty. My most relevant skill for the job was my comfort with being rejected. With Asperger’s, I was accustomed to navigating adversity. Being neurodivergent made me successful.

NEURODIVERSITY IN SALES

Twenty percent of the workforce, and 50% of sales professionals are neurodivergent. In other words, of the 40,000,000 sales professionals worldwide, 20,000,000 are neurodivergent. And 75% of these people are undisclosed due to their fear of facing discrimination.

For some reason, while hiring folks of different races and gender orientations are standard, many companies avoid hiring neurodivergent (ND) people. But why? Sure, we’re different. Aren’t we all? What is it about neurodivergence that causes neurotypicals (NTs) to avoid us?

Thankfully, undisclosed ND people who can cope with standard hiring practices are being hired. But certainly, we’re not being interviewed in a way that makes getting a job easier and, once hired, we receive no services that help us flourish.

As a result, we face discrimination, get relegated to jobs well below our intelligence, and get shunned by colleagues and at meetings. I personally found myself in trouble often for doing things I didn’t know I shouldn’t do. Having a mentor or manager who could help me navigate NT standards would have made my job so much easier and helped me be even more successful. Instead of the stress of fitting in falling on my shoulders, I could have had an easier path to acceptance and acculturation.

CULTURE OF INCLUSION

Creating a culture in which ND employees not only fit in but are active, accepted members of the community, takes work. It’s not merely doing a few things differently but having a commitment to an inclusive workplace where everyone thrives, welcomes diversity, and collaborates. It means a culture change.

Company culture

Having a culture of inclusivity makes it easier to hire and retain ND sales folks. When you advertise your company as a culture of inclusion, the people who get hired are expected to respect and include everyone, regardless of race, gender, or neurodiversity. This gives ND folks the green light to apply for a job.

Since the focus of this article is on hiring and retention practices (below), I’ll just mention a few areas to address to make sure you’ve got an inclusive culture;

Publish corporate guidelines on inclusion in all written communiques so both the public and current employees are aware.
Rethink hiring practices to provide interviewing choices that help NDs interview comfortably.
Discover the barriers to inclusion within the company and begin the process of unblocking them.
Provide management training to give managers specific skills for communicating with, and helping NDs fit in.

Once the company culture is set up for inclusion, you’ll need to know the specifics for hiring and retaining ND employees.

Hiring practices

Neurodivergent salespeople are wonderful, loyal, successful employees who can give you a competitive advantage, but require different competencies to hire: We don’t make small talk and prefer plain-spoken questions; may not make direct eye contact; and may not answer typical interviewing questions in ways the interviewer is familiar with. Obviously not great for door-to-door sales but terrific for technical sales, e-commerce sales, cold calls, and business development research. We also make great account managers: our long term clients love us because of our truth telling, attention to detail, and loyalty.

Our different competences require a different interview process than hiring NT employees and may be best served with either email or zoom interviews. With a job spec that includes a sentence like Those applicants who need specific hiring accommodations, please tell us what you need, the applicant will provide the interviewer the specifics of an interview format to get the best interview possible. Remember: we’re different; standard norms will need to shift.

Retaining neurodiverse salespeople

Here are some ideas for managing and retaining neurodiverse sellers:

For ND sellers working in a corporate building (and many work best from a home office) offer them a workspace situated away from lights or noise. Having a ‘quiet room’ on the premises helps.
Make sure necessary information is in visual and written formats.
Make sure we know how and when to use the appropriate technology. A ND techie (50% of tech folks are neurodivergent.) makes a great mentor!
Managers must have appropriate communication skills as communication is quite different with ND folks. We may understand differently but are delighted to be told we’re doing something wrong and shown the right way. And note: consider bringing in an outside company to help here, like Ochtivate.
Send out general questionnaires (no names required) that seek data from all sales folks with a specific note for undisclosed NDs to make requests, complain, etc. There’s no other way to get to the undisclosed ND population to provide any help they might need.

These are a few of the things that will help retain the ND sales professional; there are many books on the market that go into detail.

As I end this article, I’ll share something I do that works well most of the time to inoculate me from my communication partner’s assumptions of how I communicate. Indeed, I have found grace and kindness when I tell prospects/clients:

“I have Asperger’s. That means I’m a bit loquacious, obnoxious, and annoying. But I’m also committed to using my knowledge, creativity, commitment, and integrity to serve you. So if you can put up with the annoying stuff, I am here for you.”

This has gotten me more business than any pitch or price reduction could have. And it’s absolutely honest.

Net net: the neurodiverse sales professional is eager to work hard, and can be your most loyal, successful seller. But make sure they have the right tools, in an accepting environment, with appropriate managers and mentors. We’re just different. But aren’t we all?

If you’d like some coaching to set up a culture of inclusion, or facilitate hiring and success practices for neurodiverse sales professionals, call me and we can discuss. sharondrew@sharondrewmorgen.com

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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 her new book HOW? Generating new neural circuits for learning, behavior change and decision making, 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 September 22nd, 2025

Posted In: Sales

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I’ve trained about 100,000 sales professionals globally. Before we begin, I ask them what training they receive as their sales job begins. They all say ‘Product knowledge.’ When I ask them if they know how their buyers are buying, they don’t even understand the question.

In my 40 years of teaching Buying Facilitation®, I’ve never met a sales person who knows their buyer’s buying decision process. And yet this is where, how, and why buyers eventually buy. By ignoring this, sellers reduce their close rate dramatically.

SALES STARTS TOO SOON

Sales and marketing direct their efforts on placing solutions, offering prospects great content, engaging graphics, and loyal customer reviews. And it works – 5% of the time.

What’s going on the other 95%? Well, those folks don’t need your solution details. Not at first anyway.

Before people self-identify as buyers, they have work to do: they try workarounds, manage their risk of change and get buy-in to do anything differently. Until then they have no interest in the information you offer.

In other words, your pitches, illustrations, and reviews will only be beneficial for people at the very end of their buying decision path. And that’s where you’re starting!

WHEN DO PEOPLE BUY?

People only buy when:

There are no available workarounds;
The risk of change is less than their risk of staying the same;
The folks who will use the new solution agree to the change and have comfort learning how to use the new solution.

Buying is a change management problem before it’s a solution choice issue. Until people understand their risk of change, and until users buy-in to doing anything different, they will not buy regardless of what you’re selling or what they need.

Before people are ready to buy they must have these questions answered: How can they resolve their problem with the least disruption? Can a new solution fit with existing software and minimal training? How can the group generate buy-in so there’s no resistance? Who will supervise the implementation of the new solution over time?

In other words, until they have all their ducks in a row, people cannot self-identify as buyers and will ignore and rebuff your efforts.

I’m sure you know this. Hundreds of articles have been written on the 70% that goes on behind the scenes. So why aren’t you addressing this portion of the buying decision journey?

Even people who theoretically are great prospects can’t consider buying if the risk to their system, their culture, is too high, or if users won’t use it. They certainly cannot define their need until they do so.

I would think the low close rate would tell you there’s a problem with what you’re doing. My goodness, you wouldn’t even go to a hairdresser with a 5% success rate. You certainly wouldn’t get on a plane. Yet you continue to assume your solution will rule the day and base your entire approach on placing your solution. Facts tell you otherwise, and yet you ignore them.

Your solution is the last thing people need. Why not first help them with the backend work they must do anyway? Why not add some new tools and begin with a Change Management, or a Risk Management focus and help them first – and then they’ll already be working with you when they’re ready to buy? To do this, you’ll need to stop selling until they’re ready.

SELLING DOESN’T CAUSE BUYING

The question becomes: would you rather sell or have someone buy? You know the answer – but you’re acting as if the only process you need is selling….which ignores all but 5% of those those folks who will buy but aren’t ready. BTW these folks can easily be made ready! You can help them, decrease your sales cycle by one half, and close 40% from first call. But it requires a wholly different toolkit.

Sales is a Stage 2 model. First, Stage 1: facilitate buying (check out my Buying Facilitation® model). Then Stage 2: sell. To facilitate buying, you must:

change your outreach to seek folks in the process of solving a problem your solution can fix. You’ll need to ask different questions to find folks on their problem-solving journey; listen differently to hear where they are in their journey, then help them through their change process. With a ‘need’ focus you’re merely posing biased questions and listening for an opening to pitch into. How many thousands of names have you thrown away – real prospects! – because they were still in their problem-solving phase and not yet ready?

o Rule: until people have gone through their entire risk- and change management process, they don’t even have a complete understanding of their need!

o Rule: don’t begin by seeking folks with need. Begin by seeking people on route to fixing a problem your solution can resolve and help them manage their change.

put your solution knowledge on the back burner until you’ve helped people figure out their risk and change issues.

o Rule: you need a wholly different skill set to facilitate buying. Currently you’re only listening and posing questions so you can hear an opening to pitch into.

seek people who WILL become prospects/buyers once they’ve got all their ducks in a row. Now you’re merely guessing who is a prospect (i.e. the 5% close rate should make that obvious).

o Rule: People cannot buy until they’ve figured out how to solve a problem with minimal disruption. Help them do this first.

facilitate prospective buyers through their change/risk management before trying to sell. They’re doing it without you as you wait.

o Rule: People are now abusing your time to pull knowledge they can use to solve their own problem without you. Provide product information AFTER they’ve clearly defined their need.

There are 13 steps to any change process. Sales enters at the last 3 steps and seeks that small percentage of people who have completed their change process. This ignores the bulk of the buying decision journey – real prospects who you could quickly facilitate through their decisions to a close – to find those at the end.

Why not put on a Buying Facilitation® hat first, seek folks during their change and risk management processes; facilitate them through their change decisions, buy-in, and risk management; and then you’ll find real prospects on the first call and stop wasting time trying to convince people who just aren’t ready yet.

For those sellers interested in closing more and willing to learn new skills, I’d love to teach you Buying Facilitation®. Contact me: sharondrew@sharondrewmorgen.com.

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Sharon Drew Morgen September 1st, 2025

Posted In: Sales

With untold millions of sales professionals in the world, sellers play a role in any economy. As the intermediary between clients and providers, sales can be a spiritual practice, with sellers becoming true facilitators and Servant Leaders (and close more sales).

The current sales model, directed at placing solutions and seeking folks with ‘need’, closes 5% – only those ready to buy at point of contact. Sadly, this ignores the possibility of facilitating and serving the 80% of folks on route to becoming buyers and not yet ready.

Until people have tried, and failed, to fix their problem themselves, understood and managed the risk and disruption that a new solution might cause their environment, they aren’t buyers. It’s only when they:

know how to manage the risk of bringing in something new,
can’t fix the problem themselves,
get buy-in from whomever will touch the final solution,
understand that the cost of bringing in something new is lower than the cost of maintaining the status quo,

will they self-identify as buyers and be ready to buy.

Indeed: buying is a risk/change management problem before it’s a solution choice issue, regardless of the need or the efficacy of the solution. All potential buyers must go through this process anyway – and the sales model doesn’t help.

WHY PEOPLE BUY

People don’t start off wanting to buy anything; they merely seek to resolve a problem at the least ‘cost’ (risk) to their system. Even if folks eventually need a seller’s solution, until they understand how to manage the change a new solution would generate, they won’t heed our outreach, regardless of their need or the efficacy of the solution. As a result, sellers with worthwhile solutions end up wasting a helluva lot of time being ignored and rejected.

Selling doesn’t cause buying. Sales focuses on only the final steps of a buying decision and overlooks the high percentage of would-be prospects who WILL become buyers once they’ve addressed their possible risk issues. After all, until they’ve recognized that the risk of the new is less than the risk of staying the same they won’t do anything different.

It’s not the solution being sold that’s the problem, it’s the process of pushing solutions before first helping those who will become buyers facilitate their necessary change process. Instead of a transactional process, sales can be an expansive, collaborative experience between seller and buyer.

Sample

As a result, sellers end up seeking and closing only those ready to buy at the point of contact – unwittingly ignoring others who aren’t ready yet, may need our solutions, and just need to get their ducks in a row before they’re prepared to make a decision.

Imagine having a product-needs discussion about moving an iceberg and discussing only the tip. That’s sales; it doesn’t facilitate the entire range of hidden, unique change issues buyers must consider – having nothing to do with solutions – before they could buy anything. Failure is built in.

But when sellers redirect their focus from seeking folks with ‘need’ to those considering change and lead them through their change management process before selling, they can facilitate them through the issues they must resolve (politics, relationships, resource, budget, time), help them assemble the right stakeholders from the start, and help them figure out how to address the disruption of bringing in a new solution. Then sellers become true servant leaders, inspire trust, and close more sales.

WHY SALES FAILS

Seller’s restricted focus on placing solutions, and listening for needs (which cannot be fully known until the change management process is complete) all but insures a one-sided communication based on the needs of the seller:

Prospecting/cold calling – sellers pose biased questions as an excuse to offer solution details omitting those who will buy – real buyers! – once they’re ready. Wholly seller-centric.
Content marketing – driven by the seller to push the ‘right’ data but really only a push into the unknown and a hope for action. Wholly seller-centric.
Deals, cold-call pushes, negotiation, objection-handling, closing techniques, getting to ‘the’ decision maker, price-reductions – all assuming buyers would buy if they understood their need/the solution/their problem, all overlooking the real connection and service capability of addressing the person’s most pressing change issues. Wholly seller-centric.

To become a spiritual practice, sellers must use their expertise to become true facilitators that become necessary components in all buying decisions. Indeed, the job of ‘sales’ as merely a solution-placement vehicle is short-sighted.

Buyers can find products online. They don’t need sellers to understand the features and benefits.
Choosing a solution isn’t the problem. It’s the time it takes to manage the risk. – it’s the buyer’s behind-the-scenes timing, buy-in from those who will touch the solution, and change management process that gums up the works.
The lion’s share of the buying decision (9 out of a 13 step decision path) involves buyers traversing internal change with no thoughts of buying. They don’t even self-identify as buyers until they understand their risk of change.

Since the 1980s, I’ve been an author, seller, trainer, consultant, and sales coach of the Buying Facilitation® model. And though I’ve trained 100,000 sales professionals, and wrote the NYTimes Business Bestseller Selling with Integrity, sales continues to be solution-placement driven. By ignoring a large population of potential buyers who merely aren’t ready, sales unwittingly ignores the real problem: it’s in the buying, not the selling.

SERVE PROSPECTS, CLOSE MORE SALES

It’s possible to truly serve clients AND close more sales.

Aspiring to a win-win

Win-win means both sides get what they need. Sellers believe that placing product that resolves a problem offers an automatic win-win. But that’s not wholly accurate. Buying isn’t as simple as choosing a solution. The very last thing people want is to buy anything, regardless of their apparent need.

As outsiders sellers can’t know the tangles of people and policies that hold a problem/need in place. The time it takes them to design a congruent solution that includes buy-in and change management is the length of their sales cycle. Buyers need to do this anyway; it’s the length of the sales cycle.

If sellers begin by finding those on route to buying and help them efficiently traverse their internal struggles, sellers can help them get to the ‘need/purchase’ decision more quickly and be part of the solution – win-win. No more chasing those who will never close; no more turning off those who will eventually seek our solution; no more gathering incomplete data from one person with partial answers.

Sellers can find and enable those who can/should buy to buy in half the time and sell more product – and very quickly know the difference between them and those who can never buy.

The whole is greater than the sum of its parts

There are several pieces to the puzzle here.

The buyer and the environment the prospect lives in, including people, policies, job titles, egos, relationships, politics, layers of management, rules, etc. that no one on the outside will ever understand. It’s never as simple as just changing out the problem for a new product; they will buy only when they’re certain they can’t fix their own problem.
Resolving the problem needs full internal buy-in before being willing to change (i.e. buy) regardless of the efficacy of the fix. A purchase is not necessarily their best solution even if it looks like a fit to a seller.
The ability of the buyer to manage the disruption that a new purchase would incur on the system, people, and policies. A fix, or purchase, might be worse than the problem.
The seller and the seller’s product may/may not fit in the buyer’s environment due to idiosyncratic, political, or rules-based issues, regardless of the need.
The purchase and implementation and follow up that includes buy-in from all who will experience a potentially disruptive change if a new solution enters and shifts their job routines.

There is no right answer

Sellers often believe that buyers are idiots for not making speedy decisions, or for not buying an ‘obvious’ solution. But sales offers no skills to enter earlier with a different skill set to facilitate change or manage risk.

Once buyers figure out their congruent route to change, they won’t have objections, will close themselves, and there’s no competition: sellers facilitate change management first and then sell once everything is in place. No call backs and follow up and ignored calls. And trust is immediate: a seller becomes a necessary partner to the buying decision process.

No one has anyone else’s answer

By adding Buying Facilitation®, collaborative decisions get made that will serve everyone.

Let’s change the focus: instead relegating sales to merely a product/solution placement endeavor, let’s add the job of facilitation to first find people en route to becoming buyers, lead them through to their internal change process first, and then using the sales model when they’ve become buyers.

We can help people self-identify as buyers quickly, with fewer tire-kickers, better differentiation, no competition, and sales close in half the time.

BUYING FACILITATION®

As a seller and an entrepreneur (I founded a tech company in London, Hamburg, and Stuttgart in 1983), I realized that sales ignored the buying decision problem and developed Buying Facilitation® to add to sales as a Pre-Sales tool.

Buyers get to their answers eventually; the time this takes is the length of the sales cycle, and selling doesn’t cause buying. Once I developed this model for my sellers to use, we made their process far more efficient with an 8x increase in sales – a number consistently reproduced against control groups with my global training clients over the following decades.

Buying Facilitation® adds a new capability and level of expertise and becomes a part of the decision process from the first call. Make money and make nice.

Sellers no longer need to lose prospects because they’re not ready, or cognizant of their need. They can become intermediaries between their clients and their companies; use their positions to efficiently help buyers manage internal change congruently, without manipulation; use their time to serve those who WILL buy – and know this on the first contact – and stop wasting time on those who will never buy. It’s time for sellers to use their knowledge and care to serve buyers and their companies in a win-win. Let’s make sales a spiritual practice.

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Sharon Drew Morgen August 11th, 2025

Posted In: Communication, Listening, Sales

I realized long ago that the low close numbers in sales were not caused by buyers, sellers, or solutions, but by the sales process itself. With a focus on placing solutions, it enters at the last phase of a buying decision ensuring only those who were going to buy anyway will close.

Without a specific focus on facilitating the private, idiosyncratic, systemic, and confusing change/risk management issues they must resolve before they self-identify as buyers, those folks who are in the process of becoming buyers (and don’t respond to your outreach) get overlooked needlessly. You can easily find and close them by adding starting with change management thinking. Let me explain.

I’ve been in sales one way or another for 45 years, as a seller, coach, inventor, author of 7 sales books (including the NYTimes Business Bestseller Selling with Integrity), trainer and entrepreneur. I continue to be dumbfounded as to why our approach to placing solutions remains one dimensional. Our low close rates should tell us that selling doesn’t cause buying?

WHY DOES SALES OVERLOOK CHANGE MANAGEMENT?

The last – the last – thing people need is information about solutions. They can’t even fully define what they need until they understand the risk to their environment if ‘change’ is introduced.

As a seller turned entrepreneur, when I realized that sales enters with a solution too early, I developed a pre-sales/buying enablement model – Buying Facilitation® – that uses a wholly different goal and toolkit: to first facilitate the change, risk, and buy-in issues folks must manage (and sales overlooks) before they’re ready to buy.

Working together with sales, it’s possible to

organize the Pre-Sales decision/change management process by helping prospects traverse the 13 steps of decision making/change.
facilitate the buying process, close 8x more and ¼ faster;
differentiate yourself from your competitors by first helping folks manage their internal issues;
use a new qualifying focus on first calls to find high probability buyers.

Sample

Note: Dirty Little Secrets lays out the specific behind-the-scenes steps in Pre-Sales and includes an introduction to Buying Facilitation® to help sellers facilitate buying.

I’ve trained many global companies (IBM, KPMG, DuPont, GE, Proctor and Gamble, Kaiser, Morgan Stanley, etc.) with an average 40% close rate from first call. But even folks in the same company (who watch colleagues I’ve trained close 8x more than they’re closing) won’t use it as ‘It’s not sales!’ (No. It’s not.) Leaders familiar with Buying Facilitation® say they’ve got too much invested in maintaining the status quo, and the known 95% failure of sales is built into the system (hiring more sellers, longer close time, lost sales).

SALES IS MISSING A CHANGE MANAGEMENT FRONT END

The sales industry is somewhat aware of the issues that must be resolved on the buy-side, (risk management, change management, buy-in) yet continue basing their sales strategies and solution-placement tools and techniques that don’t facilitate the change management issues folks must first address and prospects really need help with.

Sad but true: in the 40 years I’ve been training sellers, I’ve never met one – not one! – who understands their buyer’s behind-the-scenes decision process, or that they cannot, will not, buy until they’ve resolved their risk of change. Indeed, sellers believe that

their questions will gather the full set of elements involved in a problem so they can pitch.
their pitch, or content, will be perceived as the fix for the problem, which most likely hasn’t yet been properly defined.
their content is offered at the right time, in the right way, to the right group of people, who need their solution NOW and be agreed to by all.
risk, change, buy-in, can be accomplished with a great solution, solution, or worse, isn’t considered at all.

None of those are true, of course. 80% of a prospect’s decision process has nothing to do with buying anything. In fact, until they’ve gotten buy-in and understand (and agree to) the risk of bringing in something new, they will ignore our efforts: if the risk of change is higher than the risk of staying the same, the status quo prevails regardless of the need or efficacy of the solution.

But with an additional toolkit that helps these folks (they’re not even prospects yet) discover and manage their change and risk issues (prospects must do this with or without us!), sellers can quickly find high probability prospects on the first call and facilitate them through to agreement once the risk is managed. Why not adopt a dedicated tool to first facilitate the Pre-Sales decision process before trying to place solutions?

SELLING DOESN’T CAUSE BUYING

Since Dale Carnegie developed the standard sales model (and regardless of all the new bells and whistles) sales continues to be based on the same premises: seek folks with need, gather information, pitch, follow up and sell. Even new sellers are first taught the features, functions, and benefits of a product when entering a company.

Yet product data is actually the last – the very last – thing people need in order to make a buying decision.

With a change management viewpoint it’s possible that sellers can be seen as true consultants and differentiate from competitors pushing solutions. Not to mention quickly lead folks through their confounding change and buy-in issues – the ones we wait for them to complete! – to enable them to become buyers.

Here is a simplified version what goes on behind-the-scenes:

A problem is noticed, gets discussed among many, and eventually (not until everyone involved is assembled to have their say) the problem gets defined.
Workarounds are tried.
The risk of bringing something new into the status quo is researched and discussed. When it’s accepted as manageable, the ‘need’ is reconsidered to account for the risk.
If the risk of change is not lower than maintaining the status quo, no change will be made.
If the risk of change is lower than maintaining the status quo, they agree to consider themselves ‘buyers’ and begin seeking an external solution.
They ‘go external’ for a solution (i.e. buy something).
Sales enters, to understand needs and possible solution fit.

It’s possible to find and facilitate would-be prospects through the internal and cultural activities they must undertake on route to becoming buyers and THEN sell. I’m not suggesting you remove the sales model, just use it precisely when then-prospects are ready for it.

So here’s my pitch. Let me train you, your team, your company to begin your sales opportunities by adding Buying Facilitation® to your sales method and:

Recognize a true prospect on the first call and facilitate them down their steps of change management so they quickly self-identify as buyers. You will then only connect with folks who have a high probability of buying, and stop wasting time on folks who will never close;
Pose unbiased questions (Facilitative Questions™) that will lead them through to buy-in and decision making quickly
Need is not the indicator of a prospect. Obviously;
Garner respect and loyalty. You’ll be serving them and truly making a difference to their decision making;
Collapse the sales cycle by 75% and close a helluva lot more;
Be a true servant leader;
Differentiate from your competitors still pushing solutions;

My Buying Facilitation® training is a new form of training I’ve invented that immerses students in new skills and thinking. It not only will generate more sales, but provides life-long skills in listening without bias, formulating unbiased questions, and following a 13 step decision making process they can use within the team and within their lives.

Should you be at a point where you’re ready to differentiate yourself from your competitors, close more, faster, I would love to speak and use Buying Facilitation® on you to help you ascertain your risk of change and your team’s tolerance to adding new skills. I look forward to speaking. sharondrew@sharondrewmorgen.com

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Sharon Drew Morgen January 20th, 2025

Posted In: Sales

I moved to London in 1983 to start up a tech company after spending years as a successful sales person. For years I had qualified prospects, created decks and wrote great content, chased appointments and networked, presented, and followed up. As I became an entrepreneur, I thought I understood buyers well-enough to become one. But I was wrong.

SELLING VS BUYING

My new role taught me the differences between selling and buying. I hadn’t realized the complexity of the Pre-Sales activity necessary to become a buyer. Indeed, there were two buying processes: the buyer’s side and the seller’s side.

As a sales professional my ultimate job was to place solutions; as a buyer, my main focus was to avoid risks while creating and maintaining Excellence.

As a sales professional my job was to get folks to make a purchase. As such, I struggled to say/offer the right thing, at the right time, to the right prospects, in order to convince, persuade, and build relationships to close; as an entrepreneur and potential buyer I had to continually manage any necessary change we needed using the most efficient, integrous, and least disruptive route to success to maintain happy employees and clients, and continue to develop a great product.

As a sales professional, I sought to find and influence people who ‘needed’ my solution; as a buyer, I couldn’t fully define my needs, or resolve problems until all voices (stakeholders) and impediments to change were factored in and until we were absolutely sure we couldn’t resolve our problems internally. We certainly couldn’t make any changes until we fully understood the risks that any change would generate.

Selling and buying, I quickly realized, are two different activities: different goals, different behaviors, different communication and thinking patterns, different types of responsibility.

Before becoming a buyer myself, I hadn’t fully appreciated how severely the sales model limits who will buy by seeking only those with ‘need’ – the low hanging fruit, those who had completed their internal change management determinations and bought-in to any risks, any disruption, a new solution would bring to their environment.

The act of making a purchase, I realized, was a risk/change management problem before it was a solution choice issue. Any needs I had were secondary to maintaining consistency and team agreements. After all, we were doing ‘just fine’ without bringing in anything new.

As an entrepreneur with many factors to juggle, I realized that no one started off as a buyer but had to go through a change management process first. And because the sales model focuses on selling, it could only seek and close those folks who considered themselves buyers already (the low hanging fruit), overlooking those who could become buyers with some risk/change facilitation.

My book Dirty Little Secrets lays out all the steps people must take before self-identifying as a ‘buyer.’

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THE JOB OF A BUYER

As a buyer, the very last thing I needed was to buy. Literally. But when I did buy, it was based on the team’s ability to understand my risk and manage change without disruption.

Indeed: the ‘cost’ of a fix had to be lower than the ‘cost’ of maintaining the status quo, regardless of my need or the efficacy of a solution. So (hypothetically) if I needed a CRM system but had to fire 8 people to buy one, I had to weigh the ‘cost’, the risk, of the change. And the time it takes to make this calculation is the length of the sales cycle. Unfortunately, the sales model does not offer tools to address this as it’s unique to the buying environment.

As a seller, I had never realized that my sales biases – biased questions (to ‘uncover needs’ of course), or listening specifically for where my solution could be pitched – were restricting my success. The sales model never considered what occurred before folks even self-identified as buyers.

By limiting my search to folks with ‘needs,’ I had overlooked an 8x larger audience of folks in the process of becoming buyers but not yet ready. Not to mention that my definition of ‘needs’ was often biased by my own needs to sell, and didn’t necessarily mean the person was a buyer.

As a buyer, I had more to worry about than solving a problem. I had to take into account

the need for buy-in by all who involved in the ultimate solution,
the risk a change would bring,
the rules and brand of the company,
the well-being of the employees and staff,
how the problem got created to make sure it didn’t recur,
the integrity of the product or service provided,
the congruence and integrity of the status quo,
the needs of the customers.

As a buyer, my challenge was to be better without losing what worked successfully, to ensure

– everyone involved agreed to a common solution,

– there was consensus and a route through to congruent change,

– we were all absolutely certain we couldn’t fix the problem with something familiar,

– the risk of change was less than the cost of maintaining the problem.

As the Managing Director/Founder, I had a well-oiled machine to consider – great staff, great clients, fantastic ROI – one that had a few problems, but did a lot successfully; I didn’t want to throw the baby out with the bathwater.

WHAT I NEEDED TO KNOW BEFORE BECOMING A BUYER

Here’s what I needed to know before I began looking ‘outside’ for answers:

– Who did I need to get agreement from? And how would their combined voices inform our needs or a resolution?

– What would the ‘cost’ be to us, the downside, of bringing in something external? Was the downside worth the upside and could we recover?

– How could we fix the problem ourselves? At what point would we realize we couldn’t and needed outside help?

– How could we be certain upfront that the people, policies, rules, and goals we had in place would fit comfortably with anything new we might do, any solution we might purchase? And was it possible to know the downside in advance?

– How could I determine the risk of change before I brought in a new solution?

I had to make decisions that didn’t cause too much disruption and garnered buy-in.

I began annotating the change process I was going through. Eventually I realized everyone goes through the same change management process.

13 STEPS OF CHANGE

As someone trying to solve problems without causing disruption, my decision making process had very specific activities, from understanding the elements of a problem to ultimately ending up with a resolution. Turned out there were 13 steps for change, and people didn’t self-identify as buyers until step 10!

I used these steps to design a Change Facilitation model (Buying Facilitation®) as a new sales tool kit to lead potential buyers through their risk issues. Indeed, with a Buying Facilitator hat on, I could identify folks who were on route to becoming buyers on the first call.

As a seller I never realized that unless people tried to resolve their own problems and had buy-in for change, until they understood and bought into any risks involved with a new purchase, they’re not in the market to buy anything. In fact, with all my awards for being a top producer, I never realized selling didn’t cause buying!

I taught Buying Facilitation® to my sales staff so they could help people on route to becoming buyers to

Assemble all the right people – decision makers and influencers of all types – to get consensus for any change at all. It was quite a challenge to figure out every one of the folks whose voices had to be heard.;
Enable collaboration so all voices, all concerns, approved action by a consensus. This was a systems-change issue, not a solution-choice issue;
Find out if there was a cheap, easy, risk-free way to fix problems with groups, policies, technology we had on hand or were familiar with;
Discover the risks of change and how we’d handle them;
Realize the point where there was no route to Excellence without bringing in a new/different solution;
Manage the fallout of change when bringing something new in from outside, and determine how to congruently integrate a purchase into our status quo.

For those who want to understand the process, my book Dirty Little Secrets lays out the 13 step Buying Decision Path or go to my site www.sharon-drew.com where I not only explain it but have hundreds of articles on the subject.

A WALK THROUGH THE BUYER’S JOURNEY

Take a look at this summary of my journey from a person with a problem to a buyer.

Like all people, I didn’t know what I didn’t know: I didn’t know who needed to be involved (It wasn’t obvious due to the hidden influence from some of the folks peripherally involved.); I couldn’t know if we could fix the problem ourselves; I didn’t know how disruptive a purchase would be and certainly couldn’t even consider bringing anything new in until there were no other options; I didn’t know what the ‘cost’ would be to bring in something from outside, and if the ‘cost’ was lower or higher than keeping the problem.

In other words, even though we had needs, buying anything was not the objective nor the first thought (and although I did research, I never paid heed to marketing or sales content). We needed to understand the complete fact pattern; we all had to agree to the goals, direction, outcomes, results, risks, and path to change – confusing because every voice and job title had different priorities, needs, and problems.

It was a delicate process, and there was no clear path forward until we were almost at the end.

Every buyer goes through some form of this. The sales model overlooks this, not realizing that by entering at the end of the Buying Decision Path, sales restricts who buys to those who are ready, the low hanging fruit.

This is where buyers go when they’re silent. They’re not dragging their heels or seeking lower prices; they need to traverse their Steps of Change to get to the point of even becoming a buyer.

As an entrepreneur there was no one to guide me through this. I sure could have used the help of an unbiased sales professional who knew far more than I did about the environment.

Once I figured this all out and developed Buying Facilitation®, we had an eight-fold increase in sales and no longer wasted time following up those who would never buy as it was very obvious.

The time it takes buyers to navigate these steps is the length of the sales cycle. And buyers must do this anyway – so it might as well be with us.

BUYING FACILITATION® FACILITATES THE BUYER’S JOURNEY

Buying Facilitation® eschews trying to sell anything until or unless the buyer knows exactly how – not what – they need to buy. After all, you’ve got nothing to sell until they have something to buy.

Here’s what we don’t know as sellers:

Where buyers are along their decision path.
How many, or if, the requisite Buying Decision Team is in place, and ALL appropriate voices have been heard so a full evaluation of the upsides and downsides to change can be considered.
Until ALL voices have been heard, there is no way to recognize or define ‘need.’ As outsiders we can NEVER know who belongs on the Buying Decision Team because it’s so unique to the situation.
Who is a real buyer: only those who know how to manage change, and get consensus that they cannot fix the problem internally are buyers. Need doesn’t determine ability to buy.
The fallout of the risk factors, and the ability for any group to withstand change.
The types of change management issues that a new solution would entail.

The sales model does a great job placing solutions, but expends too much energy seeking those few who have completed their Buyer’s Journey and consider themselves buyers. Sales believes a prospect is someone who SHOULD buy; Buying Facilitation® believes a prospect is someone who CAN/WILL buy efficiently facilitates the Buyer’s Journey from the first moment of the first call, and THEN sells, to those who are indeed buyers.

For less time and resource, we can actually lead buyers down their own change route; and we can easily, quickly, recognize who will, or won’t, be a buyer. In one conversation we can help them discern who they need to include on their Buying Decision Team; if we wish an appointment, the entire Decision Team will be eagerly awaiting us.

And with a Change Facilitator hat on, on the first call it’s possible to find buyers at early stages along their decision path who need our solutions but aren’t yet ready to buy. We just can’t use the sales model until after it’s established who is actually a buyer.

Let’s enter earlier with a change consultant hat on, to actually facilitate buyers to the point where they could be ready to buy – and THEN sell. We will find 8x more prospects, immediately recognize those who can never buy, and be true Servant Leaders. Otherwise, with a 5% close rate, we’re merely wasting over 95% of our time and resource seeking the low hanging fruit, and missing a vital opportunity to find, and close, those who WILL buy. And more will buy, and quicker. Help people become buyers. Then sell.

____________

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 her new book HOW? Generating new neural circuits for learning, behavior change and decision making, 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 December 16th, 2024

Posted In: Listening, Sales

Our viewpoints, interpretations and assumptions are so unconsciously biased that we unwittingly restrict our ability to accurately understand, or act on, incoming information. Our brains are the culprit, as they construct the way we make sense of the world; we don’t question what our brains tell us.

Responding from historic personal norms and beliefs, we instinctively assume our perceptions, actions, interpretations, are based on reality. But we invent our own reality. As David Eagleman says in The Brain,

“Each of us has our own narrative and we have no reason not to believe it. Our brains are built on electrochemical signals that we interpret as our lives and experience… there’s no single version of reality. Each brain carries its own truth via billions of signals triggering chemical pulses and trillions of connections between neurons.” [pg 73-74]

Our brains actually restrict us to seeing, noticing, hearing, understanding, and learning what we already have circuits to translate – what’s comfortable and acceptable – causing deep seated biases. Our subjectivity maintains us.

Sample

In this article I will explain how our brain biases us and what we can do to override the patterns.

SUBJECTIVITY VS OBJECTIVITY

We live our lives subjectively, based on the way our brains code and retrieve our personal, unique, and idiosyncratic beliefs, assumptions, history and norms. We think we’re making good choices when we choose or consider one thing vs another, when we easily reject something because it makes no sense or annoys us. Or worse, when it’s ‘obvious’ to us that one thing should be valued differently than another.

We like to think we’re objective. But we’re not.

The Wikipedia definition of objectivity is “… the elimination of subjective perspectives and … purely based on hard facts.” And “a lack of bias, judgment, or prejudice.” But is this possible? What are ‘hard facts’ when our brain rejects them as faulty? When our brains determine what ‘reality’ is? I suggest that objectivity is only slightly less biased than subjectivity.

Indeed, it’s pretty impossible to experience or interpret most anything without bias. We act, make decisions and choices, communicate with others, raise children and have friends, all from a small range of favored, habitual mental models and neural circuits that come from oft-used superhighways in our brains that we’ve spent a lifetime culling and assume are accurate.

Regardless of how ‘factual’ it is, when incoming data doesn’t jive with our existing beliefs, our brains ‘do us a favor’ and resist and re-interpret whatever falls outside of what we ‘know’ to be true. Obviously, anything new has a good chance of not being understood accurately. Bias is just cooked in; we don’t even think twice about trusting our intuition or natural reasoning when there’s a good chance we shouldn’t.
Whether we’re in a conversation, listening to media, or even reading, we listen through biased filters, and hear what our brains tell us was said – likely to be X% different from the intended message. Unless we develop new neural pathways for the new incoming data, we will only hear what our brains are already comfortable with.

Indeed, our worlds are very tightly controlled by our unconscious, habituated, and brain-based biases, making it quite difficult to objectively hear or understand anything that is different. It takes quite a bit of work to act beyond our perceptions.

WHY CAN’T WE BE OBJECTIVE?

Each of us interpret incoming messages uniquely. Indeed, objectivity is not, well, objective. Here’s what happens: Sometimes

the way the new information comes in to us – the words used, the setting, the history between the communication partners, the distance between what’s being said and our current beliefs – cause us to unconsciously misinterpret bits of data;
we have no natural way of recognizing an incongruity between the incoming information and our unconscious thoughts;
our brain deletes some of the signals from incoming messages when they are discordant with what we already accept as true, without telling us what we missed (My book What? Did you really say what I think I heard? explains and corrects this problem.);
our beliefs are so strong we react automatically without having enough detachment to notice;
what we think is objective is often merely a habitual choice.

Sample

We each live in worlds of our own making. We choose friends and neighborhoods according to our beliefs and how our ears interpret ‘facts’, choose professions according to our likes and predispositions, raise our kids with the same norms and beliefs that we hold. In other words, we’ve created rather stable – certainly comfortable – worlds for ourselves that we fight to maintain regardless of how our biases may distort.

When communicating with others, ‘objective facts’ might get lost in subjectivity. In business we connect with different viewpoints and attempt to convince other’s of our ‘rightness’, and either they don’t believe us or they feel we’ve made them ‘wrong’. Our children learn stuff in school that we might find objectionable regardless of its veracity, or we might disagree with teachers who have different interpretations of our child’s behavior.

And of course, most scientific facts we deem ‘objective truth’ may just be opinions. Folks like Curie, Einstein, Hawking, and Tesla were considered to be cranks because their ideas flew in the face of objective science that turned out to be nothing more than decades and centuries of perceived wisdom/opinions.

The problem shows up in every aspect of our lives. Sometimes there’s no way to separate out objective fact from subjective belief, regardless of the veracity.

I remember when my teenage son came home with blue hair one day. Thinking of what his teachers would say (This was in 1985!) or his friend’s parents, I wanted to scream. Instead I requested that next time he wanted to do something like that to please discuss it with me first, and then told him it looked great (It actually was a terrific color!). But his father went nuts when he came to pick him up, screaming at both of us (“What kind of a mother lets her son dye his hair blue!!!”), and taking him directly to the barber to shave his head. For me, it was merely hair. We both had different ‘objective realities.’

CASE STUDY IN OBJECTIVITY VS SUBJECTIVITY

I once visited a friend in the hospital where I began a light conversations with the elderly orderly helping her sit up and eat. During our chat, the orderly asked me if I could mentor him. Um… Well, I was busy. Please! he begged. Not knowing what I could add to his life and having a bias that folks who asked me to mentor them just wanted me to give them money, I reluctantly, doubtfully, said ok.

He emailed me and invited me to dinner. Um… well, ok. I’d donate one night. He lived in a tiny room in a senior living center, on the ‘wrong’ side of the tracks. It was very clean and neat, and he had gone out of his way to prepare the best healthy dinner he knew how to offer. Shrimp cocktail. Nice salad. Hamburger and beans. Ice cream. During dinner he played some lovely music. Just lovely. I was transfixed. Who is that playing, I asked.

“It’s me. I wrote that piece, and I’m playing all the instruments. I have several CDs of music I’ve composed and self-produced. Can you help me find someone who might want to hear it and do something with it? I’ve never met anyone who could help me.” I helped him find folks who helped him professionally record at least two of his compositions.

By any ‘objective’ measure, using my own subjective biases and ignoring the objective truth that we’re all equal and everyone is capable of having talent, I didn’t initially consider that someone ‘like that’ (old, black, poor, uneducated) had the enormous talent this man possessed, regardless of my advocacy of non-bias and gender/race equality.

Unwittingly, we seriously restrict our worlds the way we process incoming data. We live subjective lives that restrict us. And as a result, we end up having arguments, misunderstandings, failed initiatives; we end up having a smaller pool of ideas to think with and don’t see a need for further research or checking; we make faulty assumptions about people and ideas that could bring benefits to our lives. I personally believe it’s necessary for us to remove as many restrictions as possible to our pool of knowledge and beliefs.

HOW TO COMPENSATE

To recognize bias and have a new choice, we must first recognize the necessity of noticing when something we believe may not be true, regardless of how strong our conviction otherwise. It’s quite difficult to do using the same biases that caused us to unconsciously bias in the first place.

Here’s a tip to help expand your normalized perception and notice a much broader range of givens, or ‘reality,’ to view an expanded array of options from a Witness or Coach or Observer position on the ceiling:

Sit quietly. Think of a situation that ended with you misinterpreting something and the outcome wasn’t pretty. Replay it through your mind’s eye. Pay particular attention to your feelings as you relive each aspect of the situation. Replay it again.
Notice where your body has pain, discomfort, or annoyance points.
As soon as you notice, intensify the feeling at the site of the discomfort. Then impart a color on it. Make the color throb.
Mentally move that color inside your body to the outer edges of your eyeballs and make the color vibrate in your eyes.
When you mentally notice the color vibration, make sure you sit back in your chair or stand up. Then move your awareness up to the ceiling (i.e. in Witness or Observer position) and look down at yourself. From above you’ll notice an expanded range of data points and options outside your standard ones, causing you to physiologically evade your subjective choices.

Since the difference between subjectivity and objectivity is one of perception, and in general our brains make our determinations unconsciously, we must go to the place in our brains that cause us to perceive, and make it conscious. Only then can we have any objective choice. And next time we think we’re being objective, maybe rethink the situation to consider whether new choices are needed.

___________________________

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 her new book HOW? Generating new neural circuits for learning, behavior change and decision making, 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 November 18th, 2024

Posted In: Communication, Listening, Sales

I’m curious why so many professionals are satisfied using change and support practices knowing the fail rates in their industry: change management has a 97% fail rate as do all Behavior Modification practices; coaching and training have a 90% fail rate; and sales a 95% fail rate.

A leader in the Change Management field complained of persistent resistance during a recent call, showing me the model he was using that had ‘connect with/convince people’ at Step 6. I suggested the problem might be he brought people in too late to gather the full fact pattern of the underlying problem making goal-setting certain to be flawed, and setting up resistance when solutions are thrust on folks without their input.

Why, I wondered, had he kept using a change model that regularly got resistance rather than do something different? “What else can I do? There’s nothing else to use.”

Sales is also based on a flawed premise, starting with a desire to place solutions and prospecting for folks with a ‘need’ by posing biased questions they can then sell into. But with a 5% close rate, ‘need’ may not be the reason people buy.

Coaching has a similar problem. Coaches assume they must ‘understand’ the client’s problem by posing questions meant to either gather data or lead to problem solving. And yet clients often don’t find a permanent solutions.

WHY YOU CAN’T CHANGE OTHER’S BEHAVIORS

I’ve developed new models that increase successful permanent change, and enable efficient values-based decision making that use different intent and tools. But I’d like to first offer you some of my Morgenisms:

You can’t change a behavior by trying to change a behavior;
Selling doesn’t cause buying;
The time it takes people to understand their risk of change is the length of the change/sales cycle;
Brains hear as per a Listener’s existing (historic, biased) neural circuits that translate the incoming sound vibrations/signals (i.e. words) into meaning, very often quite different than the intent of the Speaker.
Questions are posed using the Asker’s wording, intent, needs and goals, and as such, are biased by the assumptions of the Asker, which may not be aligned with the needs, goals of the Receiver.

In other words, using conventional practices (questions, stories, examples, explanations, information sharing) influencers may not be able to persuade Others to act on their suggestions as there’s a strong possibility they won’t accurately hear/interpret what’s been said. As I’ll explain, there’s a way to help folks make necessary changes directly in their brains.

WHERE DOES CHANGE COME FROM?

Any change, any decision, any willingness to do, know, be something different requires different actions in the brain. Standard models attempt to change behaviors by trying to change behaviors! Not possible, regardless of the need or the efficacy of the solution presented: behaviors are outputs from specific prompts in the brain, not changeable without changing the original neural programming that triggered them.

Change is a brain thing. The dilemma for influencers is that due to the way brains listen and store history, information provided may not reach the specific circuits that triggered the problematic action. Just because we lead others through what seems like a rational change or decision-making process, or try to convince folks to eat healthy or pitch them a great solution, doesn’t mean our words will change the place in the brain where their problem initiated.

What is we give influencers the job of changing brains rather than behaviors, so the client can then make their necessary behavior changes from within.

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NOT VENUS RISING

Behaviors are the result, the outputs, of meaningless electrochemical computations in the brain; they do not arise like Venus from the sea.

When we try to change behaviors without changing the circuits that triggered them, it’s like telling a forward moving robot to move backwards by explaining why it should, or showing it a video of other backwards robots, or telling it a story of the benefits of flexibility. You must go back to the original programming and reprogram. And the job of influencing change is both a listening problem and a questioning problem.

THE LISTENING PROBLEM

I’ll explain the issues that make change a problem for outside influencers. To begin with, it’s a listening problem. Brains don’t hear incoming words as per the meaning the Speaker intended.

Incoming sound vibrations (words, or ‘meaningless puffs of air’ as neuroscience calls them) get translated according to the existing neural circuits in the brain of the Listener (i.e. biased, restricted), circuits that may have no relation at all to what was said or how distant it is from the original intent. It’s automatic, meaningless, and electrochemical.

Indeed, there’s a good chance something said will be misinterpreted by the Listener. It’s all unconscious and electrochemical. Think motherboard.

It becomes a multifaceted problem: Speakers may misunderstand Responders, Responders may misunderstand Speakers. And no one knows how their intended message was received or if what they think they heard is accurate.

Sample

Obviously this gives leaders, docs, coaches, and sellers dilemmas when they offer what they consider necessary information (no matter how relevant).

That’s the first hurdle. The next is the questions we ask.

THE QUESTION PROBLEM

Leaders, coaches, sellers, and doctors try to pose ‘right’ questions to discover the Other’s problem or to gather data to understand. This is problematic in many ways:

Both Speaker or Listener may inaccurately hear what the other intends to convey, possibly misinterpreting what was said without being aware they’re doing so;
The question may not be worded in a way that the Listener hears what’s intended and may unconsciously go against the values of the Listener causing resistance.

To address these problems I spent 10 years inventing a wholly new form of question [Facilitative Question], and 13 steps of change that enable Listeners to accurately hear the incoming message and leads them to the relevant brain circuits where the initiating triggers reside for discovery and change.

In other words, Influencers unwittingly use questions that may not 1. gather accurate data, 2. be heard accurately, 3. enable the Responder to reprogram their brain to make change possible. Hence you end up with change initiatives that

face resistance and sabotage,
fail to collect the full data set and face faulty goals, time delays, and resistance,
are based on the viewpoints of a small group who seem to believe they can speak for the entire group
fly in the face of the beliefs and values of the underlying system,
assume Listeners will make permanent change based on direction from a seller, healthcare provider, leaders, or coach,
don’t trust that Others have their own answers or routes to permanent change.

But it’s possible to facilitate Others through to permanent brain change. My book HOW? teaches Change Facilitation to accomplish this, including traversing the steps of change, formulating Facilitative Questions, changing perspectives, shifting hierarchies of beliefs, and listening without bias. Additionally, I coach and train folks to enable influencers to facilitate permanent, congruent change directly from the appropriate neural circuits.

I recognize this isn’t standard thinking yet. But my Change Facilitation model has been successfully trained to 100,000 sales folks and leaders globally. Contact me and I can coach or train you.

_______________________

Sharon Drew Morgen August 26th, 2024

Posted In: Sales

Your important nonprofit or exciting startup will help the world be a better place, bring innovative ideas to the market, and be quite sucessful. You’ve created a terrific pitch deck, have a highly competent management team and terms, and have identified donor prospects with major gift potential. You’ve designed a multi-channel approach to build relationships with small investors to excite them to becoming large investors. Why aren’t you raising all the funding you deserve?

It’s not you, your message. or your organization;
It’s not the strength of your relationship or who you ‘know’;
It’s not the market, your competition, your return potential or your marketing materials.

It’s about how your investors will choose you over the competition. But do you know how, specifically, they’ll choose? Since each potential investor has unique, and unspoken criteria for choosing who to invest in, there’s no way to know. How, then, can you engage them?

HOW DO INVESTORS CHOOSE?

Investor funds are not sitting there waiting for you to show up, no matter how compelling your information, solution, management team or terms. They must choose from among several worthy investments. And certainly they’ll have unspoken, and possibly unconscious political, ecological, or personal biases.

Clearly they’re judging you against some criteria that you are unaware of, and you’re guessing what information to present based on your criteria. Unfortunately, the criteria don’t always match.

Sadly, as an outsider, you have no access to an investor’s hidden or historic arrangements, personal beliefs, or political mind-fields. And asking them directly about their criteria will only get you obvious answers.

How can you set yourself apart from the competition and flush out their choice criteria so you can make an effective pitch? Let’s begin by understanding the difference between how investors choose and what you offer.

ALIGN CRITERIA FIRST

Decades ago as a sales person, I realized the difference between choice criteria (personal, idiosyncratic) vs content (data) when attempting to engage a prospect. I was frustrated with the seeming gap between what I thought prospects needed (my solution, of course) and their willingness to buy, between the information I thought might persuade them and how they made decisions.

When I started up a tech company in London and became The Buyer I realized the problem: selling involved me getting my solution placed; buying involved me meeting specific criteria that managed risk so we could make necessary changes with minor disruption or wasted resource.

Now on the other side of the table, I realized that people bought, or invested, only once their own criteria were met. I had to shift from believing that my details would rule the day, to understanding I had to help investors recognize their own criteria and match it.

I did something I had never done: Rather than designing pitch materials based on what I thought they should know, I began my interactions with questions that helped them discern their decision criteria first, THEN presented my content in a way that fit.

TRUTHS ABOUT HOW INVESTORS DECIDE

To consider the components of a decision to invest, start-ups and scale-ups should consider how investors choose:

Folks seeking funds have no way to understand an investor’s choice criteria as each has their own unique sets of rules, beliefs, values, vision they choose from. For example, some choose management as their criteria, some choose market size and potential for penetration, etc;
Unless the investor’s choice criteria are met, no decision to buy or invest will be made;
Unless the investor is willing to shift their criteria, they’ll consider presentation materials with a biased eye, regardless of the efficacy of the investment.
Information is only relevant when it fits into the investor’s criteria or it will be ignored, resisted, or misunderstood.

To have the best chance to engage investors, begin by facilitating them through the internal, and often unconscious and biased, decisions they must make then customize your pitch to meet their specific criteria.

HOW TO MOTIVATE

Enter your fundraising session with a goal to facilitate decision making. Otherwise, you’re entering into a black box of unknowns, assuming that your ideas, your solutions, or the quality of your deck will get you funded. Money goes to those opportunities that first match their hidden criteria regardless of how you present.

Rather than attempting to inspire and provoke action with a brilliant pitch and deck, I begin my funding sessions by posing questions to help the investors discover their unconscious choice criteria.

For example: As a woman, I know only 4% of investor funds go to women (up from 1% in 1996!) so I pose a question to help them recognize their bias here. I might ask:

How would you know that investing in a woman-owned company would be a good investment and offer an excellent opportunity for a high return on your investment?

By enabling them to make their choice criteria transparent and dialoguing with them, I let them tell me how I fit into their standards or not. THEN offer the specific information to address that specific criterion (and yes, I design a pitch deck with flexibility, beyond the content that I think is important.). So: Q&A first THEN pitch deck.

FACILITATIVE QUESTIONS THAT GENERATE REAL ANSWERS

I’d like to discuss the type of questions I pose. I’ve invented a new form of question that prompts the Other to discover their own answers, unbiased by my needs or assumptions. Facilitative Questions help Others discover their unconscious choice criteria.

(Note: FQs are brain-directional, not information gathering. They use different goals than conventional questions, with very specific words, in very specific order, in very specific sequences to get to the neural circuits within the Responder’s unconscious where their values-based criteria are stored. They are so different from standard questions that they can’t be learned without training. Here’s a link to a Learning Accelerator that will teach you how to formulate them.)

They not only find real answers, but instigate discussions to generate flexibility where possible. Here are some Facilitative Questions that I use during funding sessions:

What would you need to see from me and my company to know it’s got a high probability of succeeding?
What would you need to see to know we’re organized and managed for ongoing success, can enter the market competitively, and employ ethical standards?
How would you know in advance that we represent collaboration, communication, and cooperation making us a good choice for partnership?

By posing these questions, you can dialogue with the investors first around substantive issues, begin a relationship, and get rid of the hidden criteria as much as possible. This will certainly differentiate you from your competitors. And don’t worry if some investors don’t want to play: they’re the ones who wouldn’t have invested in your anyway. It’s not only the investors who must choose: you get to choose who you want to get into bed with.

Remember: your solution is great. But so are the other solutions these investors are considering. The problem is not how to position your solution, but how to inspire investors to choose you.

____________

Sharon Drew Morgen March 18th, 2024

Posted In: News, Sales

Your solution is great. You know the narrative of the type of buyers who buy. You’re writing appropriate content and getting it out to the right demographic. But you’re still closing less than 5% from first contact and spending a ton of resource finding different ways to touch the same people as your competition touches – in hopes that you’ll have the right message that catches them at the right time or just grind them down.

Why aren’t more buyers buying? Do you know why your well-executed sales outreach programs – salesperson, social media, digital media, marketing – don’t elicit more closed sales?

DO YOU WANT TO SELL? OR HAVE SOMEONE BUY?

You’re not closing more because your messages target a restricted audience, those who have already

understood their risk of change,
tried all familiar resources and workarounds to fix their own problem and came up short,
decided their only route to a problem resolution is to make a purchase,
gotten appropriate buy-in and managed any disruption that a purchase would bring

and then you and your competitors work tirelessly to close a sale from that small pool of ready buyers.

Seeking those you believe are probable buyers (those who SHOULD buy) limits your spectrum of buyers to those who are prepared for any change a purchase will cause.

In other words, before people self-identify as buyers, they must first understand that the risk of change is less than the risk of the status quo. A buying decision is a risk management problem before it’s a solution choice issue.

Indeed, the last thing buyers want is to buy anything. Literally: the last thing. People don’t want to make a purchase, they merely want to resolve a problem with the least disruption/cost, and try everything they can to first fix the problem themselves.

By acting as if selling causes buying, we disregard the internal, private, idiosyncratic, systemic change management work buyers must do before they’ve got their ducks in a row and are ready to buy; until then, the risks of change are too high regardless of their need or the efficacy of your solution.

The sales model only handles the buying portion at the end (step 10 of 13. See steps below) of the complete Buying Decision Path. But this is merely a fraction of those who will eventually buy.

Here are the problems you face when targeting people who haven’t yet self-identified as buyers and don’t yet have all their ducks in a row:

Once prospects have determined a need, you’re already in a competitive situation and have to find ways to be better/cheaper/more branded.
You’re wasting over 90% of your time finding, following up, meeting with, and in several ways trying to connect with, those who appear to need your solution but turn out not to be buyers.
You ignore the high percentage of those who would/will buy but aren’t yet ready to (but could easily be gotten ready).
You overlook the possibility of connecting with and serving, real buyers early along their change management/decision path
and reduces the number of possible entry points onto the Buying Decision Team/buying decision.

Sure, you’re making great information available for those who are ready to engage. But you could be entering earlier and facilitating those who are in the midst of taversing the full range of risk/change management steps along the Buying Decision Path and not accessible with the sales model.

Sample

SELLING DOESN’T CAUSE BUYING

The problem has never been your terrific solution but in closing all the sales you deserve to close. It’s because sales are solution-placement driven, seeking optimal ways to get persuasive content to probable buyers in hopes of making a sale, but ignores the much higher pool of real prospects who aren’t far enough down their buyer’s journey to commit or engage.

The sales model is great for when buyers have completed their internal steps for change. But for those buyers who haven’t completed their buy-in and change/risk management issues, and haven’t yet determined if they CAN buy, sales don’t have the intent, skills, or focus. Sales wasn’t created to do that. It’s only meant to place solutions.

It’s possible for us to add a front end to sales and first facilitate people through their internal change work so they can self-identify as buyers. Then you’ll be a true relationship manager, quickly prepare the folks who WILL be buyers, and close quickly. Not to mention with a change facilitation hat on as you begin each interaction, you can recognize those who will become buyers on the first call and not waste time on those who will never buy.

The sales model we’ve been using is based on a model developed by Dale Carnegie, introduced in his book How to Win Friends and Influence People (1937). He promoted relationships, face-to-face visits, finding folks with a need, placing solutions, for which he recommended developing great pitches.

Think about it: while there are certainly a helluva lot more bells and whistles in 2020, the basic skeleton of need/relationship/ appointment/ pitch, remains the same. It shouldn’t be. Selling doesn’t cause buying. They are two different activities.

The buying environment has changed dramatically over the past 100 or so years, far more complex than merely choosing a vendor or solution; the sales model hasn’t. It’s time for new thinking. Let’s join buyers where they really have their real ‘pain’ and facilitate Buyer Readiness earlier in their buy-in/systemic change process.

BUYING MEANS CHANGE FIRST

If prospective buyers might need a new CRM system, for example, they cannot buy until their tech guys, users, time frames, vendor relationships, current software etc. are in agreement, recognize they can’t fix their problem themselves and have assembled everyone who will touch the final solution to integrate the ‘new’.

Sales seeks out folks with ‘need’ in order to place solutions. But need is not the primary factor in a purchasing decision: until the risk of the new is a understood and accepted those who SHOULD buy will maintain their status quo, regardless of their need or efficacy of your solution. And the time it takes them to manage all this is the length of the sales cycle.

Buyers don’t want to buy anything. They just want to resolve a problem with the least disruption and the most efficient use of a resource. And

until they figure out that they cannot resolve their problem themselves,
everyone has agreed to bring in something new,
everyone understands and buys into the risk of change,
and they know how to avoid any disruption that something new invariably brings with it,

they cannot buy. Indeed, they’re not even buyers until everyone agrees. [Hence the reason they don’t heed our content outreach].

All prospects/buyers must do this anyway, with you or without you. It might as well be with you. Why not use your industry knowledge to help them figure out how to traverse their steps efficiently? With a different hat on and a new skill set, you can facilitate them quickly through their process and be right there with them as they decide. You want to seek/find those exact ones who WILL buy. And you can find them on the first call. You’ll just need a different hat on.

STAGES IN THE BUYING DECISION PATH

To design messaging to find buyers earlier in their Buying Decision Path, recognize the steps buyers take to be ready and able to purchase:

1. Idea stage: Is there a problem?

Does it need to be solved? When? How?
What’s the fallout?
Is the cost of a fix lower than the cost of the status quo?
Who needs to be involved?

2. Brainstorming stage: Idea discussed with colleagues.

3. Initial discussion stage: Colleagues discuss the problem, posit who to include on Buying Decision Team, consider possible fixes and fallout. Action groups formed. Research begins. New team members invited.

4. Contemplation stage: Group discusses:

Known workarounds and acceptable/fallout from each,
People who would need to buy-in.

5. Organization stage: Group collects all internal issues that need consideration, including finding more folks to invite into process; research into the elements of the status quo; fallout to change. Begins to assess the entire scope of problem, resolution possibilities, cost of change/no change.

6. Change management stage: Group to determine:

Types of research necessary (and who will do it),
If appropriate people are involved (and who else to invite),
A review of all elements of the problem and solution options,
How much change management would be required,
How much disruption is acceptable.

7. Coordination stage:

Review needs, ideas, issues of new members invited,
Incorporate change considerations,
Delineate everyone’s thoughts re goals and change capacity,
Appropriate research responsibilities.

8. Research stage: Specific research for each possible solution; seek answers to how fallout and change would need to be managed with each solution.

9. Consensus stage: Buying Decision Team meets to share research consider their givens: downsides per type of solution, possibilities, outcomes, problems, management considerations, changes in policy, job description changes, HR issues, etc. General decisions made. Buy-in and consensus necessary.

10. Action stage: Responsibilities apportioned to manage the specifics of Stage 9. Calls made to several vendors for interviews and data gathering.

11. Second brainstorming stage: Discussion on results of data gathering, calls with vendors and partners, and fallout/benefits of each. Favored vendors pitched by team members.

12. Choice stage: New solution agreed on. Change management issues delineated and put in place. Leadership initiatives prepared to avoid disruption.

13. Implementation stage: Vendor contacted. Purchase made. Everything put in place.

For those who want to explore these stages and all elements of how buyers buy, see my book Dirty Little Secrets: why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell and what you can do about it.

A NEED ISN’T ENOUGH

Instead of only targeting probable buyers and ignoring the much larger pool of real buyers who are merely too early in their decision process to consider buying anything (but will, once they get to that point in their process), add a new focus: seek out folks who want to change, and facilitate them through to becoming buyers.

Note: your current messaging is the wrong tool for this part of their process because it’s not information, need, or buying driven. You need a new skill to facilitate change. To manage this Pre-Sales work, and as an adjunct to the sales model, I’ve developed Buying Facilitation® to

work with sales to enter the Buying Decision Path between Steps 1-9 above (Pre-Sales),
seek/find those who CAN buy (those who’ve recognized a problem in the area your solution serves, but aren’t set up to buy anything yet),
find the large pool of real buyers who can be facilitated efficiently through to Buyer Readiness,
collapse the time from problem recognition to discovery of need to purchase,
enable sellers to be servant leaders and real consultants, and be part of the Buying Decision Team when buyers get to the point they’re ready to buy.

Buying Facilitation® is a generic change management, decision facilitation model that can help buyers traverse that part of their journey that sales doesn’t handle. Using unique skill sets not currently used in sales (Facilitative Questions, Listening for Systems, change sequencing) it was designed to optimize the change/decision process. By adding some new messaging and Buyer Persona targets, you can find those who aren’t touched by your sales messages but are in the process of becoming buyers.

By targeting those who seek change rather than those who might have a ‘need’, by understanding the Pre-Sales (change management) steps all buyers take, by changing your messaging to enable the collection of the full stakeholder group, enable buy in from the disparate voices, and needs, you can find and facilitate the Pre-Sales decision path of those who WILL buy and enable them to ready themselves for a purchase. Here are two examples of success after learning Buying Facilitation®:

Kaiser Permanente initially made 110 visits and got 18 closed sales, wasting too much time traveling to those who WOULDN’T buy. Adding Buying Facilitation® to their sales, they made 27 visits and got 25 closed sales. They still needed to sell – but only to those who were ready/able to buy. And saved a ton of time/money only traveling to those who were real buyers.

Working with Wachovia small business bankers, they went from 100 calls, 10 appointments, and 2 closed sales over 11 months, to 100 calls, 37 appointments, and 29 closed sales in 3 months.

Using Buying Facilitation® outcomes are quite different. It begins by entering as a true consultant, seeking folks who seek change in the area of the seller’s solution. The conventional ‘need’ and ‘solution placement’ mind set not only misses those who are en route to becoming buyers and don’t (yet) have interest in content, but has the potential of alienating folks not already seeking to buy. Not to mention it’s a huge time waster.

Using Buying Facilitation® as a preliminary skill set,

Sellers can tell who will be a buyer on the first call and only visit people once they’ve completed their change process and have become buyers – a highly shortened process as the Facilitator makes the buying decision process much more efficient (half the time) and when a solution is finally discussed, it’s relevant to the buyer’s actual needs, timing, buy in, and stakeholder criteria;
Appointments are made only when representatives of the entire Decision Team are onboard [And note: this can take just one or two calls.];
By entering at the beginning of the Decision Path instead of trying to enlist the low hanging fruit who’ve already become buyers, it’s possible to close 8x more sales (as per 35 years of control group/pilot testing);
A seller’s first job is to facilitate the Pre-Sales steps, then add the solution placement component when they’re ready.

It sounds impossible if compared with the sales process of prospecting, qualifying, and pitching and ultimately closing 5%. But the entire process is different. With the focus on first facilitating the complete Decision Path from beginning to end (focus on change, not on selling), Buying Facilitation® expands the possible target audience by a factor of 8, to include those in the buying decision process, not just those who have completed it (the low hanging fruit). It’s a true Relationship Management tool, and saves time as sellers only sell to those who WILL buy.

Once people know all – all – of the elements (most are hidden, personal and idiosyncratic) of their Pre-Sales decision/change steps and have realized they cannot resolve a problem without outside help, they are buyers and seek a solution. By this time, they’ve gone through their steps and are have recognized that bringing something new in will ‘cost’ less than maintaining the status quo. Design messaging to help them traverse their steps (Note: offering information about your solution until this occurs is irrelevant) to manage change and consensus – and THEN sell. We wait while they do this anyway and run after the ones who have completed this journey. Why not add a new criteria and skill set to what you’re already doing and expand your focus to find those who WILL buy.

____________

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 her new book HOW? Generating new neural circuits for learning, behavior change and decision making, 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 March 4th, 2024

Posted In: Listening, Sales

Do you know precisely who in your funnel will buy? During your conversation it seemed like these folks needed your solution, but from your history you know that being in your funnel may not indicate who will buy.

Here are a few questions that will help you consider the baseline criteria that potential prospects must meet before deciding to buy something:

Do you know at what stage in the Change Management cycle your prospects are? Have they finished trialing their workarounds?
Are the full set of stakeholders (yes, even Joe in accounting) on board…and have they all bought in to the change?
Do they know the risks that your solution would bring to their status quo?

To make a purchase, all the stakeholders, or at least those who will touch the final solution, must buy-in to change. In fact, if the cost/risk of bringing in a new solution is higher than the risk of maintaining the current problem, they won’t buy anything and will maintain their status quo.

RISK A BETTER FACTOR THAN NEED

Since 1987 I’ve trained Buying Facilitation® to about 100,000 sales professionals globally, in all sectors and industries, and at solution price points from $3,000 to $50,000,000 – and I’ve never met a salesperson who knows precisely who will buy. And yet they should.

The sales model continues to use ‘need’ as a factor, falsely believing that if you find someone with a ‘need’ (according to answers to your biased questions), they’re a prospect. But you probably aren’t closing more than 5% so maybe that assumption is incorrect: ‘Risk management’ and the ‘cost of change’ are the issues that must be resolved by potential buyers for them to consider making a purchase. Until they understand these factors they can’t even know their needs.

I know that Dale Carnegie, Neil Rackham, David Sandler (who tried to buy me out in 1993 before he died), and Lori Richardson – the founding fathers and mother of our sales process – all promoted needs-based selling.

But I’m here to tell you that ‘need’ is NOT an indicator of purchasing. Do you need to lose 10 pounds? You’ve got a need to replace some of your foods, exercise more, stop drinking. Have you done that? Nope. What about your need to get organized? Need is not the determinant. And the folks you deem ‘prospects’ most likely aren’t real prospects since 95% of them don’t buy!

Who, then, IS a prospect?

Sample

WHO IS A PROSPECT?

Prospects are folks who have:

recognized something wrong, and brought together the full set of stakeholders to fully understand the facts of the problem;
failed to find a workaround to resolve it;
understand and accept the risk of bringing in something new (i.e. disrupt the status quo);
have all agreed to go ‘outside’ to achieve their outcome and know how to integrate the new with the old (and train folks, etc.) with minimum disruption.

In other words, they agree there’s a problem they can’t resolve and accept the risks, the disruption, involved with a purchase. And until they’re ready to make a purchase they’re merely people trying to solve a problem, people who have no interest in your solution.

Think of your own life: if your car is dead when you need to get to work one morning, the first thing you do is call to get the car towed to your mechanic. It’s only if the mechanic says your car is irreparable, or the cost of a fix would be prohibitive, that you start researching new cars. Buying a car is the LAST step you’d take.

SELLING DOESN’T CAUSE BUYING

Unfortunately, the sales model, designed for a different era, does not offer the tools to facilitate Buy Side change. Indeed, the sales model ignores this entire – and ubiquitous – Pre-Sales change management process. Yet it’s where 80% of real prospects reside.

As sellers, we’re so focused on selling to need that we forget the costs of bringing in a new solution: How does a new solution affect daily business routines? Pay? How can buyers mitigate their learning or integration curve? Currently people do this on their own, very slowly.

Sadly for sellers, the time it takes to complete this is the length of the sales cycle. They must do this anyway, with us, or without us. Until now, they’ve done it without us. And this is our competitive edge, not to mention a revenue boost and time saver.

Sales is the second tool in a two-stage decision process, useful once people traverse their 13 steps of change (defined in my book Dirty Little Secrets) AND can’t resolve a problem on their own AND understand the risk/cost of the change AND the stakeholders buy-in to the change. Buying Facilitation® first, THEN sales.

I know sellers aren’t accustomed to thinking this way, believing that ‘indecision’ is causing a ‘stall’. But potential prospects are just taking the time they need to address their internal decision making.

It’s not an idiosyncratic idea, or industry trope: for any buying to occur, people must congruently address their internal change issues and risks to their environment. And by leaving this element out of our sales, we end up trying to find the low hanging fruit – those who have completed their process.

What if sellers had an additional tool kit to first facilitate the change, and then sell to those who are real prospects? Contact me to discuss Buying Facilitation® training for your team. sharondrew@sharondrewmorgen.com

________________________

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 her new book HOW? Generating new neural circuits for learning, behavior change and decision making, 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 November 6th, 2023

Posted In: Sales

50% of Sales Professionals are Neurodiverse: An introduction to finding, hiring and retaining them, by Sharon-Drew Morgen

Don’t Start Selling with Sales: facilitate back-end buying decisions first for a higher close rate, by Sharon-Drew Morgen

Sales as a Spiritual Practice

What Do Prospects Do Behind-The-Scenes? by Sharon-Drew Morgen

The Real “Buyer’s Journey”: the reason selling doesn’t cause buying, by Sharon-Drew Morgen

The Noise of Subjectivity: how our personal biases shape and restrict our worlds

Dear Sales People (and Leaders, Coaches, and Doctors): We have new information, by Sharon-Drew Morgen

Successful Fundraising: getting chosen over the competition

Sell to Prospects who Will Buy, not Those who SHOULD Buy

Why Aren’t You Closing More Prospects? Hint: maybe ‘need’ is not the best predictor