With untold millions of sales professionals in the world, sellers play a role in any economy: sellers are uniquely positioned to make a difference. 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).
WHAT’S WRONG WITH SALES?
The current sales model is a time-waster, restricts success, and is horribly inefficient. Sellers close 5% of prospects and waste 95% of their time (approximately 130 hours a month per seller); product data is well-represented online so pitches based on product details may be irrelevant; sellers connect with only those who are ready to buy, and ignore the possibility of facilitating and serving people en route to becoming buyers.
Until people have tried, and failed, to fix their problem themselves, and then figured out how to manage any disruption that a new solution might cause their environment, they aren’t buyers. It’s only when:
will they seek help through a purchase. Indeed, buying is a change management problem before it’s a solution choice issue.
People don’t want to buy anything, they merely seek to resolve a problem at the least ‘cost’ (risk) to their system. And the sales model, using eyeballs, content, price, and needs assessments seeks to place solutions, ensuring that the only people they find are the low hanging fruit. Indeed: selling doesn’t cause buying. Sales focuses on only the final steps of a buying decision and overlooks the change process necessary for would-be prospects to even self-identify as buyers.
In fact, 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 needed and worthwhile solutions end up wasting a helluva lot of time being ignored and rejected.
It’s not the solution being sold that’s the problem, it’s the process of pushing solutions rather than first helping those who will become buyers facilitate their necessary change process that’s mistimed and misguided, leading to the win-lose quality of sales: sales becomes a product/solution push into a closed, resistive system, rather than an expansive, collaborative experience between seller and buyer wherein both attain trust and a win-win.
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 begin conversations at the point where people are considering change, and lead them through change management before selling, sellers can truly facilitate them through all of the issues they must resolve (even those that aren’t obvious), have all stakeholders in the loop 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.
IS SELLING PREDATORY?
Seller’s restricted focus on placing solutions, listening for needs (which cannot be fully known until the full change management process is complete) rather than for ability to serve, all but insures that kindness, respect, and true facilitation are unwittingly overlooked. A major factor is the one-sided communication based on the needs of the seller:
I’ve been a seller, trainer, consultant, and sales coach since the 1970s, been a buyer as founder of a tech start up 1983-1988, and have personally worked with dozens of global corporations and untold thousands of sellers. I see sales as a near-predatory job: sellers spend their time seeking and following, pitching and positioning, networking and calling to find those few set up to buy something, and ignoring a large population of potential buyers who merely aren’t ready, but could be with true facilitation.
Selling is fraught with guesswork and hope, manipulation and persuasion, white lies and exaggerations – not to mention highly ineffective when the time spent vs sales closed ratio is examined.
Not only are we wasting time pushing/chasing folks deemed prospects (A real prospect is one who WILL buy, not someone who SHOULD buy; the current sales model doesn’t know the difference.), but the nature of the client’s environments causes closing to take 30% longer. And the ubiquitous nature of the internet makes most pitches and presentations moot. In fact, buyers often know more than sellers.
Sales unwittingly ignores the real problem: it’s in the buying, not the selling. The sales model’s focus on placing solutions keeps sellers from using their positions as knowledge experts and Leaders to facilitate buyers down their own path to excellence.
Truth is, sellers can never know all the elements that have created and maintained a prospect’s status quo, or what needs to happen internally for them to be ready to make a purchase. And here is where sellers can truly serve. Sellers can facilitate the buying decision/change management path to help folks discover what a congruent fix looks like, and in the process create trust, respect, and serving.
SALES IS SHORT-SIGHTED
Indeed, the job of ‘sales’ as merely a solution-placement vehicle is short-sighted.
It’s possible to truly serve clients AND close more sales, by adding a Buying Facilitation® capability that leads the steps of change, expands entry points into the buy cycle, makes the buying decision process much more efficient and makes sales a spiritual practice (that closes dramatically more sales in a fraction of the time). Here’s my definition of ‘spiritual’:
Different from sales, which
To elaborate:
Aspiring to a win-win
Win-win means both sides get what they need in equal measure. Sellers believe that placing product or resolving a problem offers an automatic win-win but that’s not wholly accurate.
Buying isn’t as simple as choosing a solution; buyers first must resolve the entire system that created and maintains their problem (problems never occur uniquely). The very last thing they 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.
Sellers waste a valuable opportunity to facilitate buying by only wanting to sell. If we enter earlier, work with them as Buying Facilitators to help them facilitate their change, sellers can capture and serve more real prospects, and spend less time trying to convert those who aren’t yet buyers.
Believe it or not it becomes a very efficient process and great time saver: 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. Win-win. [All the change issues buyers must address are in my book Dirty Little Secrets].
The whole is greater than the sum of its parts
There are several pieces to the puzzle here.
We are all here to serve each other
Sellers understand enough about the systems in their areas of expertise to help buyers traverse their change route that could lead to a sale. With an entry point of systems excellence rather than solution placement, buyers immediately recognize the benefits from a collaboration with the seller and are happy to invite sellers onto their decision team and not seek other competitors. Win-win. The Facilitative Question I developed for Wachovia’s Small Business Banker’s cold calls helped prospects immediately realize a problem they had to resolve rather than say ‘No’ to an appointment request:
“How are you currently adding banking resources to the bank you’re currently using for those times you seek additional support?”
With no disrespect, no push, no information gathering or asking for an appointment, this Facilitative Question above (as one of several asked in a specific sequence, using specific words) merely pointed to the problem they might have to resolve over time. [Note: I invented Facilitative Questions to lead brains through to change, rather than conventional questions that elicit biased data.] The results were astounding: against 100 prospecting calls and a control group: 10% appointments vs 27%; 2 closes in 11 months vs 19 closes in 3 months; we facilitated discovery immediately and served: we actually helped folks figure out their own configuration for change. And we only visited those who could close.
One more note: people are happy to buy in a short time frame once they know, and figure out how to manage, the full set of change issues they’ll have to deal with (Fire a team? Retrain users? Get rid of software they’ve used for years?). As I’ve said above, they must do this before they can buy. And sellers’ aren’t helping them. But they could. And truly serve them in the process.
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 or motive to enter earlier where buyers are not at the point of even knowing if – let alone what – they might buy. Let’s expand the definition of a buying decision as the route down the 13-step path from the status quo through to congruent change. Includes the people, policies, relationships, and history – the systems issues that ensure Systems Congruence – that maintain the status quo and must be addressed before they consider buying anything.
Once buyers figure out their congruent route to change, they won’t have objections, will close themselves, and there’s no competition: buyers are the ones with the ‘right answer’; sellers facilitate change management first and then sell once everything is in place. No call backs and follow up and ignored calls. Win-win.
No one has anyone else’s answer
By adding Buying Facilitation®, everyone focuses on uncovering the right questions. Collaborative decisions get made that will serve everyone.
Let’s change the focus: instead relegating sales to a product/solution placement endeavor, let’s add the job of facilitation to first find people en route to becoming buyers, then lead them through to their own type of ‘excellence’ through their internal change process first, and then using the sales model when they’ve become buyers. Then buyers make better, quicker, more congruent decisions – with more/quicker sales, less tire-kickers, better differentiation, and no competition, and sales close in half the time.
THE NEW WAY
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 is a breakthrough innovator and original thinker, having developed new paradigms in sales (inventor Buying Facilitation®, listening/communication (What? Did you really say what I think I heard?), change management (The How of Change™), coaching, and leadership. She is the author of several books, including the NYTimes Business Bestseller Selling with Integrity and Dirty Little Secrets: why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell). Sharon-Drew coaches and consults with companies seeking out of the box remedies for congruent, servant-leader-based change in leadership, healthcare, and sales. Her award-winning blog carries original articles with new thinking, weekly. www.sharon-drew.com She can be reached at sharondrew@sharondrewmorgen.com.
Sharon Drew Morgen August 8th, 2022
Posted In: Communication, Listening, Sales