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
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
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:
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:
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 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 January 20th, 2025
Posted In: Sales