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Control: What does it give you? What do you lose? Where is the real control?

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Recently I listened while a coaching client pitched his solution precisely when he could have facilitated his prospect through the contingent issues she had to handle before she could buy anything.

SDM: Why did you pitch when you pitched?

CL: It gave me control over the conversation, and gave her the data she needed to understand why she should buy.

SDM: So what sort of control did you achieve?

CL: Now she knows how our solution will meet her needs.

SDM: Do you know if she heard you? Did your pitch convince her? How do you know she knows she needs your solution? Has she assembled the appropriate folks to begin discussing problems or change? Have they already tried a workaround that proved impractical and now must consider a purchase? Have they resolved any implementation/user issues that a new solution would cause? Have they reached consensus? Or if they’re individual buyers, have they addressed their own internal change issues?

You’re assuming a need before the buyer gets her ducks in a row: she can’t understand her needs until she’s handled her contingent change issues; she can’t hear about possible solutions – your pitch – until she knows what to listen for. Just because she fits your buyer profile doesn’t mean she’s a prospect.

A prospect is someone who will buy, not someone who should buy. You spend too much time chasing folks who fit a profile but will never buy; you can’t recognize a real buyer because you’re only listening for ‘need’ and forgetting the work they must do to prepare for, decide upon, and get consensus for, a purchase. And that stops you from finding/creating those who can buy but may have not completed their buying decision process. This prospect can’t do anything with your information – unless you got lucky, and found one of the few who have completed their groundwork at the moment you connect with them.

CL: I know what they need.

SDM: That’s not possible. She doesn’t know what she needs yet. You don’t know her buyer readiness or if she’s representing everyone else involved or where/if the team is stuck somewhere along the Buying Decision Path. You don’t live with them; only they can amalgamate all of the voices, givens, change issues, or future considerations and come up with the full fact pattern of a ‘need.’ People merely want to resolve a problem, not make a purchase. Buying anything is the very last thing they’ll do, regardless of the need or the efficacy of your solution.

CL: But our solution is a perfect match for her needs.

SDM: Having needs is different from being ready, willing, or able to buy. She’s got a lot of work to do before she’s ready. Instead of first focusing on selling, start as an unbiased coach. Facilitate her route through consensus and change so you’re there at the right time with real prospects and never waste time on those who can’t buy. You could even speed up the decision path and enable/facilitate those who would have bought later.

CL: I have no idea where she is along her Decision Path. Isn’t that just price, vendor or solution type?

SDM: Buying is the last thing she’ll do. She must first assemble everyone to design a solution that fits everyone’s needs and avoids major disruption. Folks would much rather maintain their status quo if the price of change is too high – and you can make it easy for her to manage her change so she’s ready to buy if possible. If it’s not possible for her to get consensus, you’ll know in about 10 minutes she’s not a buyer, so long as you stay away from discussing your solution. She has to do this stuff anyway.

Giving her data too early doesn’t help: no matter how good or relevant your data is it’s useless until they’ve carefully determined they can’t fix their problem without some outside help. This is the length of the sales cycle. Be involved early as a Buying Facilitator and have real control. Or keep closing the same 5% that show up as the low hanging fruit.

What Control Do You Have?

As sellers or influencers, here’s what we’ve got control over: pitch, solution data, content, questions, listening biases, assumptions. Focusing on understanding and biasing material toward Marketing Mary’s ‘needs’ is specious: we’re outsiders and can never understand the unique composition of anyone else’s culture that has created, and maintains, the ‘need’ and would have to change to bring in something new.

Here’s what we can’t control: The prospect’s internal ill-defined decision-making process; the assembly of the people, problems, vendor issues, interdepartmental politics, relationships, balance sheets, corporate/team rules; their history; what criteria a solution must meet; consensus and change issues. Until buyers make sense of this they can’t responsibly buy. Even individuals of small items go through this process in a simple way.

No matter how good our content, presentation, pitch, or marketing is, it will only be heard by those ready for it and then you’re playing a numbers game. By trying to control the elements YOU think should be involved, or offering information/content where YOU believe it’s needed, you’re restricting successful outcomes to your bias of what you want to achieve, and will sell to only those who match your restricted criteria.

You can only have an outsider’s superficial understanding. Folks who need your solution but haven’t completed their change work will be turned off, not hear you, not understand how you can help, regardless of whether they need you or not. Even offering a price reduction will only attract those who have done their Pre-Sales change work first. The cost of change is higher than your price reduction.

You have no control over others; mentioning your solution details doesn’t give you control over the Buying Decision Path.

You can, however, have real control by facilitating prospects down their Decision Path to design their own change process that includes you as the natural provider – or eliminate them quickly if it becomes obvious they can’t ever buy. You can either wait for those who’ve completed their Decision Path to show up, call/chase enough people to find those who are ready, or become a Facilitator and help the real buyers through their path quickly and shorten the sales cycle.

They must do this with you or without you. Use your need for control to facilitate them in discovering their own best solution, not manipulate them into using yours. Where they are the same, you’ll make an easy sale.

About the Author

Sharon Drew MorgenSharon Drew Morgen is a visionary, original thinker, and thought leader in change management and decision facilitation. She works as a coach, trainer, speaker, and consultant, and has authored 9 books including the New York Times Business Bestseller Selling with Integrity. Morgen developed the Buying Facilitation® method (www.sharondrewmorgen.com) in 1985 to facilitate change decisions, notably to help buyers buy and help leaders and coaches affect permanent change. Her newest book What? www.didihearyou.com explains how to close the gap between what’s said and what’s heard. She can be reached at [email protected]

Do you understand your buyer’s buying journey well-enough to influence it?

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Are your buyers buying differently now – and you have not changed the way you sell?

On September 20-22, the developer of the decision facilitation model Buying Facilitation® will be running a rare public training program in Boston to teach you how to help buyers buy.

Sharon Drew Morgen, author of the NYTimes Business Bestseller Selling with Integrity and Dirty Little Secrets: Why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell and what you can do about it, will be running her learning facilitation program for 18 participants.

Buyers are buying differently these days, and sales people need additional skills to offer real value add over the solution focus of the internet. Buying Facilitation® is the missing piece in the sales process: it helps buyers manage their behind-the-scenes issues that have become more complex than ever before, and gives sellers the ability to get inside with them.

Dirty Little Secrets is Sharon Drew’s latest ground-breaking book on systems, change, and decision making. It introduces Buying Facilitation®, teaching readers how change happens and the action decisions take place. Whether you are a sales exec, or a change consultant, this material is state-of-the art decision making material that will help sales close quickly (regardless of the industry or solution), and give sellers and change agents the tools to become servant leaders.

Register Today: take the program that is only rarely available in a public program setting. Join an exclusive group and get privately trained by the developer of Buying Facilitation®.

Sales only manages the needs assessment and solution placement end of the buying decision. But buyers have work to do before they can make a purchase: they must handle the political, rules/relationship issues that go on behind-the-scenes to get buy-in. And selling – even with the best technology and data – doesn’t go behind-the-scenes.

Buying Facilitation® is based on systems thinking and how change happens. It details, and helps influence, the buying/buy-in decision journey.

This is a rare opportunity to study directly with Sharon Drew. This program is for sales folks, change agents, and consultants.

Join Sharon Drew for 3 days on Monday – Wednesday, September 20-22, to discover:

  • how change happens – within the buyer’s environment;
  • how decisions get made – to buy, to implement a change;
  • how to formulate Facilitative Questions, use decision sequences for decision making, and help internal systems buy-in to a purchase quickly;
  • how to prospect, close, avoid objections and become part of the Buying Decision Team on the first call.

To register, http://www.newsalesparadigm.com/3day_bft.php
Syllabus: http://www.newsalesparadigm.com/ebooks/bft_3days.pdf

To contact Sharon Drew Morgen with questions about the program or the outcomes, contact: [email protected].

About Sharon Drew Morgen

Sharon Drew Morgen is the visionary behind Buying Facilitation®, the change management model that navigates through the decision making process. She’s written 7 books and over 1000 articles on this material. Her clients consistently achieve a 400-600% increase in revenue. Learn more about Sharon Drew Morgen and Buying Facilitation® at: www.sharondrewmorgen.com.

Get Buy-In First Before Initiating Strategic Change

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StrategyDriven Change Management ArticleInitiatives involve change. Yet no matter how essential or critical the change, change is fraught with pitfalls that are costly.

The problem is that too often the change is a push from the top, with the assumption being that because the initiative is important, and well presented, that folks will naturally buy-in. But we know that’s not true.

The conventional way of achieving buy-in usually involves some sort of influencing:

  • find the decision makers in a group or those deemed to be ‘in the know’;
  • inundate these folks with the importance of this particular new initiative;
  • get influencers involved with creating and testing a prototype;
  • get 5 or 6 influencers to use it and start a buzz going;
  • write up case studies and send them out to the user population;
  • test the results, make the necessary changes, and start the implementation.

Basically, it’s a sales job: it’s information-driven and does not manage a belief change; individuals are often left out of consideration; communication is often top down rather than across contexts and individual-criteria based.

A Change Initiative Deemed Successful

I interviewed the CEO of a well-known copy company, asking him how he managed change. He told me of a recent initiative that had needed buy-in from 30,000 employees. He spent over a million dollars on a high quality dog and pony show – and then went on the road for 6 months to introduce the initiative.

He said everyone bought in. Everyone I asked? Well, yes, except for about 10%.
SDM: What happened to those 10%?
CEO: It became a retention issue.
SDM: You fired them? You fired 3,000 people?
CEO: Yes, but it wasn’t a problem. They were deadwood: the folks that had been around 18-20 years.

He fired the core – the very history – of his company because he didn’t know how to get buy-in. Others have since told me that a 10% fall-out rate is great, that it could have been worse.

We have assumed that by asking our target audience to make behavioral shifts – often leading to new job descriptions, or new relationships and skills – we can get buy-in. But we are merely pitching an idea from our own map of the world and assuming that the listeners will react as we want. We are pushing from the outside, hoping to get specific results from the inside.

The Systems of Change

We actually have no idea what criteria needs to be met before others are willing to change. We have no idea what internal issues we’re asking people to shift.

We don’t realize that before change can happen, a series of internal agreements must be accomplished to ensure the congruency of the unique system the person or group has lived with for some time.

Until or unless a person or group is consciously willing to support a request for change, they will merely attempt to carry out what they think they’ve understood.

But what does that mean? It means people will only do what they are comfortable with, to the level they agree. It’s quite impractical to assume that others will change because they’re told to.

Let’s think about that for a moment. People-systems include all of the criteria – rules, roles, relationships, beliefs, partners, economic factors, branding and competition issues, ego needs – which the people have already bought into and acted upon when entering the system (i.e. becoming an employee).

In fact, the entire range of criteria that folks have originally bought into is relatively impervious to change, otherwise it wouldn’t be a system. And anything new that enters that system must parallel the same norms, rules, beliefs, and implied outcomes included in the status quo, or the system will reject it.

In other words, if a team has been doing a job based on one set of rules, they won’t change their behaviors just because a new set of rules has been issued. They would certainly individually give it a try because the request comes from on-high, but they might not know how to work together as a team with the new rules, or they might individually be carrying out functions inappropriately because their unconscious annoyance might kick in, or whatever.

Indeed, when others must acquiesce to change, when rules and roles and norms, relationships and skills must change as a result, the ‘inside’ needs to shift more than the ‘outside’ – the inner beliefs rather than the external behavior or rules.

Change Our Beliefs

What if we believed that:

  1. unless each person – each person – that will be a part of the change process has to buy-in to the change before they are presented with an action plan or they might end up unwittingly (or ‘wittingly’) sabotaging the operation;
  2. a system will reject any element that threatens its status quo;
  3. people are doing the best they can at any moment, but may have conflicts: What if the change encroaches on their levels of responsibility, or interaction with colleagues or clients or other departments? What about managing new partner relationships? A lot of ideas and responsibilities may be competing in the same category for the same mind share;
  4. unless there is buy-in at the belief level, people may not necessary know how, or be (un)consciously willing, to change;
  5. people are generally willing to change and be compliant at a conscious level but un/sub conscious issues may create a different set of buy-in behaviors that may be counter productive to the ultimate change requested;
  6. decisions don’t need to get made right away – the status quo has successfully been in place until ‘now’;
  7. disagreement up-front might end up shedding light on inherent problems with a proposed implementation, and managing the disagreement might yield a more robust solution.

In other words, people may not be aware that they have issues that are causing them to not be compliant with the change request, and that without discovering and then managing these issues up front, there will be implementation issues that may derail the success of the project. Not to mention how the change process might be enhanced as buy-in discussions might lead to increased creativity and leadership.

Let’s approach change by recognizing that buy-in should be achieve before attempting to implement any change initiative.

About the Author

Sharon Drew Morgen is founder of Morgen Facilitations, Inc. (www.newsalesparadigm.com). She is the visionary behind Buying Facilitation®, the decision facilitation model that enables people to change with integrity. A pioneer who has spoken about, written about, and taught the skills to help buyers buy, she is the author of the acclaimed New York Times Business Bestseller Selling with Integrity and the new book Dirty Little Secrets: Why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell and what you can do about it. She lives in Austin, Texas.