The Secret Button for Getting Your Ideas Approved

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StrategyDriven Alternative Selection ArticleGetting your idea approved requires a clear recommendation that’s paired with a compelling reason for your stakeholder to approve your idea. If you can combine that idea with a powerful rationale, you’ll get to “yes” before you know it.

Make Your Audience Care

At the heart of getting your pitch approved is making your audience care about it. The best way to make them care is to explain how your idea advances their agenda. Show them how your recommendation drives a result they’re interested in. The way you make this linkage is through the creation of the Core Idea.

A Core Idea is sometimes referred to as an “elevator pitch.” The reason it’s called an “elevator pitch” is because you have approximately 30 seconds to deliver your message. That’s the amount of time you’d be on the elevator with the stakeholder going from one floor to another. Imagine you get on an elevator and a senior stakeholder boards your elevator on the next floor. They proceed to ask you what you’re working on. You can either ramble on about all the data you’re gathering and the analysis you’re doing or you can give them a brief yet powerful explanation of the idea you’re pursuing and why it’s exciting. Ideally the reason it’s exciting is related to a metric or objective that stakeholder cares about. The latter approach is obviously preferable. By the time you finish your elevator ride together, the stakeholder knows what you’re working on and they’re supportive of you pursuing the idea.

A Core Idea is composed of two elements. The first half entails you explaining the “what we should do” part of your recommendation. The second half is the “why we should do it” part of your pitch. The “what we should do” component is your hypothesis as to what your best answer is. The “why we should do it” component depends upon your stakeholder. I refer to this component as “the button” – that metric or objective that makes your stakeholder sit up and take notice. Let’s look at a hypothesis about expanding our business into Italy and Germany. Let’s turn that hypothesis into a Core Idea. Below I’ve listed a few stakeholders and corresponding Core Ideas to pitch to them regarding the European market entry:

  • VP of Sales: “We should enter the Italian and German markets because we can generate $XMM in sales.”
  • Chief Financial Officer: “We should enter the Italian and German markets because we can generate $XMM in incremental profits.”
  • Chief Marketing Officer: “We should enter the Italian and German markets because we can increase our European market share by X%.”
  • VP of Human Resources: “We should enter the Italian and German markets because we can get access to a large, diverse talent pool.”

Notice the hypothesis is the same every time. I’m making a pitch for entering the Italian and German markets no matter who my stakeholder is. But the button changes depending upon who I’m trying to influence. The VP of Sales will care about sales. The CFO will care about profits. The Chief Marketing Officer will care about market share. The VP of HR will care about talent. I’m not pitching a one size fits all Core Idea. I’m tailoring it based upon who I’m trying to influence.

The odds of me getting their support go up when I target my communications this way. Imagine if I pitched the same Core Idea of “We should enter the Italian and German markets because we can generate $19MM to $23MM in sales” to all those stakeholders. The VP of Sales would be excited because the idea drives sales. The CFO might be interested but would wonder how profitable those sales will be. The CMO would ask how much of a market share increase those sales translate to and wouldn’t approve the idea until she had that answer. The VP of HR might feel frustrated because I didn’t explain the idea’s talent implications. That Core Idea would get some support from this crowd but it wouldn’t be unanimous and I would have questions I’d still need to answer.

Building a Core Idea: Hypothesis + Button

A good Core Idea combines an easily understood hypothesis with a button relevant to the stakeholder. First, get clear on your hypothesis. When you write down this part of your Core Idea, be specific and tell your audience what you want them to do. Write the hypothesis portion of your Core Idea in simple yet precise language. Saying “We should pilot a test of the new marketing model on our IT system” is more likely to be understood by everyone in the room – more so than “leverage our IT system.” If stakeholders understand your recommendation, they’ll know what you’re asking them to approve.

The second component of the Core Idea is the button. The button is the one metric or objective that your stakeholder cares about more than any other. Sometimes the button is obvious – the VP of Sales would like to drive sales. For other stakeholders the button might not be self-evident. In those situations you have a few choices for how to figure out the stakeholder’s button. You can get a copy of their goals or strategic plan. The metric they emphasize the most in those documents is their button. You can ask a member of their team what the stakeholder cares most about. You can ask the stakeholder what their objective is. If you can’t access any of those sources, think through which metric matters the most to them and start with that.

Once you’ve settled on a metric to use for the button, quantify it if possible. You may only have a rough value estimate. In many cases you won’t have an estimate at all. For now include whatever you have as a placeholder that will be refined later. In the examples I provided earlier I wrote “$XMM” or “X%” to serve as a placeholder. That’s acceptable – and encouraged – at this stage. The placeholder will serve as a reminder in future steps that you’ll need to do the analysis to solve for “X.”

If you use this “X” approach, think through X’s unit of measure. This process is about making it easy for your stakeholder to say “yes” to your pitch. If they think in percentages and you give them “$X,” you’re asking them to do math. The same holds true if they think in dollars and you give them “X%.” These extra steps aren’t required if you do the math for them. Small points like this may not seem to matter but these are the details that differentiate a rough pitch from an elegant one. Elegance is about simplicity and smoothness. These small changes are ways you can smooth the rough spots in your pitch.

About the Author

Mike Figliuolo is the author of The Elegant Pitch: Create a Compelling Recommendation, Build Broad Support, and Get it Approved. He’s also the co-author of Lead Inside the Box and the author of One Piece of Paper. He’s the managing director of thoughtLEADERS, LLC – a leadership development training firm. An Honor Graduate from West Point, he served in the U.S. Army as a combat arms officer. Before founding his own company, he was an assistant professor at Duke University, a consultant at McKinsey & Co., and an executive at Capital One and Scotts Miracle-Gro. He regularly writes about leadership on the thoughtLEADERS Blog.

Why the Need to Build Relationships is a Myth

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In 1937 Dale Carnegie published his celebrated How to Win Friends and Influence People – the first book suggesting sellers build relationships. 1937: with primitive transportation, sellers found clients closer to home; telephones were emerging (FYI – Morse Code was preferred for 40 years after the telephone was invented!); marketing avenues were limited, as was advertising (Sears Catalogue, Life Magazine, The Farmer’s Almanac, the local paper or general store). Obviously there was no technology, or global competition.

Selling focused on natural customers – face-to-face relationships with neighbors and friends. And buyers needed sellers for information and relevance. Relationships were vital.

It’s now 2016. We have a plethora of options to present our solutions. Our communications capability is global, cheap, and ubiquitous. With safe payment and delivery options, global competitors are pervasive. And – here’s the big one – our prospects have the ability to receive the information they need to easily choose a solution without us. Buyers contact us only when they’ve done their Pre-Sales change work and are ready. They don’t need a relationship with us.

The Ploy of Building Relationships

So why do we continue to think we must ‘build relationships’?? As a carryover from Carnegie, relationship building has been used as a ploy to manipulate a sale. If buyers like us, the thinking goes, they’ll buy. Here’s the reality:

Everyone knows you’re pretending. Until you’ve known people over time, through the good times and bad, you’re not in a relationship with anyone, especially when you’re trying to be nice so you can meet your own agenda.

Your ‘relationship’ will not facilitate a sale. Buyers cannot buy unless they have managed their internal change management journey that

  1. assembles all the people needed to be involved and hears their voices/concerns/criteria;
  2. gets buy-in from the Buying Decision Team that something must change;
  3. figures out how to meet everyone’s needs and make adjustments that fit without internal disruption.

Buyers can’t buy until they’re ready, willing, and able to bring something new into their status quo regardless of how ‘nice’ you are.

Buyers aren’t swayed by your niceness. It will, however, make you a preferred vendor WHEN ALL ELSE IS EQUAL and WHEN THEY HAVE REACHED THE POINT OF CHOICE.

It doesn’t work when your focus is a sale. Here is a real dialogue:

SELLER: HI SHARON! AND how are YOU today?? ?
SDM:[picking up the phone in tears, thinking it was my friend] My name’s not Sharon! And I’m rotten. I just put my dog down!

I offered an ‘authentic’ moment, useful as an opportunity to connect: he should have said ‘I’m sorry that happened. Obviously you can’t speak now. Is there a better time? This is a sales call and I’d like to discuss X when you’re feeling better.’

Whether for a large, complex sale, or a small personal item, buyers cannot buy until they have their internal ducks in a row, and then agree to seek an external solution (Step 10 of a 13 Step process). Because the sales model focuses on placing solutions – possible only after buyers have completed their Pre-Sales change management issues – we can’t discern where buyers are along their Buying Decision Path and buyers show up seeking a transactional connection. Our ‘niceness’ (which I’m differentiating from real customer service) is irrelevant; we just sound like everyone else trying to sell them something.

Differentiation?

I’m told sellers use the ‘make nice’ ploy to differentiate – difficult using the conventional sales route. Following acceptable marketing criteria of the era – words and phrases that are in vogue, graphics and colors that are deemed ‘what everyone is doing’ – it’s hard to be unique. And the myth of being a ‘Relationship Manager’ or ‘creating a relationship’ is supposed to show buyers why they should choose us over the competition. See?? I’m NICE!

Here’s the truth: buyers don’t start off wanting to buy anything whether it sounds like they have a need or not. They merely want solve a problem. But they have work to do before they’re ready. It’s only once they’ve determined their systemic change management requirements that they’ll buy – but by then they’ll haven chosen their list of vendors and solutions from online data or referrals.

By focusing on attempting to influence people to buy because we’re nice, we’re left out of their behind-the-scenes decision process and reduced to ‘being there’ when/if they show up (the low hanging fruit, or 5%). Not to mention chasing bad leads with folks who we think should be buyers (Prospects are those who WILL buy, not those who SHOULD buy.).

We can mitigate this and REALLY be nice by entering enter early and facilitating buyers along the route of their systemic change/Pre Sales path. I’ve coded the steps in their decision sequence and developed a model that facilitates Pre-Sales Buyer Readiness (Buying Facilitation®). You don’t have to use my model – create your own! But entering the buyer/seller interaction as a change facilitator will differentiate you and enable a true relationship.

Buyers would never buy from anyone else when a seller has taught the prospect how to assemble ALL of the folks necessary to be part of the Decision Team, or HOW to get everyone on board for change. Remember: they will do this anyway before they buy – they might as well do this with you.

There’s a way to make money AND make nice. It’s by being a true Servant Leader and change facilitator; by entering into a WE Space in which there is a tracit agreement that everyone will be served. Stop using ‘nice’ as a sales ploy. Stop focusing on the low hanging fruit. Add a change management focus and find real buyers who’ve already recognized a problem, and first facilitate them through their route to inclusive, congruent, systemic change. Then you can become part of the Buying Decision Team, make a difference, close more, waste less time, and act with integrity.

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]

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]

When is Internet Marketing Worthwhile?

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Generally, the answer to this question is “always”, but the answer is much more involved. Sure Internet marketing is worthwhile but as with any type of marketing it is only worthwhile if it is done well. For example, you can spend thousands of dollars on a television marketing campaign but if no one sees your commercials or your commercials do not reach your target audience and generate sales, the advertising and the money that you spent was a waste of time and effort. So perhaps a more appropriate answer to this question would be that Internet marketing is worthwhile when it works. This is a rather vague statement, I know. But I will try to explain what I mean further and show you how you can make Internet marketing work for your business.

One of the most basic and most important principles of marketing is to make sure you reach your target audience. This is important because your target audience are the people who are most likely going to be interested in purchasing your products or services. It is much easier to sell your products or services to those who already have an interest in the products and services you have to offer. Much easier than it is to convince those who are not interested in your products or services at all. As an example consider a business who sells fishing rods. You will want to market your products to those who enjoy fishing either competitively or as a leisure activity because among this audience you are likely to find people who may be interested in purchasing a new fishing rod. It would make sense to place an advertisement for your business on a website selling bait and tackle or a website which organizes fishing trips in exotic locations. Conversely it would not make sense to place your advertisement on a website selling telescopes because you are not likely to reach a large target audience here. There may be some stargazers with an interest in fishing but your advertising dollars and efforts would be better spent placing advertisements with websites more closely related to your business.

Another factor to consider when purchasing advertising space on another Internet website is traffic the amount of traffic the other website receives. This is significant because you want to place your advertisement on a website which is closely related to your own and likely to attract a similar audience but you also want your advertisement to receive a large amount of attention. For this reason, it is important for your advertisement to appear on a website which receives a great amount of traffic each month. This will help to ensure your business is getting a great deal of exposure through this advertising.

When it comes to Internet advertising, there is a fine line between great advertising and spam. Some business owners get carried away trying to get as much exposure as possible and can sometimes go overboard and wind up being considered spam. Internet users who see your advertisement in a couple of key locations will likely notice the advertisement and may be compelled to visit your website immediately or may keep your website in mind for future use. However, Internet users who see your advertisement everywhere they look are likely to view your advertisement as spam. This can be harmful because they are not likely to visit your website because they expect it to not be worthwhile.

In any Internet marketing campaign, it is important to carefully monitor the results of your marketing efforts and make changes to your campaign as necessary. This is important because you want to make sure your marketing efforts are paying off and the best way to do this is to evaluate the results of your advertising carefully. One way to do this is to place specially coding in each one of your advertisements so you will know which advertisements are generating business for you and which ones are not. You can use this information to decide whether you should modify the ineffective website or stop running these advertisements. If you decide to modify these ads, you will want to continue to monitor the results to determine whether or not the changes made the advertisements more effective.

Good luck and happy advertising!

About the Author

John MontanaJohn Montana has been a successful salesman since 1990. He currently lives with his wife and travels between Chicago and Los Angeles. He created his site – ABMSNOW to offer tips and ideas on how to become better at selling… no matter what your product is.

Sales, Marketing and Social Can Be More Successful: hint – it’s not about your content

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Sales, marketing, and social marketing attempt to place solutions and create relationships by supplying great content, discovering likely prospects, and creating trust. Unfortunately sellers end up closing a small fraction – less than 5% – of those they reach, and marketers and social end up closing even less. Our products are terrific. So what’s causing our failure?

Problems With Our Current Thinking

Here’s a bit of flawed thinking that exacerbates the problems:

  • Sellers believe prospects are folks who SHOULD buy (those with a ‘need’) rather than those who WILL buy (those who achieve consensus and set up a way to manage any change a purchase involves, and are ready and able to buy regardless of urgency of need).
  • Marketers believe that content is king, that offering the right content at the right time enables a buying decision. But we don’t know the role the reader plays on the Buying Decision Team, how or when our content is being used, and if it’s making a difference in the buying decision (i.e. it might be just a resource);
  • Social believes that by engaging in relationships over time and developing trust, followers will come back when they are ready. But because we can’t know their decision path, or associates who need to buy-in to any change, or internal political issues, we can’t know if we are spending time wisely.

We can facilitate buying decisions by employing different thinking to avoid:

  1. Merely guessing at, or manipulating, our conversations or offerings without knowing where along their decision path our buyers are, and how many of their Buying Decision Team are on board;
  2. Playing a numbers game to find and pitch those with a supposed ‘need’, assuming our content persuades buyers to buy or take action;
  3. Neglecting possible actions that can facilitate a buyer’s off-line decision steps.

It’s time to add some new thinking to what we’re doing.

What I Learned In The Trenches

By focusing on placing solutions, we’re missing the first 9 specific steps in a 13 step buying decision path that have nothing to do with our solution:

  • People have complicated issues (personal, systemic, organizational, and all criteria-based) to handle before they can buy or change. They only buy when all issues are managed regardless of need (systems congruence trumps need);
  • Buying includes change; change means disruption; consensus helps manage the disruption before it’s a problem; each person involved brings unique criteria and voice and shifts the buying criteria (i.e. until the entire Buying Decision Team is formed, weighs in, and agrees, there is no way to accurately define ‘needs’).
  • Given politics, internal relationship issues, history and future, it’s challenging, but necessary, to design a route through to change (in this case a purchase) that includes the people, rules, relationships, and group outcomes to avoid resistance and fallout.

I learned this as both a sales person and an entrepreneur. When Merrill Lynch hired me a stockbroker in the 1970s, I became a million-dollar producer my first year. But I couldn’t figure out why everyone with a need (especially those I had a great relationship with) didn’t always buy what I thought they needed. Where did they go?
When I started up my tech company in London in the 80s I realized the problem: as a buyer myself, my direct needs were often superseded by the social, political, organizational, and relational considerations I had to manage. When sellers came to pitch they worked hard to understand my needs in the area their solution served, and gave fine pitches, but as outsiders had no way to handle or understand the fights I was having with the Board, or the issues the distributor was having with their sales force. Nor did anyone even try.

The sales model, I realized when faced with great pitches and lovely sales folks, was not designed facilitate the behind-the-scenes non-need-related issues I had to manage before I could buy anything. I realized that all the great content, all the lovely relationships, all the ‘needs’ I had that matched their solutions, were worthless if I couldn’t manage the off-line, ‘Pre Sales’ issues that would be involved if I purchased anything. So, “Yes” to need; “No” to Buyer Readiness. And the sales model has no skills that address this problem because it is personal, idiosyncratic, and systems-based, and lie outside of the focus of placing solutions. I’ve heard it said that 80% of buyers you’re following now will buy a similar product (not yours) within 2 years of your connection; that’s the time it took them to make decisions that wouldn’t disrupt – the time of the sales cycle.

I then developed a facilitation approach (Buying Facilitation®) for my own sales team to add to the front end of the sales model to first facilitate Buyer Readiness – the steps buyers would have to take internally anyway and without Buying Facilitation® take a helluva lot longer. My team then added a new focus, and entered conversations as change management facilitators first, then selling when/if buyers were ready (more were ready, and much, much quicker, with no chasing around and we were able to disengage very early from those who could never buy.). After all, until they were able to determine if they COULD buy (and still maintain systems congruence) they could never be buyers regardless of need (the reason folks with a real need don’t buy). I continue to pose this question: do you want to sell? Or have someone buy? They are two different activities, and the sales model only handles the sales end; the buying end is change management.

Rule: the time it takes buyers to manage their off-line, idiosyncratic change issues is the length of the sales cycle. We were then able to get onto the Buying Decision Team early, lead buyers quickly through their unique decisions, and became great relationship managers, not to mention servant leaders. Our sales tripled and the time to close was reduced by two thirds; our relationships with clients were cemented and we avoided competition and price issues.

The takeaway here for marketers and social is the recognition that we are largely ignoring the hidden, systemic issues going on within our buyers’ environments that are not available to outsiders yet fundamental for any change to happen. We keep pushing content, hoping and praying that it will reach the right people at the right time. So long as we continue to focus on solution placement, we lose sales that we needn’t. That is our Achilles Heel. And it doesn’t have to be.

What’s The Role Of Change Management?

Buyers and followers don’t know their journey to change when they begin and hence take longer than necessary to figure it out. But figure it out they must. And we can help them, and make our value proposition our ability to be their GPS, so long as our focus is to facilitate change, not push or manipulate to make a sale. Plus, it’s an entirely different skill set.

There are two elements of Buying Facilitation® that can be added to create a ‘pull’ that’s change- and decision-focused.

  1. Enter as a change facilitator. Instead of coding, noticing, tracking details that will help us guess at who’s reading, who’s a decision maker, where they might be in their sales cycle, etc. let’s begin listening for, and designing, tools that facilitate each step of the movement along the decision path that change decisions goes through; let’s ensure they discover the right people to be involved (some not so obvious) and help them build the necessary internal consensus. Currently we now listen for what we want to hear rather than listening for issues with decision making, change or choice. I’ve developed a new way to listen (Listening for Systems) that is non-biased.
  2. Guide buyers through change management at the start of the sales process. Regardless of the type or size of the solution, buyers cannot buy until they are ready internally, and sales doesn’t have tools to focus to handle systemic change management without bias. Facilitative Questions are a type of criteria-recognition tool that facilitates thinking using Servant Leader thinking. Conventional questions are biased in favor of the seller; Facilitative Questions are biased in favor of the buyer.

It’s possible to develop assessments, questionnaires, intelligent contact sheets, CRM tools that enter in the right place along the decision path, provide the capability to lead buyers and followers through the full complement of steps they must take, making it possible to send out just the appropriate data at the right point in the cycle, and facilitate the consensus and buy-in as they quickly ready themselves for change. We can add these to the sales, marketing, and social models to truly serve our buyers and followers and close more. It will be an addition, and the results will stronger relationships and more conversions.

The problem has never been your solution; the problem is that we overlook the idiosyncratic stages of Buyer Readiness that are not involved with using our solutions – helping buyers address their unknowable change issues (independent of need, and based on people, rules, relationships, history, etc.) so they can get their ducks in a row to buy anything. By adding a facilitation tool directed at managing change before we try to sell, we can find more clients, and sell more, faster. And we can become true servant leaders.

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 NYTimes Business BestsellerSelling 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]