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It’s The Consensus, Stupid*

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Buying decisions happen well before buyers consider your solution regardless of their need or the efficacy of your solution, marketing, or content. In fact, a purchase is the very last thing that occurs in a string of events buyers must handle as they seek to solve a business problem.

One of the first things they must do is assemble the complete Buying Decision Team to garner the consensus necessary for change. Studies from the CEB show that a Buying Decision Team includes approximately 6 decision makers and untold influencers who must achieve consensus before considering how to resolve their problem, whether it’s a purchase or another fix. Let’s look at this from 3 angles:

  1. Buyers don’t initially know who belongs on the Buying Decision Team. The time it takes them to assemble the right people and hear their voices around fixing a business problem is part of the buying decision path. These issues are political, systemic, relational – not focused on need. We are not facilitating the assembly of the team.
  2. An external solution is considered only when there is consensus that an internal problem can’t be resolved with familiar resources. We are not facilitating the systemic discovery process that has little to do with our solution.
  3. An external fix causes disruption. It’s necessary to have consensus as to when, if, or how to bring in a new solution so disruption can be either avoided or planned for. We are not facilitating consensus as it’s unique and systemic.
  4. Any solution – internal change or an external purchase – must address the change management issues that result from anything new entering the status quo. We are not facilitating change but merely offering content on what might be a solution.

Content Is Not King

Content is merely one way the decision makers and influencers can learn about possible solutions when they are ready to begin thinking about options. Other solutions being considered include internal workarounds that will manage the problems more simply. A purchase is merely the very last thing buyers consider. We are limiting our success to a small segment of opportunity and should be facilitating decisions point before pushing solutions.

We can facilitate a buyer’s consensus from sales, marketing, and social, but not with the current sales or marketing models. Add Buying Facilitation® to your sales and marketing and enter earlier by first helping facilitate consensus. It’s not sales, nor is it solution driven – it’s a change facilitation model. But buyers have to do it with you or without you. It might as well be with you. And THEN you can sell your solution.

*Thanks to Bill Clinton: “It’s the Economy, Stupid.”

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 Dirty Little Secrets: Why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell and what you can do about it.

Contact Sharon Drew at [email protected] and add her Buying Facilitation® model to your sales or marketing solutions. Then you can influence the entire decision path, not just the back end.

Help Buyers Buy: Facilitate The Buy Path, Then Sell

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Your solution is the last thing a buyer needs. Literally.

The sales model is a solution placement model. It does a fine job assessing needs, pitching, presenting, and placing solutions. Yet we close no more than 7% of prospects from first call, spend huge amounts of money creating presentations, sites, and marketing materials bring that in a fraction of the business they were designed to, spend inordinate amounts of resource responding to RFPs that fail, and attempting to make appointments with prospects who either reject us or don’t buy. We waste at least 90% of a sales professional’s time. As a result we hire more people and set our budgets accordingly.

We have great solutions. Our sales folks are professionals. What’s the problem?

The problem is that buyers don’t buy the way we sell. In fact, a purchase is the last step buyers take along their buy path, and we sit and wait for them to traverse their steps without having the proper skills to influence their journey from the start.

A Buying Decision is a Change Management Problem

To understand how buyers buy, we must understand systems and change. Buying anything, from a shirt to a company, a training program or a piece of software, is a change management activity. Something that has existed, and worked well-enough for a period of time, will be replaced by a relatively unknown entity. Change. And change is systemic: anything that touches the new element will be affected in an unknown way and potentially mess up the system. And systems won’t abide by disruption; we learned that in 6th grade chemistry.

Like all of us, buyers live in systems; everything within them chugs along together like a set of gears so the system remains stable. Stability – the status quo – gets maintained with rules and processes and job descriptions and relationships. Whatever doesn’t fit within the system gets chucked out because the system is sacrosanct. When there is a problem, the system creates workarounds so it can continue functioning; the problem then becomes part of the tapestry of the system. Only when there is no other option will the buyer face the potential disruption of bringing in something that is outside the system.

In order for buyers to buy and be willing to have something foreign enter their system, they need to first manage systemic change: they must get buy-in for the change, design new rules or roles, replace the old solution in a way that insures equilibrium is maintained, and last but not least, involve the managers, department heads, and sundry people who will touch the ultimate solution – folks not necessarily direct stakeholders or decision makers, but folks whose jobs will be effected by the change. Without managing this change, they will buy nothing, regardless of their need or the efficacy of your solution.

A buying decision is a systems problem. And sales acts as if the buyer’s problem were an isolated event.

Buying Includes a 13 Step Buy-in Change Process

There are unique change management issues that must be addressed before a purchase can occur. Indeed: until there is a clear path to change, there is no way to even know who is a prospect; before every appropriate voice is assembled and heard, there is no way to define a need. As outsiders focused on placing solutions, we have no ability to enter into the buyer’s environment and facilitate these activities because they are idiosyncratic and personal. And the time it takes them to figure out how to manage the backend change is the length of the sales cycle.

We’re currently entering at the end of the decision path: the very last thing a buyer needs is your solution. The last thing. But we can enter earlier. Here’s what we should be facilitating that is currently outside our purview and skill sets:

1. All – ALL – who will touch the new solution must have their voices heard. Usually it takes buyers a while to understand who must be included on the Buying Decision Team. In a small sale, it’s easier than a larger sale, but the process is the same.

It’s possible to facilitate our buyers in both assembling the full Buying Decision Team on the first or second call, and their discovery of the types of systems change they would need to address. They have to do this anyway: helping them speeds up the buying process and gets everyone at the table for an appointment.

2. Before a purchase, every element that would be disrupted needs to know how to compensate for change: tech folks must figure out their new scheduling or find outsourced support; sales and marketing must have a unified strategy to share budget; HR must get the right groups together, etc. It’s unique in each situation, although totally independent of need.
Sellers can use a facilitation model to navigate buyers through their change before they sell, so all areas that will be affected will know how to manage the change and be ready to buy. This speeds up the sales cycles and makes the seller a part of the Team.

9 out of the 13 steps in a buying decision involve systems change and include idiosyncratic, historic, and personal activities. Using only the sales model or marketing, a seller has no place at the table until it’s time to choose a solution. But we’re missing great opportunities to become real relationship managers and trusted advisors and suffering much longer sales cycles than necessary.

Use Buying Facilitation® with Sales

Selling and buying are two different activities. Change the way you are entering. Stop:

  • pitching, presenting, or discussing solutions before buyers have defined their route to change;
  • trying to get an appointment until the entire Buying Decision Team is assembled;
  • assuming because you’ve spoken to one or two people there is a need;
  • assuming that because there’s a need it’s a prospect;
  • basing your sale on your solution;
  • basing your sale on price (it has nothing to do with anything).

Instead, before selling:

  • facilitate excellence and buy-in, from the first call with the gatekeeper;
  • be a neutral navigator throughout the steps of change;
  • help assemble the complete Buying Decision Team (even for a small sale) with you on it;
  • recognize when a system cannot change and when it’s no longer a prospect (it’s got nothing to do with needing your solution).

Buyers don’t need you: they need to solve a business problem. And the business problem involves more of a solution than just your product. It’s time to help buyer’s buy.

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 Dirty Little Secrets: Why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell and what you can do about it.

Need help developing content, tools, training or questions that will enable a buyer’s buying decision process? A speaker at your next conference? Contact Sharon Drew at [email protected] or visit her website: www.buyingfacilitation.com.

StrategyDriven Welcomes Hank Moore

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The StrategyDriven family is proud to introduce Hank Moore as our newest contributing author!

Hank Moore is an internationally known business advisor, speaker and author. He is a Big Picture strategist, with original, cutting-edge ideas for creating, implementing and sustaining corporate growth throughout every sector of the organization. He is a Futurist and Corporate StrategistTM, with four trademarked concepts of business… heralded widely for ways to remediate corporate damage, enhance productivity and facilitate better business.

Hank is the highest level of business overview expert and is in that rarified circle of experts such as Peter Drucker, Tom Peters, Steven Covey, Peter Senge and W. Edwards Deming.

Hank has presented Think Tanks for five U.S. Presidents. He has spoken at five Economic Summits. As a Corporate StrategistTM, Hank speaks and advises companies about growth strategies, visioning, planning, executive-leadership development, futurism and the Big Picture issues which profoundly affect the business climate. The Business TreeTM is his trademarked approach to growing, strengthening and evolving business, while mastering change. He conducts independent performance reviews and Executive Think Tanks nationally… with the result being the companies’ destinies being charted.

Hank has provided senior level advising services for more than 5,000 client organizations (including 100 of the Fortune 500), companies in transition (startup, re-engineering, mergers, going public), public sector entities, professional associations and non-profit organizations. He has worked with all major industries over a 40-year career. He advises at the Executive Committee and board levels, providing Big Picture ideas.

He is the nation’s premiere expert on Big Picture issues… and how core business specialists may enlarge their scope and assume mantles of greater responsibility and recognition. Hank has overseen 400 strategic plans and corporate visioning processes. He has conducted 300+ performance reviews of organizations. He is a mentor to senior management. This scope of wisdom is most often utilized by CEOs and board members.

Hank speaks and advises companies about growth strategies, visioning, planning, executive-leadership development, futurism and the Big Picture issues which profoundly affect the business climate. The Business TreeTM is his trademarked approach to growing, strengthening and evolving business, while mastering change. Business visionary Peter Drucker termed Hank’s Business TreeTM as the most original business model of the past 40 years.

The Business TreeTM is the only book that encompasses a full-scope business perspective, whereas the other books are micro-niche focused. This book contains original case studies in which the author was directly involved, not a rehash of others that have appeared elsewhere. This is the only book to offer an original business model, one that has been utilized in the author’s track record of success over the last 20 years. These qualities make it invaluable for the corporate and small business markets.

Additional Information

Hank has written numerous articles and several books on a wide range of business and management topics. His book, The Business Tree: Growth Strategies and Tactics for Surviving and Thriving, reveals his trademarked approach to growing, strengthening and evolving business, while mastering change. Two of Hank’s insightful articles include:

Additional materials may be found on Hank’s website, www.HankMoore.com

Speaking Engagements

A captivating speaker, Hank is featured at some of the most prestigious conferences and gatherings held each year. To learn more about Hank’s presentation topics and availability, visit any one of the speakers bureaus listed below:

Decisions are Never Emotional

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StrategyDriven Decision Making ArticleImagine if instead of believing that unexpected decisions are emotional, we assume they have a very specific reason, even if we don’t understand or agree. Then what? Is it just easier to believe the other person to be irrational?

Decision-Makers Must Comply with Their System

Because decision-makers take actions that outsiders regularly believe to be ‘irrational’, we say that they are either ’stupid’ or making an ‘emotional’ decision. Neuroscientists call these decisions irrational or emotional as well. But we – the outsiders and neuroscientists – are rather biased: we see a problem, believe we know the solution, and consider our solution to be the best because it’s the most rational. We forget that every person, every group or family, every system if you will, has a very unique and idiosyncratic set of beliefs and criteria that determine their choices. And what may look irrational from the outside is very, very rational on the inside, even if sometimes unconscious.

Indeed, before anyone makes any decision, they consider it against their own beliefs. Would you walk over to a stranger in a park and harm him? No? Why not? That would be an emotional, irrational decision. But you wouldn’t do it because you have internal, unconscious beliefs and values that wouldn’t allow you to harm another person – especially a stranger.

No one makes decisions outside of their beliefs. The internal, private ’system’ that makes up our functioning rules (as individuals or groups) is sacrosanct, and if any decision might render the system useless, or ‘less-than,’ then another decision will be made. And outsiders cannot understand what’s going or become a part of that decision because, well, because they are outsiders.

If you were going to start working out daily, you’d have to either get up earlier or move something else in your schedule around. You’d have to probably start considering to eat healthier, and maybe stop having so many sugary drinks. It’s not about the gym, or about the weights; it’s about your system and how it’s willing to change so it all becomes a seamless whole that operates in tandem to serve you.

Decision-makers live in a unique system of rules and roles and relationships, history and initiatives, feelings and vendors and budgets. Change anything and everything else gets touched in some way. Before decision-makers decide, they must figure out how to manage all this so it ends up butter-side-up; understanding their needs, doing SPIN or Sandler or Relationship sales, or or or, only manages the problem end of the decision – the very, very last action that decision-makers need to take – AFTER they’ve managed their systems change bits. And again, no matter what we ask or what we are told, we can never, ever understand someone else’s system, just as they can’t understand ours.

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.

StrategyDriven Podcast Episode 39 – Making Change Work: A Radical Approach to Change Management, Real Leadership

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StrategyDriven Podcasts focus on the tools and techniques executives and managers can use to improve their organization’s alignment and accountability to ultimately achieve superior results. These podcasts elaborate on the best practice and warning flag articles on the StrategyDriven website.

Episode 39 – Making Change Work: A Radical Approach to Change Management, Real Leadership explores what true leadership is and how it is effectively applied throughout the change management process. During our discussion, Sharon Drew Morgen, the New York Times bestselling author of Dirty Little Secrets, shares with us her insights and illustrative examples regarding:

  • what leadership is and the difference between leadership and management
  • the qualities, characteristics, and skills successful change leaders commonly possess
  • the difference between the exercise of power and force
  • reasons so many change implementations are unsuccessful
  • steps leaders should take to ensure change implementations succeed
  • how leaders can get buy-in before the change initiative begins
  • the outward signs a leader should look for that indicate the change has been accepted; that the organization will continue to adhere to the change and not revert back to its previous way of doing business
  • actions the change leader should take if he or she feels the organization is not accepting the change; that the change initiative is failing

Additional Information

In addition to the outstanding insights Sharon Drew shares in Dirty Little Secrets and this edition of the StrategyDriven Podcast are the resources accessible from her websites, www.NewSalesParadigm.com and www.BuyingFacilitation.com.   Sharon Drew’s book, Dirty Little Secrets, can be purchased by clicking here.

Making Change Work!
This podcast is the sixth and final podcast in a series that teaches leaders how to make change work.

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Thank you again for listening to the StrategyDriven Podcast!

About the Author

Sharon Drew Morgen is a New York Times bestselling author and developer of a change management model based on buy-in that she’s written about in her latest book Dirty Little Secrets. She is the visionary thought leader behind Buying Facilitation®, a decision facilitation model that focuses on helping buyers and those who would be impacted by the accompanying change manage their internal, unconscious, and behind-the-scenes issues that must be addressed before they purchase anything or buy-in to the requested change. She has served many well known companies including: KPMG, Unisys, IBM, Wachovia, and Bose. To read Sharon Drew’s complete biography, click here.

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