| Be The GPS For Your BuyerSharon Drew Morgen | | Buyers have two identifiable responsibilities:
* maneuver through their internal, behind-the-scenes buy-in issues to ensure a trouble-free change process, and
* choose a solution that will address their stakeholder’s criteria for systems excellence while maintaining the integrity of the system.
Sales addresses one of these jobs, but not the other. In fact, we’ve never been taught the skills to help with the off-line issues buyers address: as per the explanations and skills offered in my new book Dirty Little Secrets, helping buyers maneuver through their off-line buy-in issues requires a wholly different skill set.
We need to have the... Read More >> |
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| The Arrogance of SalesSharon Drew Morgen | | Sales professionals face a lot of failure. You work very hard to discover plausible opportunities, understand needs, respect and care for prospects, and position your products so prospects recognize how your solution manages their need. You are good. You are professional. You are conscientious. Yet you only close a fraction of your sales; you seem to have no idea who to spend time on, who to let go, who will be able to buy, or who will have no ability to buy (even though they act like prospects), regardless of the fit between their need and your solution.
You end up... Read More >> |
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| How Do We Sell If We Don't Understand Needs?Sharon Drew Morgen | | When people first hear about Buying Facilitation®, they ask: ‘But if we can’t ask about needs and discuss our solution, how do we sell?’
The short answer is, you don’t. At least not when you are accustomed to. Because that’s not the first thing buyers need from you. The buyer first needs assistance navigating around their off-line decision issues. See, we actually enter our buyer’s sphere far too early in their decision cycle. And we end up attempting to gather needs, understand, and place product before a buyer really knows how to have this conversation with you.
The first thing buyers... Read More >> |
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| The Future of SalesSharon Drew Morgen For centuries, the sales model has been focused on placing a solution. Given the complexity of business these days, having the right solution to manage a ‘need’ is not enough to help buyers choose your solution.
Buyers live in a very complex world now. With global stakeholders, economic downturns, enlarged decision teams, and an almost limitless number of options – all available at the drop of a hat – competition is far more complex than being addressed by us having a good solution and giving great service. And as a result, we’re having greater difficulty closing sales. We’d like to think it’s ‘the economy, stupid.’ But in reality, the problem is more complex.
The only way to shift the results is to do something different. [You know the deal: According to Einstein, you can’t solve a problem using the same things that created it.] And sellers are kicking and screaming at the possibility of having to do something different. But I can tell you that doing what you are doing will keep giving you the results you’re getting.
Sales is no longer a robust-enough model. The future of sales lie in actually helping buyers navigate through their internal decision issues that often have absolutely nothing to do with a problem or a solution. We have been taught to believe that by understanding the ‘problem’ and having the appropriate ’solution’ that buyers will buy. We’ve never been taught that getting buy-in from the internal, behind-the-scenes cultural issues that buyers live with daily and are the cause of the ‘need’ are what determines purchasing habits. In fact, a buyer’s decision issues are managed, daily, by a plethora of internal people, policies, history, relationships, vendors, etc. that are independent of their need or our solution, and are well outside the sphere or influence of ’sales.’ But we know that, as that’s what’s stopping us from closing all of the sales we should be closing.
WE CAN’T MANAGE BUYERS’ RELATIONSHIP ISSUES
A prospect that a client of mine had been working with for a year finally, after 3 visits and 3 trials, decided to not purchase the product. I spoke with the prospect that was the head of Learning and Development: What stopped her from being able to buy a product that they loved? The new HR director was a very difficult person to deal with, and the prospect didn’t want to get into a fight and decided to not purchase rather than deal with him.
So this had nothing to do with need or solution, and everything to... Read More >> |
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