When Does a Buyer Buy?

Written by Sharon Drew Morgen

Let me say something you’re not going to like: If a buyer truly needed your solution they would have either bought it already or resolved their problem already.

David Sandler called the buyer’s need ‘Pain.’ But think about it: If you broke your arm, would you wait weeks/months/years to get it fixed? Of course not. So how can buyers wait to resolve their need when it’s so obvious (to us, of course) that using our solution would create a state of excellence that they are not experiencing?

Because of their system. The system that has created the ‘need’ is the same system that is holding it in place. Think about any extra weight you might have, or your inability to stop smoking, or your reluctance to work out as much as you know you should, or eat healthier. You’ve been talking about managing those issues for…for how long?? SOOO why aren’t you? You have the need, right? You have the “pain,” right? What’s the deal?

You will change – just like your buyer – when the system you live in (your work hours, your family issues, your identity and ego issues) is willing to be or do something different. Having a great gym near-by, having great clothes a size smaller, having a doc tell you you must shape up – none of those things are enough to get you to change (or you would have).

Sales Does Not Handle Internal, Private Decisions

Unfortunately, sales only manages the need/solution part of a buyer’s buying decision, and has no tool kit to help the buyer recognize and manage the off-line, behind-the-scenes issues that must be addressed before the system is willing to make a change. Is the other department ready to bring in a new X? What about the old vendor? How will the team know how to choose between resolving This problem or That?

Sales doesn’t manage those issues. In fact, sales acts as if the ‘problem’ were an isolated event. Ah – a need my solution can resolve! I have a prospect! – but of course that’s not true or we’d be closing a lot more than 7% of our prospects. In our excitement of finding a prospect with a need that could be resolved with our product, we forget that there are a whole lotta other things that buyers must address internally before they can make a purchasing decision. And we forget that just because WE perceive the ‘need’ doesn’t mean the prospects perceives a ‘need.’ Indeed: noticing a need that our solution can resolve, and assuming that we have a prospect, is a specious assumption

Buyers will buy only when the system the buyers live in – entire grouping of people and policies and relationships and history - buys-in to adding something new and getting rid of the old, when it’s clear the regular vendor can’t do the fix, when the other departments know how they are going to work alongside of the new solution. Sales doesn’t handle these issues, causing us to wait forever for buyers to decide, or to lose really good prospects that seemed a good fit.

Sales is a Solution-placement Model

Helping buyers manage these internal, private decision issues has nothing to do with placing a solution or managing a need. Even if we were to understand what all of the decision issues are (which we can never do as outsiders, much like we can never understand our best friend’s marriage or why our cousin doesn’t lose weight), we cannot be involved in the decisions that must go on for any change to happen.

I also find it rather interesting that sellers are now asking what the decision making process is, or who the decision makers are….. as if sellers could do anything about it, or as if the buyer knows until just at the end of the process who, exactly, needs to be involved.

Sales is a solution placement model. It enters the buyer’s decision making too early. It does not, and cannot, manage the decision issues that buyers must address off-line. It has no capacity to help buyers navigate through relationships or to change necessary rules. We need a wholly different skill set for that, or just be content to sit and wait while buyers do it, as they must get internal buy-in before getting agreement to make a purchase.

I’ve developed a model - Buying Facilitation® - that offers a wholly different skill set. It’s a change management, decision facilitation model that is NOT SALES but is a model sellers can use to help buyers recognize and manage their internal issues in order to insure buy-in for change. Just like you won’t lose weight, or work out more, or eat healthier unless you have internal buy-in (we don’t make decisions to change based on good data, or someone else’s opinion), so buyers won’t buy until they know that their system will remain intact and healthy after the addition of the new solution.

Buying is a systems/change management issue. Selling is a needs-discovery, solution-placement model. Add Buying Facilitation® skills to the front end of your selling skills and you can actually teach buyers how to buy, and close sales in 1/8 the time, find 3x more prospects, and stop wasting time on folks who won’t buy.

Sharon Drew Morgen -
	Sharon Drew Morgen is the bestselling author bestseller Selling with Integrity and 5 other books and 800 articles on her original collaborative decision-support model Buying Facilitation. Based on supporting the buyer's internal (management) decisions, the material has been trained worldwide, in global corporations such as Coors, Wachovia, Intuit, KPMG, IBM, and Clinique. Sharon Drew is a trainer, consultant, keynote speaker, and designer of patents that help site visitors and sellers make the decisions necessary for success. She can be reached at: www.newsalesparadigm.com , This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it , or 512 457 0246Read More >>
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