What Is Buying Facilitation®?
Buying Facilitation® is a decision-facilitation method used with sales to enable the off-line, internal issues buyer's must manage before they are ready to choose a solution. By enabling that portion of the buyer's buying journey, you will...
- Increase your closing ratio, even in a down economy
- Support the portion of the buying journey that's beyond the scope of technology
- Differentiate you from the competition and eliminates the need for price wars and objections
- Enables the relationship/political and private issues buyers must handle in their buying decision process
- Create a trusting, collaborative communication that forms the basis of a long term relationship
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Buying Facilitation® is a sequenced questioning system
Buying Facilitation® uses Facilitative Questions and a decision making model that helps buyers navigate through their behind-the-scenes buy-in issues which are an integral part of their buying journey.
For any size purchase, a buyer's need resides in a tangle of people, policies, initiatives, etc. that hold the need in place, but must be simultaneously resolved as part of the solution.
Sales manages need resolution and product placement. It does not facilitate the full range of internal decisions necessary for a purchase.
It is not product- or solution-based; rather, it works with sales to manage the parts of the sales cycle - the buyer's decisioning - that have been hidden until now. Buying Facilitation® works in conjunction with product- and solution-based selling models to shorten the buying cycle.
Where can it be used?
As a decision support tool rather than a problem-solving/product placement method, it is used from the first call through the entire sales cycle, for any size product, in any industry, for B2B sales as well as retail. Used throughout the entire path of the buyer's decision process.
Who has used Buying Facilitation® successfully?
KPMG (Tax Minimization Team), Morgan Stanley (Retail Brokers), Clinique (Counter Sales), Intuit (Call Center), Wachovia Bank (Small Business Bankers), IBM (Software Sales, Account Management), HP (Meeting Management), BOSE (Customer Care), Pioneer HiBred (Direct Seed Sales in Field), California Closets (Designers Worldwide), Kaiser (Insurance Brokers), Bose (Customer Service), Mellon-Dryfus Bank (Customer Service).
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Buying Facilitation® alters your sales process in many ways...
- It supports the decision-facilitation and solution-finding process of the buyer rather than pitch, promote, or present product
- It eliminates inappropriate prospects in one or two calls
- It dramatically decreases the sales cycle
- It facilitates decision-making for individuals and groups who take a long time to make a buying decision
- It creates an instantaneous relationship of trust and collaboration between buyer and seller
- It takes your offering out of the competition and away from price sensitivity
- It widens the potential market for your products by appealing to those prospects who didn't know they need your product
- It teaches buyers how to recognize, use, and appropriately alter their buying patterns
- It teaches Teams of Influence how to gather and operate from the cultural norms and values that must be taken into account in a buying decision
The skills of Buying Facilitation® include...
Formulating Facilitative Questions
Learning to help buyers transit through the myriad internal decisions necessary before they purchase. For example...
What has stopped you from resolving this problem until now?
Formulating Presumptive Summaries
Naming the (sometimes unidentified) buying variables that buyers must consider before they will purchase. For example...
So what I hear you saying is that your current vendor doesn't have the tools to help you fix this problem and your Vendor Management group hasn't given you the go-ahead to seek a new vendor?
Listening for Systems:
Listening for the underlying systems that control the status quo is necessary to support the buying decision versus the product sale. For example...
Content listening: seller listens for the details of how the Identified Problem was created and what a solution needs to resolve.
Systems listening: the Identified Problem is a part of a larger problem and is perpetuated daily in normal routines.
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What is a Buying Facilitator?
To be a Buying Facilitator, you will need to learn how to...
- Separate the selling process (product placement, needs analysis) from the decision making process (involving the people, policies, management, time issues that maintain the current Identified Problem).
- Help buyers make the unique, hidden, internal decisions they must make prior to making a purchase.
- Create collaborative communication that expedites decisions, in addition to placing products.
Until now, you've been selling by uncovering need, gathering information, and finding ways to place product. And you're very good at what you do.
What is stopping you from closing all the sales you deserve to close?
Because the buyer's buying decision involves many elements that buyers need to address that are hidden from the seller, it is necessary to learn an additional skill set in order to influence the process. Otherwise, you will remain waiting for the decision, and outside the decision making, as you have until now.
Why work with the buying decision instead of the product sale?
Before buyers can buy, they must manage all of the elements within their current system of people, policies, rules, relationships, initiatives and vendor issues. And the time it takes them to do that is the length of the sales cycle. They must do this with you or without you. Buying Facilitation® actually teaches buyers how to recognize, manage, and align all of the internal decisions they need to make in order to make a purchasing decision. Give your sales folks the tools to influence the buying process.