Buying Facilitation™ Learning Accelerators

Sharon Drew's Comments

As the developer of Buying Facilitation™, one of my challenges has been to design materials to teach it. While my books describe the Method, change, and how buyers buy, they don’t teach the ‘Hows’.

Historically, Buying Facilitation™ training has been run in corporations and not available to individuals. To help individual learners wanting to learn the entire Method, I developed a 26 session Guided Study program. Now, for those folk who wish to "put a toe in" or add just one or two new skills to their existing sales skills, I've developed single Accelerators to target specific areas of learning. Pick and choose the ones that sound interesting. Enjoy. For those wishing to learn the complete set of skills of Buying Facilitation (Guided Study Series) we will be happy to credit your Accelerator purchases towards the series.

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How do the Accelerators work?

Here is how the Accelerators are crafted:

• Each Accelerator begins with an overview of Buying Facilitation™ so anyone can start anywhere and understand the baseline thinking;
• Each Accelerator has an explanatory note so you can get an overview of what you’ll be learning in that Accelerator;
• Each Accelerator has a questioning segment that uses Buying Facilitation™ on you to help you learn each individual skill set from your own internal place of learning;
• Each Accelerator gives you homework. This ranges from 1 – 3 hours.
• Each Accelerator offers a Discussion to help you make sense of what you learned.

These Accelerators are not easy: They will work you hard, at a deep level of learning. You will learn about:

• how you communicate (or not);
• how buyers buy;
• how to help change happen and decisions get made;
• how to formulate Facilitative Questions.

You will learn, and have a bit of fun along the way.

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How do I choose?

The two ends of the spectrum are the foundational books (necessary thinking that teach the Whys and Whats, strategic and tactical) and the high end Guided Study Program which teaches the entire set of skills of the Buying Facilitation™ Method in a 26-session learning program developed for serious learners. This is basically the program I teach in corporations and is an emersion into new ways to think, listen, and communicate.

The middle road is for those folks who don't want to change what they are doing, but wish to add a few new skills as an add-on to current sales skills. Each Accelerator teaches the decision facilitation aspect of one skill at a time: sales support activities such as presenting or handling objections.

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Can I use Buying Facilitation™ with my sales skills?

Buying Facilitation™ is a change management model. It navigates the buyer through all of the internal issues - people, vendors, technology, relationships - they need to address as they move toward a decision to purchase a solution. It works as an adjunct to the sales model, and helps buyers buy much more quickly as they manage their buy-in issues more efficiently. Buying Facilitation™ does NOT gather data about need, nor does it place solutions: that's how BF and sales fit together so perfectly.

First: help buyers figure out their buying decision criteria, the buy-in issues their Buying Decision Team will have to address, how they can get agreement for solutions. Then sales comes in. It's the piece sales has been missing until now; sellers have sat and waited while buyers do this. Now they can do it with us.

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Expected Results

Each Accelerator will teach you how to facilitate change in the behind-the-scenes aspect of the particular aspect you're interested in.

The Change Bundle will teach you what change is, how to change, and how you can lead your buyer through the steps of their buying decision journey.

The Prospecting Bundle should get you into 25% more prospecting situations.

The Daily Skills Bundle should be able to increase your sales, in general, by 30%.

The other Accelerators will teach you how to go behind-the-scenes to help buyers make the appropriate choices to choose you, and should be used with your sales skills.

Each of these Accelerators will help you overcome the problems you've had in these areas until now.

CAUTION: These Accelerators represent one small aspect of Buying Facilitation™. You will not be able to do the entire Model after working with this one Accelerator. If you desire to learn the entire Model, please examine the Guided Study program

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Sample

Sample from: What Makes Buyers Buy

What is the difference between you and your buyer?

• Please make a guess: what does your buyer and her Buying Decision Team go through behind-the-scenes prior to making a decision to purchase your product?
• What is the difference between what you have to sell, the buyer's need, and the buyer's ability, timing, and commitment to purchase your product?
• What does success mean to a buyer re:
• Resolving their Identified Problem.
• Getting everyone connected with with the problem to buy-in and accept a new solution.
• Managing the behind-the-scenes issues that get disrupted when a problem seeks resolution.
• What goes on within a buyer's environment that will seek to maintain the status quo and not make a purchase – regardless of the efficacy of your solution or the import of their need?
• What's the difference between what you have to sell, the buyer's Identified Problem, and their internal, behind-the-scenes issues they have to manage?

HOMEWORK

----- Part 1 -----

Think about a decision that took a long time for you to make, but you eventually made and has proven successful. It can be a personal decision (i.e. change your hairstyle, change jobs) or a living choice (move, buy a new car), or a relationship choice (get married, end a friendship).

Write down:

• what kept you so long in the situation;
• how did you know when it was time to finally decide to do something different;
• the repercussions of the decision to change (positive and negative) once you adopted the new solution;
• the repercussions of the original decisions to maintain your status quo (positive and negative) as long as you did.

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Special Offers

Purchase more than $300 in Accelerators and receive the ebook, Buying Facilitation™
Purchase more than $500 in Accelerators and receive the exclusive "The Skills of Buying Facilitation™" plus the ebook, Buying Facilitation™.

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Pitching Accelerator: when, how, why and what.

This Accelerator will help you recognize the difference between how and when you pitch vs what the buyers need from you to help them make a buying decision (Hint: it's not a pitch).
In this Accelerator you will:

• learn how to lead buyers to choose their Buying Decision Team;
• understand the buyer's buying criteria and buying decision journey;
• learn to help buyers prepare for change management and a solution purchase;
• learn to recognize when it's time to pitch;
• learn to recognize when buyers haven't completed their behind-the-scenes decisions before being ready to purchase – and help them get ready;
• have the skills to know exactly what information to share, and when, to help the buyer choose you over the competition.

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Prospecting Accelerator: cold calls, referrals, warm leads.

To be willing to make a purchase, buyers must manage behind-the-scenes change management issues. Until they, do they can’t buy. But sales only handles needs assessment and solution placement. Learn how to go beyond getting an appointment, and actually help your prospect decide how to buy from your first call.

Using many hours of internal change experiences, and guided homework, this Accelerator helps both you and your buyer recognize all of the issues they must handle before they can buy.

This Accelerator will:

• introduce you to skills to help prospects put you on their Buying Decision Team;
• help you recognize tire kickers and help non-buyers become real prospects;
• teach you how to use the phone to manage the prospecting experience for your buyers;
• teach you the difference between prospecting to sell a solution and prospecting to engage a buying decision;
• teach you how to lead buyers through their behind-the-scenes decisions right away.

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Gatekeepers Accelerator.

Using Self-Guided Study exercises, and targeted homework, in this Accelerator you will:

• learn the difference between trying to ‘get in’ and being invited in, and how to make it happen;
• discover how you bias your outcomes, and how to shift your communication and approach to have success;
• learn how to exercise a different form of control;
• recognize how your style has biased gatekeeper’s responses, and how to make new choices.

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Price Accelerator: avoiding objections, and positioning cost.

Through focused self-examination exercises, and several thoughtful homework segments, Accelerator 10 will teach you how to get rid of your price biases along with buyer’s objections, and learn new skills to help buyers decide based on their criteria rather than price.
This session will address:

• how you bias your price discussions and how to stop;
• how to position price along with the other non-charged behind-the-scenes decision issues buyers have to address;
• the differences between your price biases and the buyer’s buying decision;
• how to help buyers recognize their criteria for bringing in a new solution.

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Presentations Accelerator: how to get the right people into the room.

Unfortunately, we’ve used presentations when WE believe it’s time to offer solution detail – without comprehending the exact criteria buyers are using to buy. In this Accelerator, you will learn not only how to get the right people in the room for when you present, but how to make sure the right decisions are being made and the correct data is being presented to match the buyer’s buying criteria (which is not always based on their apparent ‘need’).

With a great deal of guided study and a large homework assignment, learn all of the stages buyers must go through before being attentive listeners who are ready to make a purchase, and have new skills to effectively use your time in front of prospects.

In this Accelerator you will learn:

• how to give your audience what they need  to make a purchasing decision;
• how to get the full Buying Decision Team into the room – even after your first call;
• when to offer data, and when to help the Buying Decision Team recognize the criteria they need to meet;
• how to manage the prospect’s unspoken criteria before presenting solution data;
• how to include the change issues that must be managed before they can make a purchase.

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Prospecting Bundle

Sales only handles needs analysis and solution placement, leaving the buyer to figure out their behind-the-scenes issues on their own. Now, you can become involved in the buying decision process from the first prospecting call.

In this Bundle, including Accelerators on What Makes Buyers Buy, How Buyers Decide, and Prospecting, you will learn the skills necessary to help buyers elicit buy-in, quickly put together their Buying Decision Team – and become a part of it – and help them get ready to choose your solution. Learning includes:

• the difference between the ‘need’ and the buyer’s purchasing journey;
• the difference between how you sell and how buyers buy;
• the types of decisions both you and buyers make in order to learn and buy;
• all of the internal, non-needs-related issues buyers must manage before they can buy;
• how the Buying Decision Team get chosen, and how to influence it;
• understanding what the buyer’s buying environment look/act like;
• how buyers handle their internal change management issues.
• how to help prospects put you on their Buying Decision Team;
• how to recognize tire kickers, and help non-buyers become real prospects;
• how to use the phone to manage the prospecting experience;
• the difference between prospecting to sell a solution and prospecting to engage a buying decision.

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Daily Skills Bundle

Sales only handles the needs assessment and solution placement, and leaves buyers to their own devices to manage their behind-the-scenes issues they must address before getting the buy-in to make a purchase. As a result, the sales cycle takes much longer than necessary as buyers have to figure out how to handle their internal politics and relationships, gatekeepers don’t know who to allow ‘in’, and prospects push back with objections.

This Bundle will give you the tools to let gatekeepers direct you to the proper person, help prospects know how to choose you from the first prospecting call, teach you how to help buyers choose their Buying Decision Team, and how to avoid any objections – including price. It will:

• help prospects put you on their Buying Decision Team on the first call;
• teach you how to use the phone to manage the prospecting experience;
• teach you the difference between prospecting to sell a solution and prospecting to engage a buying decision;
• learn the difference between trying to ‘get in’ and being invited in, and how to make it happen;
• recognize how your style has biased gatekeeper’s responses, and how to make new choices to give you success with gatekeepers;
• expose how you bias your price discussions and how to stop;
• how to position price along with the other non-charged behind-the-scenes decision issues buyers have to address.

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Change Bundle: Learning new skills; Buying a new solution

This Bundle teaches unique skills never before offered outside of a complete Buying Facilitation™ program. Through several hours of homework and experiential change work, you will learn how to formulate Facilitative Questions – a new form of question that actually incorporates several types of often-unconscious change criteria necessary for a purchasing decision. Until now, these questions have not been a part of the sales process and are unique to Buying Facilitation™. On completion, you will also understand the activities buyers must address before they can make a purchase.

Learning includes: 

• recognizing what you, and what buyers, need to change to achieve excellence;
• how to learn and purchase without resistance;
• the issues buyers must manage to get the necessary buy-in for a purchase;
• how buyers choose their Buying Decision Team;
• what is going on behind-the-scenes in a buyer's buying environment;
• the structure of Facilitative Questions;
• the Decision Phases all buyers go through before a purchase;
• listening skills to help you be a GPS system for your buyer's purchasing decisions.

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How To Turn Prospects Into Buyers Bundle

A lot, but the sales model only focuses on the needs assessment/purchasing end of their decision: sales offers few skills to help buyers manage their private, behind-the-scenes buying journey that is often based on relationships and internal politics and has little to do with choosing a solution.

In this Accelerator, you’ll learn how to lead buyers through the people and politics, rules and vendor issues that must be addressed before they can buy.

Buyers buy only to resolve a business problem. If they can easily fix or repurpose what they already have, they’d much prefer to do that: it’s easier and cheaper. And we wait while they figure this out – losing more business to ‘no decision’ than to competitors. A fraction of those we believe are prospects actually buy. And unfortunately, with the focus on needs and solution placement, we don’t know who will be buyers nor how to convert those who would buy if they knew how.

In this Bundle, learn how to lead buyers toward resolving their internal, off-line decision issues in order to move toward a purchase. While doing this, you can get onto the Buying Decision Team and become a true Trusted Advisor – not based on your solution (which they will buy, without objection or price discussion), but based on your ability to be a true Trusted Advisor; you will help them navigate through their behind-the-scenes, non-need/solution related issues that must buy-in to a purchase. They must do this anyway, with you or without you: the sales model has not offered you the skills to do this before.

You will also learn how to use Facilitative Questions – a unique type of question that actually teaches buyers how to generate new decisions.

In this Accelerator you will:

• learn all of the issues buyers must manage to get the buy-in to make a purchase or resolve a problem;
• learn how the Buying Decision Team gets chosen and get on it on the first call;
• understand what the buyer’s buying environment look/act like;
• learn how buyers manage their internal systems to accept change;
• learn how to help buyers navigate through the elements they need to manage in order to elicit buy-in;
• learn how to identify the 3 phases of how buying decisions get made, and what goes on in each phase.
• introduce you to the structure of Facilitative Questions;
• help you listen appropriately to help you know how to lead buyers to their necessary decisions.

This Accelerator is jam packed with skills that are useful throughout the sales process to truly help buyers manage their behind-the-scenes decision issues as well as helping them choose you and your solution.

Filled with a great deal of personal, experiential discovery lessons, and a great deal of homework (sorry!), you will learn how to help buyers get buy-in from their Buying Decision Team, and help them address their decision issues to ensure they are covering all of the bases as they choose your solution.

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