HOW TO CHANGE A PARADIGM, THE HARD WAY: part 2 of 2

SUMMARY, PART 1

Part 1 talks about how I went from being a million-dollar producer in sales to an entrepreneur, and how my new career led me to understand the root of the problems – delayed sales cycles, objections, competition issues, price issues - I had as a seller: how the buyer’s environment influences buying decisions.

I walked through how I learned about the systems of how buyers buy as I learned about systems thinking within my own new company. I introduced the system my company ‘lived in’ and how it was made of the same sort of people/policy/relationship issues that my buyers experience, and how I realized that before a seller can actually close a sale, the buyer has to recognize and manage all of the internal issues that create the status quo and actually keep it in place – issues that go far beyond anything my solution can resolve. In other words, it wasn’t about the Need, nor my Product, nor my skill as a Seller: it was about how, and when, and if the buyer could manager their buying environment.

To read Part 1, go to http://newsalesparadigm.com/newsletter/1007.html

With this new-found understanding, I designed a sales model to help me and my team sell: it has an initial outcome of leading buyers through all of those idiosyncratic and unique internal decisions they need to make as they ready their environment to adapt to a new solution. The product sale becomes - and this is so contrary to what I knew as a successful sales person - phase two of the sales process.

I named this new model Buying Facilitation® because it facilitates a buying decision and manages the two distinct phases of the sale: the buying decision phase managed by the buyer, and the product sale/needs analysis phase led by the seller. So we end up doing what we always did, we just do it second; and first we put on a Coach/Neutral Navigator hat and lead buyers through their decision making systems.

Once I developed a program and taught my own sales folks, our results changed dramatically: we began closing 8x (that’s 800%!) more sales! We found the sales were so much quicker to close (the time it takes buyers to come up with their own answers is the length of the sales cycle) because we actually led them through all of the internal issues they had to manage before they could buy – issues they didn’t realize had to be managed as they weren’t in the business of managing that particular type of change.

THE NEW MODEL

Because of this new model, I was also to help more prospects choose me (both over the competition and decide to take action that they hadn’t considered), and decide they had a need that they would be willing to fix ‘now’. In the past, I noted that prospects sometimes avoided this internal process of change and preferred not to make a purchase rather than go through it.

I had a winner. Indeed, I did so well that I was able to retire after 4 years. And, for all of you who think that was easy, YOU try starting a company from scratch, with no business background (NONE), in a foreign country, with no contacts, no marketing, no budget, no understanding of the industry or competition, in the bear market of the 80s, and double your business every year and be able to retire in just under 4 years.

I moved back to the States and bought a tiny ranch in Taos, NM, figuring that I could spend the rest of my (many) years hanging out with the cows and alfalfa. But I could only do that a couple of years before going bonkers.

CHANGING A FIELD

In the early mornings, I wrote my first book Sales on the Line, (published ’93 and still in print), and went on the road, bound and determined to change the entire field of sales and shout The Truth from the rooftops and radio stations.

So with model in hand and some best-selling books, I went forth to change the entire field. I kept (and still have!) a note on my desk: "Behind every might oak is a nut that held it’s ground." I prided myself on being persistent, and luckily, there were always enough visionaries who found me and brought me in to their companies to keep me going. Brian Tracy recently said to me: "Sharon Drew. There comes a point when you need to know the difference between persistence and stubbornness." Indeed.

Along the way, I had to learn a few things: how to market myself in a virtual vacuum (there was no internet in 1988) and then how to use the net optimally; how to market myself so that visionaries could find me; how to choose the industry or market to align myself with. First I aligned myself with the Spirituality in the Worldplace market, assuming that with an ethical, servant-leader, collaborative decision making model, they would welcome me. I assumed wrong. They believed that because sales was basically a manipulative model, it could never be ethical. I tried valiently, with my own resources, to enter the field for 5 years before giving up. Then I decided to try the Sales profession. I've been focusing solely on shifting the Sales model for 13 years with 6 books out and 1000 articles, and personally training 16,000 people in visionary teams.

In fact, the visionaries were my market. They were open to a new model, understanding sales to be a frustrating and expensive challenge. (During a key note, I heard a prospect from a major brokerage house yell out: ‘THAT’S IT! IT’S ABOUT THE BUYING DECISION! THAT’S THE MISSING PIECE! NOW THERE’S A WAY TO GET THERE!’). Finding visionaries was challenging; you can’t call IBM and say, “Hi. Can I speak with one of your visionaries?" and visionaries don’t heed conventional marketing outreach.

And now, 20 years after my first training with KLM and 20 years into the dream of changing the sales paradigm, I am now just hearing Early Adoptors talk about the need to support the buying decision. And I wonder sometimes if the years of effort have been worth it.

STUBBORN DETERMINATION

I've been following a dream and I have obviously made many mistakes along the way.

I was so convinced that the sales profession would promptly see the error of its ways that I forgot to apply my own learning: because a system can’t change until all of the internal elements are aligned and managed so chaos won’t occur, nothing will happen no matter how valid the need, the choices or logic. We all know that one, don’t we.

I tried to bring a new model into a mature field (sales) that was still operating out of the same basic beliefs it had held for generations, figuring that because of the problems with the model (failed sales, poor responses, long sales cycles, and all of the other impediments to sales that have been endemic to the process) sellers would be eager to change. After all, with an average close rate of 7%, the field must compensate for a 90%+ failure rate. It’s the only field with such consistently abysmal numbers, and these failure numbers are built into the metrics. At no point has anyone questioned that the model itself might be broken, and companies and sellers fight to continue the same approach regardless of the numbers! Sellers continue to battle objections, delayed sales cycles, competition issues, closing issues, all because the model addresses the product sale first rather than the decision!

But the field itself remains locked into the conventional thinking: sellers still believe it's about product sale, corporations don't want to mess with their metrics, and unfortunately, few people understand the possibility or need to manage decisions as precursors to choosing a solution. The field actually eschewes the possibility of a dramatically more successful sales cycle rather than change!

And I cannot, for the life of me, understand why the sales model, which delivers a 7% success rate on a good day, is so sacrosanct.

STATE OF THE FIELD

I just returned from keynoting at a Sales Institute. What a thrilling set up – all of the universities that run sales programs sent their three top folks and a coach to compete against each other to manage objections, do presentations, speed pitch – all with closed circuit TV so they could watch each other, learn from each other, and compete.

And all of the skills they used so professionally were based on selling product, managing objections, and gathering data to understand needs. In other words, they are becoming better and more professional at maintaining the status quo in the field. I mentioned to one of the folks who brought me in that Buying Facilitation created a communication between buyer and seller that eliminated objections.
     “What do you call them, then?" he asked.
     “Nothing. There is no need for objections if buyers are managing their own solution design. There is nothing being pushed into their system by an outsider that would cause disruption and would need to be objected to."
     “So do you have another name for objections?"

Sales does not manage the buying end – just attempts to use better and better influencing tools to get the buyer to agree that they like the seller and the seller’s offering. And as a result, sales take far, far longer than they need to, with price issues that come up as buyers face internal problems with bringing something new on board, and with objections as buyers fight their status quo and resist change. They want to resolve their problem, but not if the cost is too high. After all, whatever they are doing now is ‘working’ in some fashion, or they would have fixed it already.

We’ve assumed the problems with sales are ours as sellers. We’ve gotten more professional, marketed our products better, institutionalized the sales process, bought CRM systems – all in the hopes of making more sales, faster. But we haven’t learned how to manage all of those idiosyncratic decisions that buyers must make before they choose us, decisions around how departments must work and communicate together, or how people can add new capability to their job descriptions, or how to choose a new vendor when people have relationships with the old ones.

They have to go through this process anyway – with us or without us. I’d much rather have it be with me and earn me a place on the buying decision team. And once all of these idiosyncratic decisions get made, it becomes SO easy to fit the product in.

Buying Facilitation® has nothing to do with placing a product or determining a need; it leads the buyer – in a Neutral Navigator fashion – through each people, policy, relationship, and political piece of their internal system that got them where they are. These are issues that are endemic in the buyer’s environment and not usually discussed (the missing father who left a legacy to the new son-owner, the historic rules that preclude using certain venders) and yet determine how the buying decisions get made. Here are a couple of questions to give you an example:

How would you and your decision team know when it was time to bring in a new vendor and add some new capability to what you are already doing?

What has stopped you from resolving your problem until now, and what would need to be managed internally for you to know it was time to begin finding a solution?

I leave with this question (and a promise that next essay I’ll go back to my regular format of topics):

What needs to happen in the field for sales to put the buyer’s internal, systems-based decision-making issues first before attempting to place product?

Give me an answer, and help me bring you all more success.

ABOUT MORGEN FACILITATIONS INC.

TELEPROGRAM --- Influencing with Integrity --- Jan. 10, 2008
Joing Sharon Drew for a 7 session training program, offered in 2-hour segments, and using interactive web technology that will replicate her well-known learning environment training. Available only in a classroom setting until now, this program will incorporate several internet-based tools to teach Decision Facilitation by leading learners through exercises, discussions, and lectures into belief changes and skills transfer. And, of course, with Sharon Drew as your trainer, you will walk away with the tools to formulate Facilitative Questions and help manage buyer's buying/change decisions.

Who should attend? Sales professionals, coaches, negotiators, consultants, managers, biz development professionals, change management professionals, influencers.

What are the take aways?

• understand how people decide and the system that holds their decisions in place
• skills to lead people through their decision making process
• formulating Facilitative Questions
• listening for systems and beyond content-based listening
• how to influence buy-in in any interaction
• ability to increase revenue dramatically, position product more effectively, respond to proposals more effectively, and know how to win the business over the competition
• knowledge of an ethical, values-based, servant-leader collaborative decision making model that leads to clean questions for coaches, and good decision making for stakeholders

This program is available on a series basis or as  individual sessions.

For those of you who have wanted to learn Buying Facilitation, but were unable to attend any corporate or public seminars that Sharon Drew has conducted due to time, cost, or distance, see if our teleprograms will work for you. For those of you who are coaches or managers, the series will give you new tools to help Others make their own best decisions.

See the details: http://www.newsalesparadigm.com/tele.html

WEBINAR
Sharon Drew will be running a webinar called: CLOSING THE STALLED SALE with The Competitive Edge. Go to: www.thecompetitiveadvantage.net and sign up.

BUYING FACILITATION
For those of you wish to learn more about the model, go to www.buyingfacilitation.com and purchase the ebook Buying Facilitation: the new way to sell that influences and expands decisions.

PARTNERS
Check out www.SalesPractice.com
They are a group of sales folks who are committed to ensuring that sales is a profession with spiritual values, care and respect, and collaborative support between seller and buyer. Check out their interactive forums, their training partners, and their articles. They’re the good guys.