Buying Facilitation® Training
Learn from Sharon Drew to close more sales by helping buyers buy. More.
Guided Study
Work at your own pace with 26 self guided studies. More.
Until now, selling has been seller-based and product-focused without taking into account the full complement of a buyer's needs. This has been true of every sales approach regardless of industry, product, or sales environment. Although the Consultative approaches do address buyers' needs more than the Traditional approaches, they still assume the product is the answer, and it's the seller's job to learn the best way to direct the prospect toward the product.
In Buying Facilitation®, it's the seller's job to help prospects discern what they need in our area of expertise and assist them in figuring out how to align the solution with the needs of the decision-making body. Let's take a look at Buying Facilitation® and see how it will assist you in serving your clients and thus serving yourself, as well as in making money and selling product.
Buying Facilitation® is
Service-Based
Solution-Focused
Relationship-Based
It looks like this:
The main beliefs are:
As one of my clients says, reminiscent of President Clinton's 1992 presidential campaign, "It's the buyer, stupid." It is amazing to me that sellers don't act as if they understand they cannot make a sale without a buyer giving them a check. Given that the buyer has the ultimate control, what must our job as seller be? How do we make money? How do we sell product? And how do we carry out our job?
To switch from the belief that the seller has the answers to the belief that the seller's job is to support and facilitate the buyer gives the seller a totally new job description. It actually makes the job of salesperson much easier. All a seller needs now is the questions. Of course, product knowledge is necessary, but not to the same extent it once was, especially on the first call. When the interaction was task-based, the seller had to have the answers. Now that the job can be relationship-based and solution-focused, the answers aren't the point.
Information isn't always stored sequentially in our brains, which means it is sometimes difficult to retrieve. In fact, when people say "I don't know," they really mean, "I don't know where in my brain that information is stored nor how to retrieve it." If they really didn't know, they would stare blankly. When you say to someone who has just professed to not know something, "Make a guess," he will come up with the answer. At that point, he does a brain search instead of looking in his normal place. A seller can actually teach a buyer how to scan his brain for his own answers.
It has never been about the product or the seller. You can have the best product and the best sales pitch in the world. If it's not the right time or the right place or the right set of circumstances, there's no reason to buy. And buyers have to be ready and willing to change - that's the big one.
The only reason a buyer buys is that he needs the product. When a seller puts aside his selling patterns to support a buyer's buying patterns, he only needs to find people who need the product to make a sale. Sure, you have to put the time in to make the calls and visits, but the ultimate sale is not dependent upon how a seller "sells."
When a buyer understands that the seller is there to serve, there is no reason not to trust and receive the offered support. The seller must take the responsibility to create an environment of trust, however, and ensure that the buyer and seller are aligned on the same side of the table, both knowing the ultimate goal is to support the buyer in getting his needs met. I call this environment a "We Space" - the place where the two people involved in an interaction, the "I's" if you will, meet as an entity in the middle and constitute a unique duo - the "We." Until now, sales has been the "I" of the seller seeking the "I" of the buyer, rather than creating a "We." I'll be speaking more about "We Space" in chapter 8.
Once we understand the buyer has the answers, the seller's job becomes one of helping the buyer sequence the information in his brain so he can see his way clear to solve his own problems. I give the seller the job of maintaining the structure - the direction and context - of the buyer/seller interaction. The buyer's job is to generate the content. Until now, it has been the opposite, with the seller taking control of the content of the interaction and losing the pathway to the sale. I will be discussing this thoroughly in chapter 9.
Interdependence is the deal. Once sellers believe that buyers really do have their own answers, it becomes their job to offer buyers their skills and support in a way recognized by the buyers as supportive (more on this in chapter 9). The product may be an answer; it may not. But the seller will structure the interaction to support the buyer's discovery of how to meet his own needs. The seller becomes an integral part of the buyer's decision-making team. In the Buying Facilitation Method®, the seller is placed on the same side of the table as the buyer in order to serve the buyer more valuably. Because of the seller's support, the buyer now has a clear view of the solution - whether it be the seller's product or an alternative.
In order for a prospect to make a decision about purchasing the seller's product, there must be a clear view of the product at the time the prospect discovers he needs an external resource. If the product is introduced before the prospect understands what he needs, he will actually be repelled by the product, and his personal values around his ability to solve his own problems will be offended. There should be nothing - and no one - between the prospect and the product. The prospect has a direct line to the product if it provides the solution to his problem.
This is the most difficult part for sellers new to Buying Facilitation®: knowing what to say, how, and when, without resorting to old selling patterns. Since the seller must support the way a buyer buys, using any tried and true communication patterns will negate the intent. By using no selling patterns at all, the seller can work with a buyer's buying patterns and get into rapport on the buyer's terms. This creates trust; buyers can tell the difference immediately.
Our questions have to bring a buyer to a place of discovery, not to our answers. Our listening ferrets out the areas a buyer needs to examine to fully understand his situation. We are not listening in order to notice a thinking glitch we can use to sell into.
Until now, sellers have not taken responsibility for the interaction, just for knowing their product and having a unique sales approach (knowing how to handle objections, for example). In fact, whenever the interaction has not gone the way the seller believes it should go, he blames the buyer for getting it wrong. Now, with Buying Facilitation®, sellers have the responsibility to create the structure of the communication. The buyer not only may not know how to do it, but he certainly will not have the desire to do it with a stranger. Once the seller creates an environment in which a true collaboration can take place, a buyer is usually delighted to enter into it.
It's a tough job, but somebody has to do it. Remember: "It's the buyer, stupid." And the buying decision process is the only way to the product, if the product is the answer. If it's not, the seller has still supported the buyer in discovering how best to get his needs met. As we saw in the brief example with the office supply company in chapter 4, it can take less than five minutes to create this discovery - less time than it takes to attempt to get an appointment.
Again, the buyer doesn't know how or why to create an environment of trust and respect with a stranger. It's the seller's responsibility. Once a buyer enters a "We Space" with the seller and begins to reap the benefits of the seller's questions, he will begin to take his share of responsibility for maintaining the relationship. On the first call, however, it's up to the seller to create the rapport. Remember: there are three ways to make a sale: Rapport, Rapport, and Rapport. No matter how good your product is, how good your questions are, if you are out of rapport with your buyer there won't be a sale. There is always another product and another salesperson similar enough to you for the buyer not to have to be in an uncomfortable situation.
In summary, here's how Buying Facilitation® works.A seller learns about the product, and spends equal time learning relationship-building and communication skills. A seller gets names from appropriate lists or uses the Yellow Pages to find potential buyers. The seller uses the telephone as the main qualifying tool, trusting that through the interaction both people can discover whether or not they should move forward and how. That "meeting" takes place if the buyer decides it's in his best interests to do so. The seller creates a collaborative environment: he sets up a win-win interaction, with the seller in control of the structure and direction of the conversation and the buyer in control of the content. The seller uses the questioning process to assist the buyer in looking at the current environment in which the seller's product is being/could be used. The questions then focus on helping the buyer discover what's missing.
Once missing pieces start coming forth, the seller changes his questioning to assist the buyer in looking at the buyer's own internal resources to meet the needs. When internal resources can be found, the seller might then ask for names of referrals who might need his product and end the relationship there. When internal resources cannot be found, the buyer begins asking about the seller's product and how it might answer the needs.
Only at the point where the buyer is clear he cannot meet his needs through internal resources does the seller move to the product explanation, and he only discusses those areas where there is a fit. At this point, the buyer is in control of the questions and structure; the seller is in control of the content. Once the product is described, the seller then asks the buyer how he would like to go forward. This includes: what the buyer needs from the seller in order to know if the product is the right one; whether the relationship between the buyer and the seller is working for the buyer; if the buyer thinks the buyer's and seller's companies can work together; and how the seller can contribute to the buyer's decision-making process.
To take on any of these new beliefs or behaviors, change is necessary. But change is difficult. The overriding ideas of sales have persisted until now. In the nicest ways, with the nicest people, with the highest principles in mind, sales has promoted disrespect.
Because we in America are not trained to serve, or even think multidimensionally, the split between task and relationship, mind and spirit persists. Sales, the preeminent business skill, has assumed the ultimate insult: to serve itself.
It's time to grow beyond our cultural narcissism and serve each other. I propose that the seller become the servant to the buyer. When sellers hear me use the word servant in relation to their jobs, they often wince, so let me explain this a bit through a story.
A man died. When he "came to" and realized he was no longer living, he looked around and found an angel sitting by him.
"Would you like a tour of the grounds?" the angel asked.
The angel led the man around. The first room he came into was a darkened room with beautiful candlelight and many people sitting around a bubbling pot of delicious-smelling stew. Oh, what a smell! Just like mother's kitchen on a cold, rainy day.
"Where am I?" the man asked the angel.
"You're in hell."
"But how can I be in hell with such an amazing stew?"
"Watch."
The man looked again and noticed the people were severely emaciated, although they each held the handle of a six-foot-long spoon. As he continued to watch he saw that occasionally one person would maneuver the spoon into the pot, take out a spoonful of delicious-looking stew, and attempt to maneuver the bowl of the spoon into his mouth, only to watch the food end up on the floor due to the length of the handle.
The people were starving, with as much food as they needed just a spoonful away.
"What does heaven look like?" the man asked the angel.
The angel brought him to another room, which looked exactly the same as the first. The dim light, the people sitting around, the long spoons, the delicious stew. But there was a difference. These people were well fed and happy. There was laughter in the room. The man watched while the people took turns maneuvering their six-foot-long spoons into the stew. But instead of trying to get the spoonful of stew into their own mouths they were feeding each other. And all had food.
This is my perception of service: by serving our clients we serve ourselves. We all get our needs met, and we all have abundance.
It's time for the seller to become a servant - to the buyer, to the company, to the culture. And in return, he will be served - by the buyer, the company, the culture. Again, it's interdependence: win-win or no deal.
In Buying Facilitation®, it is the seller's job, as servant, to lead the buyer through the process of discovering what precisely the buyer needs to know in order to make the best decision possible. I believe that buyers know what they need. Buyers would have fixed the problem if they knew how and why and when. We must assume they didn't see a clear pathway to the answer.
The seller must serve the prospect, not the product. And buyers know the difference. Here's an example of one way I used Buying Facilitation®.
I was called to meet with a group at a large hardware company to discuss the possibility of assisting them with a new marketing directive. By the time I got there, the team had decided they were doing fine and they didn't need an external resource. I was told I could present for ten minutes since I had taken the time to visit them.
"I don't present. I just ask questions," I said.
They all laughed good-naturedly, and told me to go ahead with my questions for the ten allotted minutes. I began asking questions about their current environment, where they were going, how they were going to get there with the resources they had in place, what internal resources could supply the missing pieces, what was still missing, what criteria they would use to complete any missing pieces, and how the team would adjust to working with outside people where external resources were needed.
One and one-half hours later, my questions had led them to look into areas they hadn't considered, and they discovered a need they hadn't noticed that they could not fill internally. They talked among themselves and decided they would be willing to look for an external solution. They asked me if I could support the particular problem that had emerged. I walked away with a job - not because I sold them something, but because they bought. They recognized for themselves what they needed, how they needed to buy, and how they needed to bring a resource onto the team. My facilitative questions supported them in discovering that their internal resources were inadequate, a fact I had no way of knowing when I entered the room. But my job was to serve.
I assisted them in discovering the best use of their own resources, and in the process they discovered missing pieces. I did not discuss my product or assume it might be an answer until they asked me specifically if I could supply the missing piece. Because I did not go to the meeting to push a product or with the assumption that I had answers for them, I gained their trust and became part of the team. By meeting their criteria for adding resources to their existent system, I became a supplier. It was win-win, with no sales cycle.The shift I am describing is from salesperson as authority to salesperson as servant. Win- lose no longer needs to reign when you can make more money and sell your product appropriately through ethically based methods that support the integrity of each individual in the process. You must work from the assumption that it's your job - in fact, your responsibility - to create win-win relationships with respect and integrity. And in return, you will have buyers who will work with you in trusting, creative relationships.
People who train with me are amazed at how easily I form relationships with prospects: I just be with them. And since people only buy what they need, the way they need it, from people they trust, it doesn't matter how useful or powerful or wonderful my product is if people don't trust that I have their best interests at heart. Ultimately, all I have is me and my ability to serve. The product or service for which they pay me is the deliverable.People have found that Buying Facilitation® increases sales dramatically, decreases turnover, increases work enjoyment, and aligns sellers' personal values with their sales jobs: and sellers are closing three to five times more business. One recent statistic I can share concerns a group of telemarketers I trained. The initial group of seventeen sellers closed twenty sales in the seven months prior to their training with me. In the four weeks following their training, the eleven remaining sellers (six were redeployed) closed fourteen sales. In the next four weeks, they closed fifteen sales with a revenue equaling their entire year-to-date income.
Once the numbers were all in, there was a two hundred percent increase in sales in the eight weeks following the training. Here are some additional reasons why the approach is so effective:
People using the Buying Facilitation Method® have found over and over again that a six-month sales cycle easily gets reduced to six weeks (where feasible), using the phone as the original qualifying tool. (While face-to-face meetings are necessary in a large number of cases, it's often not necessary to make an in-person visit to qualify when you use the Buying Facilitation® questions on the initial call. In fact, you might consider only going to visit those people ready and willing to close.)
In an average sales cycle (six months, for example) several weeks, if not months, are spent getting to the qualified buyer: finding the right person, waiting for a response, and chasing down the person for a decision. Several more days or weeks are spent sending and receiving the necessary information and documentation. More weeks and months are spent waiting while the team or buyer makes decisions. Much of this waiting, this void, is eliminated when using Buying Facilitation®.
In general, the sales cycle will be shorter because necessary information will come to light sooner, as will previously not-thought-of questions. The seller-buyer interaction will be a primary source of creativity.
You now have a better understanding of where we have been as sellers and where we need to go. To implement the beliefs inherent in a sales methodology based on collaboration, respect, and serving requires new skills. In section II, we will explore these new skills in light of how and why people buy.
