Change is difficult for most of us and especially difficult for an organization full of individuals. Some of us resist, others encourage, others sabotage. If we want our organization to get change right, we’ve got to involve everyone who will be affected by the change and allow them to prepare themselves, their departments, and the organization’s systems to handle the change in an orderly manner–or everything turns to chaos, and if chaos is an anticipated result, we simply won’t institute the change no matter how potentially beneficial that change may be.
Buying creates change.
Whether purchasing a new product, replacing an existing vendor, or instituting a new program or service, when your prospects contemplate purchasing your products or services, they and their organizations are going to undergo significant change. Often that change never happens (that is, you don’t make a sale), not because your product or service doesn’t solve a real issue they have or because it won’t improve their sales or because it won’t improve productivity or reduce expenses. In fact, a great deal of the time purchases of products and services that have these very positive results are not made because the company can’t handle the change—yep, even extremely positive change—the product or service will create.
What does this mean for sellers? It means the way we sell is all wrong—or at least the way we deal with the concept of selling is all wrong.
Sharon Drew Morgen in Dirty Little Secrets: why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell and what you can do about it (Morgen Publishing: 2009) changes the whole concept of the sales process. We sellers have been taught that we find a suspect, qualify them as a prospect, connect with them, identify a problem or issue, develop a solution, close the sale. Morgen says that this vision of selling is all wrong because it doesn’t take into consideration the change management issues that must be dealt with before our prospects can commit to making the purchase.
According to Morgen, when our prospects disappear—when they say “I’ll get back to you” and never do, where they’ve gone is to deal with all of the behind the scenes issues they must deal with prior to making the commitment to purchase. Why do most of them never get back to you? Morgen says because they have not been able to get the people or the systems within the company in alignment to make the purchase. Worse, all of this change management stuff is stuff that we as sellers have little knowledge or understanding of.
If all of this change management must take place before we can consummate a sale and it’s all out of our hands, is there anything we can do to either speed up the process or help the organization manage the change?
Yes, Morgen says, we can help facilitate the change by engaging the company—our buyer—with the Buying Facilitation method. This method, whose primary tool is Facilitative Questions, helps get all the necessary players within the company on board and leads them through thinking through the changes necessary to make the purchase possible.
Sound mysterious? This isn’t rocket science but it’s a far cry from light reading. Fortunately, Morgen makes it easier to understand by dividing the book into three sections.
The first section lays out the change management issue from the buyer’s perspective. She gives us insight into the changes a purchase necessitates—from its impact on individuals to company politics to systems. She gives a great example of what a buyer must go through when making a simple purchase of a couple of extra dining room chairs (I’ll leave it to you find out on your own by reading the book why it’s so difficult to sell a couple of chairs).
Section two goes through the process from the seller’s point of view, demonstrating where our traditional sales process has left us and our prospects high and dry.
And the third section details the Buying Facilitation method skills. Buying Facilitation is about change management, not selling. It is the precursor to selling, not a replacement for it. It involves its own set of skills that don’t replace your selling skills but instead allow eventually using those selling skills more effectively and closing more sales.
If you really want to begin to understand why your closing ratio is so low, if you really want to know why those prospects never get back to you, if you really want to know what your selling process is missing, read Dirty Little Secrets.
Available at Amazon or Dirty Little Secrets Book
Paul,
I will definitely be reading this book. This developing shift in the selling profession has been going on for quite some time. Those sales people, and managers, that haven’t noticed are getting weeded out – especially in this economy.
How do you see Drew Morgan’s book fitting in to the discussion of sales and marketing alignment, along with the issue of when marketing should turn leads over to sales. It would appear that a sound lead nurturing program would fit in with the book’s basic premise that you outline – or does it?
I’m looking forward to reading the book and answering some of those questions for myself, but I’d love to hear your take.
Phil Lauterjung
Integrated LeadGen Results
Comment by Phil Lauterjung — October 15, 2009 @ 5:26 pm |
Phil,
Sorry it has taken a few days to answer. The question of how Sharon Drew’s book fits within the sales/marketing alignment dialog is a great one. With Sharon Drew’s process there has to be a someone to work with the prospect to help them get their background stuff in order to be able to accept and handle the change that a purchase will create and that someone is typically the salesperson since their needs to be continuity throughout the process. I don’t know that it couldn’t be a nurturer from marketing to hand off to sales at some point–or maybe sales is brought in early to work with the prospect.
Suspect it might be a good idea to get Sharon Drew in the discussion. I’ll get her over here within the next couple of days.
Comment by Paul McCord — October 23, 2009 @ 3:33 pm |
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hi folks:
thanks for getting me involved with the conversation. i’ve never been asked this before so will try to think it through. because i don’t have a pat answer, it might be a bit circuatous (spelling?).
nurturing programs focus on the belief that if i make nice to you and you have a need, you’ll choose me as your provider. so it’s still firmly routed in sales. remember that because sales is focused merely on the back end of the solution purchase, buyers withhold decisions, object, etc. so things like nurturing became hopeful adaptations to influencing and manipulating. but it doesn’t close more sales (from first call to close) because final buying decisions still get based on the internal system that buyers make decisions out of, not how nice or perfect the solution/provider.
i think paul got it right: once you’re using the Buying Facilitation(R) process, the need for nurturing goes out the window. remember: until or unless a buyer knows how to discover all of their own answers, they will make no decisions. and since they need to do this with you or without you, being involved with them personally to act as their GPS system early on, precludes the need for nurture marketing. not to mention that you’ll pick up the ones who will buy immediately, get rid of the ones who won’t immediately, and help the ones who might to make the decision that would convert them.
remember that this is a different model from sales; i’m not getting rid of sales, just moving it to where it belongs: as a solution placement tool once the buyer’s internal decision team has figured out how to manage all of the internal (change) issues.
it’s pretty well laid on in my new book (Dirty Little Secrets). site: http://www.dirtylittlesecretsbook.com
hope this helps.. and that i didn’t confuse you more. so hard to say in 10 minutes what it took me 272 pges to say
sd
Comment by Sharon Drew Morgen — October 23, 2009 @ 6:13 pm |
Sharon,
I haven’t yet read your book, but I definitely will, so my questions come from that perspective. Here’s where I get a little confused, and I think it comes from a definition of terms – or lack of.
First off, I think too many people use the term ‘lead’ to simply mean an inquiry; or, worse, simply a company name and contact. Second, I don’t see nurturing in quite the same light as you do – at least the way you explain it in your brief response here. I think of nurturing as a selling organization (could be marketing and/or sales) participating in the discovery process with the buyer through feeding relevant information (emphasis on relevant) on a regular basis to the potential buyer. The goal being to get to a point where the selling organization has earned the right to engage with the buying company in a more in-depth conversation regarding the buyer’s process. Leading, of course, to a completed sale.
Would you say that fits in with the process that you outline in your book, or not? I confess that I’m at a bit of a disadvantage having not yet read your book. But, from what I’ve read about it, my initial reaction is that I will find myself nodding my head in agreement with most (maybe all) of it.
Thanks for engaging in this conversation, and I look forward to reading your book.
Phil
Comment by Phil Lauterjung — October 24, 2009 @ 3:08 pm |
Hi Sharon
I bought your book and went through it all. It makes a very convincing case for change management.
Your process starts with a prospect contacting the sales person. For most of us you first need to get to the stage where you have someone contacting you with a need for a solution. How do you get there to start using your methods? Any insights you can offer?
BR/Ram
Comment by Ram Udupa — October 24, 2009 @ 8:51 am |
phil and br/ram:
phil: your question is still in the ‘sales’ category. please go to today’s blog post and read about how the decision facilitator’s job is to be a gps system: http://www.sharondrewmorgen.com
bf/ram: i do/have done a great deal of cold calling and use the model from the get-go with the gatekeeper – i’ve closed a whole lotta sales with the gatekeeper (whose job it is to get the right people in to her boss and manage his/her time appropriately).
just remember: selling a solution and discovering needs is a very very very different focus than helping the folks figure out how they will be going through any purchasing decision.
is your question coming from a change management/decision facilitation curiousity, or a sales curiousity?
and, everyone, my first name is sharon drew, and i use both names. thanks, folks.
hope you liked the book br/ram.
sd
Comment by Sharon Drew Morgen — October 26, 2009 @ 11:43 am |