The short answer is, you don’t. At least not when you are accustomed to. Because that’s not the first thing buyers need from you. The buyer first needs assistance navigating around their off-line decision issues. See, we actually enter our buyer’s sphere far too early in their decision cycle. And we end up attempting to gather needs, understand, and place product before a buyer really knows how to have this conversation with you.

The first thing buyers do – well  before they are ready to choose a vendor or a solution  – is to figure out what needs to happen internally for them to be assured that they can achieve excellence AND keep their organization in tact.  THEN they are ready for you to understand their need and place your solution. The sales model does not help the buyer at this initial part of their decision cycle because it’s private, unconscious, idiosyncratic, and for insiders only. But they must do it – and we needlessly wait as they do. It would like finding the house or car of your dreams before you discussed a move or a purchase with your spouse or bank.

GOING INTERNAL

Where do buyers go when they say, “I’ll call you back?” They go internal, to make sure the department heads are in agreement, that the status quo can allow change without creating a mess, that the historic fight between rival teams is cleaned up, that the new software will work with the old. Until or unless they manage the interal stuff of relationships,  initiatives, rules, etc., they will not be in a position to buy anything. Regardless of their ‘need’ or ‘pain.’

Think of moving. You and your spouse find the perfect house. Are you going to buy it? Well, that depends on if you can get a loan, or if the school district is viable, or if your spouse really wants that separation, or … And these things are private and off-line and have absolutely nothing to do with the house or the realtor.

It’s possible to add a front end to what you’re already doing successfully and use a different skill set to help buyers maneuver through their internal pitfalls. But it’s not sales. And it has absolutely, absolutely nothing to do with understanding: as an outsider you’ll never understand. Can I understand if, in the example above, your spouse is thinking of separation? Or how to handle the bank if you were overdrawn for 3 months last year?

Once a buyer manages the internal issues sellers can use rapport and sales and understanding skills to make sure the solution is superb. But trying to understand the personal stuff is impossible.

GATHERING DATA AT THE WRONG TIME DOESN’T HELP BUYERS BUY

Sales is faulty (see my new book on this: Dirty Little Secrets: why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell and what you can do about it) and only manages needs assessment and solution placement where it is imperative that you understand. I’m suggesting you acquire an add-on skill set to merely act as a GPS system that says left/right/left, through the maze of the types of decisions buyers must make as they consider their internal, systemic issues that hold their status quo in place. Until they do this, they can’t buy from you anyway. But when you use Buying Facilitation® first with them and do some neutral navigation that is system- and change-based, you will be placed on their Buying Decision Team.

I recently spoke with a potential vendor who I was referred to. She automatically assumed I was ready to buy because of the referral (I certainly was not), and she went ahead gathering data (that I found myself very reluctant to give since I didn’t know her or trust her yet) and trying to sell her services. When I told her that until I knew how I would have a good chance of getting the results I wanted I wouldn’t be able to buy, she was quite adamant: “You’ll know when I give you results.” Well, in my mind that’s kinda foolish. That means I have to buy her services, pay her a lot of money, go through internal disruption, and I won’t know until AFTER all that whether I’m going to be successful or not??? Before I’d be able to choose her, I’d need to figure out the criteria I’d use to know if her suggestions, her personality, my needs, my market, my folks who would be working with her, my company, would act together in a way that would bring me the change I’m seeking. And if it would be worth the money and disruption. She’d have been far better off to have used a Facilitative Question:

How would you know before we begin that you would have a good chance of reaching your goals? What would need to happen within your organization to make sure they are ready for the type of change you are requiring?

It’s not about my need or her solution. It’s about the issues I need to manage internally in order to allow change to take place in a way that minimizes disruption.

Until you realize there are actually two different types of decisions buyers must make – the vendor/solution decision that you handle, and the behind-the-scenes issues that they must handle first – you will be trying to understand too early and not be present to help them with the main decisions they must make first.

You can add a new set of skills to what you’re doing already, and actually become a part of your buyer’s buying decisions. And, when it’s time for you to understand, you will be there with just the skills you need to do it. But first, let’s help manage the private process that you’ve left unattended until now.

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To learn how to do this, consider buying my new book Dirty Little Secrets: why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell and what you can do about it

Related posts:

1. What do Sellers Need to Understand – and When?
2. Why Must You Understand Buyer’s Buying Decisions?
3. I Simply Don’t Understand

Folks who are just starting out using the internet as a social networking tool have lots of choices. Geert offers you many of the possibilities, the ups and downs of each, what they look like, what you need to do, and great stories to learn from. One of the best features of the book are the personal stories he recounts.

One surprise for me: I opened the book and there I was! My picture and an article I’ve written about sales and the new economy! Fun stuff.

Here is a link to Geert’s book:  Have a look, and enjoy.

Related posts:

1. Use LinkedIn To Grow Your Business
2. Josiane Feigon’s new book

If you do business writing to help you get business, this is a good book to have handy. Not only does it walk you through every single aspect of every single thing you need to do to be successful, it also gives you definitions, examples, illustrations, summaries, tips, warning, charts, to-do lists – everything that you’ll need to do a good job.

For those of you who are already using Buying Facilitation® the book focuses on conventional sales strategies (I’m convinced I’m going to get Neil to include something about how Buying Facilitation® shifts the direction and focus of proposals to include how to influence the behind-the-scenes non-solution-related decisions), you’ll need to add some Facilitative Questions, and do your up-front work differently. But the basics are all here in detail and with great clarity.

What’s so interesting about this book is how it breaks apart everything you need to do and actually helps you think through how to do it: how to brainstorm, how to edit, how to do mind maps. For those of you who resist writing, or who have a hard time, or who do a lot of business writing and could use some additional tips, or for those just starting out, pick up a copy of this book. It’s one of those you should keep on your shelf.

http://howtowriteproposals.com/

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Related posts:

1. Maestro, BookSurge, and Friends: writing and marketing “Dirty Little Secrets”
2. NAVIGA Business Services
3. Use LinkedIn To Grow Your Business

Jeff runs a site in his spare time. Sales Practice is an ‘everything-sales’  site. He has a very very active and involved community of sales folks who hold passionate discussions about sales. And he keeps an eagle eye on the discussion groups, making sure that no one is putting anyone else down, that all discussions are respectful and considerate, and he will quickly take off posts if he finds they will hurt someone.

Jeff does book reviews, has a job opportunity section, features sales training articles and links, introduces CRM capability for sellers. Whatever a seller needs is on Jeff’s site. And not only does he charge nothing and receive no income for his time and trouble, but he sees the site as his gift to sales. He loves the field, and is committed to making available all of the best material that he can so folks can take it and be better sellers.

Fortunately, years ago, Jeff found me (or did I find him??) and he fell in love with Buying Facilitation®, believing (rightly, if I might humbly concur) that BF is actually a spiritually-based, integrity-filled way to truly serve clients. He also recognized that it wasn’t sales and managed a very different element of the buying decision process than sales manages. He began shouting my name from the rafters: one person actually thought that I owned the site; another person told him to please stop sending him emails about Sharon Drew Morgen. Of course, I loved it, even if it was slightly (oh, just ever-so-slightly) obnoxious. But Jeff did it all out of passion for the field – that he had something that would help sales be all it could be.

Now that my book is out and doing so well, I would like to publically thank Jeff for his passion, his vision, his heart, and his commitment to Excellence. And I hope you all go to his site and find it to be a forum to discuss your thoughts and ideas on how to make sales a truly professional, integrous, career.

Thanks, Jeff. You’re the best. And the field is a better profession because you’re in it.

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Related posts:

1. SalesPractice.com
2. Discussion about Sharon Drew on SalesPractice
3. A Disturbing Book

You end up wasting a lot of time, being annoyed, and facing far too much rejection. Where do seemingly appropriate prospects go? How can they choose a different vendor after all you’ve done for them? How can they take so long when it’s so obvious what the answer should be? Why do people treat you so badly when you really want to serve them?

It’s a tough job, and you end up being protective of yourself – maybe even a bit defensive, and maybe slightly arrogant – hanging on to what you believe: so much of everything else around you seems to make little sense.

And, it’s not your fault. It’s the fault of sales because sales only manages a fraction of  the decision issues buyers must address before they make a decision to accept or choose a solution. Indeed, sales does not offer the tools to facilitate the off-line, behind-the-scenes decision issues buyers must manage in order to get internal buy-in for change. And with this lack, you are left fighting the results of prospects who are basically incapable of  making efficient decisions because they have so much unknowable stuff to deal with at the start of a decision to find a solution.

‘WE ARE RIGHT’ MENTALITY, REGARDLESS OF SUCCESS

I began thinking of this fact this past week as I found myself embroiled in a Linked-In group discussion, with sales folks adamantly defending several Consultative Sales models. Pitch better! Buyers are stupid! Understand your customer! Be their Trusted Advisor!

Each time I tried to remind these otherwise intelligent people that sales does not address the long-standing argument the prospect is having with her deparment head, or that the prospect team really, really wants to use their regular vendor, or when the tech team comes in and attempts to take over everything. And I ever-s0-gently remind folks that their closing rates are very abysmal given the amount of time they spend. So why are they defending what they do when it obviously fails?

Sales is a very faulty model. And yet sellers buy-in to the failure as if you’re expecting to lose, just like folks going to Las Vegas hope they will walk out winners but knowing the odds are bad.

It is almost a crap shoot.  After all, you have no idea, when you start, which of your prospects will buy, do you? You’d like to think you do, but you do not.

The only answer I have is Buying Facilitation® since it gives sellers an additional tool kit. And it works, with proven success of hundreds of percentage points over sales in studies from major, global corporations. But to want to learn it would mean some agreement that just maybe, an additional tool kit would offer better results and be worth the time/money/effort to learn.

How would you know that an additional skill set would offer you the possibility of having more success?

What would you need to know about a new skill set to understand if you would be able to recognize a good prospect from a time-waster? That  you could lead buyers through their behind-the-scenes decisions before they are ready to buy, and become part of their Buying Decision Team?

How would you know if it was worth the effort to learn how to help maneuver buyers through their off-line decisions before going down the sales route.

What would you need to believe differently to be willing to give up being right, and be open to adding new possibilities – all of which would include your being a true, true partner rather than having an answer at the start?

If any of you decide that you would be open to learning something that will give you good success at truly helping buyers in a way you  have not been able to before now, please consider learning Buying Facilitation®. I know it might fly in the face of  ’sales’ and operate in a different area of the buying decision. And I know it will be uncomfortable at first. But you have a choice: Would you rather sell? or have someone buy? They are two different activities. And unless you know how to stop selling and use a different set of skills to be the GPS system for your buyer’s off-line and largely unknowable trip, the arrogance of sales will keep you from being as successful as you deserve to be.

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There is still time to get the freebies for: Dirty Little Secrets: why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell and what to do about it. Check out the site for more details.

Or consider purchasing the bundle: Dirty Little Secrets plus my last book Buying Facilitation®: the new way to sell that influences and expands decisions. These books were written to be read together, as they offer the full complement of concepts to help you learn and understand Buying Facilitation® - the new skill set that gives you the ability to lead buyers through their buying decisions. You still get the freebies with the bundle order.

Related posts:

1. How Does Sales Make Our Job Harder?
2. Sales Is The Problem: What Is The Solution?
3. Sales Treats A Need As If It Were An Isolated Event

Do you remember, back in the day, when docs said that women suffering from PMS were hysterical and they needed to have a hysterectomy (that’s where the word ‘hysterical’ comes from btw)? They didn’t understand the physiology underlying the physical issues, and relegated the problem to emotions.

My son has a neurological disease called Dystonia. There is no physical/medical test for it (although it’s very obvious what it is if you are familiar with it), and for many years people suffered with it and had to go to mental institutions because it was called an ‘emotional’ disease. In fact, when I lived in London and my son needed his perscriptions filled from our NY neurologist, our ’surgery’ doc (the UK medical model) told us he needed a psychiatrist, not meds for his uncontrollable spasms.

Historically, when we don’t understand the roots of something we assume there is an emotional component, with the underlying belief being that there is something ‘not quite right’ with the person experiencing what is outside our comfort zone.

BUYER’S PURCHASES MUST COMPLY WITH THEIR SYSTEM

Because buyers take actions that sellers regularly believe to be ‘irrational’, we say that they are either ’stupid’ or making an ‘emotional’ decision. Neuroscientists calls these decisions irrational or emotional as well. But we – sellers and neuroscientists – are rather biased: we see a problem, believe we know the solution, and consider our solution to be the best because it’s the most rational. We forget that every person, every group or family, every system if you will, has a very unique and idiosyncratic set of beliefs and criteria that determine their choices. And what may look irrational from the outside is very very rational on the inside, even if sometimes unconscious.

Indeed, before anyone makes any decision, they consider it against their own beliefs. Would you walk over to a stranger in a park and harm him? No? Why not? That would be an emotional, irrational decision. But you wouldn’t do it because you have internal, unconscious beliefs and values that wouldn’t allow you to harm another person – especially a stranger.

No one makes decisions outside of their beliefs. The internal, private ’system’ that makes up our functioning rules (as individuals or groups) is sacrosanct, and if any decision might render the system useless, or ‘less-than,’ then another decision will be made. And outsiders cannot understand what’s going or become a part of that decision becasue, well, because they are outsiders.

Ever wonder why your friend stayed with her/his spouse? You’ll never understand. But it’s not irrational to him or her; it meets a need of some sort. Indeed, why haven’t you lost those ‘5′ pounds? And why don’t you eat healthier, or work out more, or spend more time with your kids, or or or or. It might look irrational to me, but you have a very unique, idiosyncratic set of internal beliefs that kinda fit together and make up who you are, and if you try to change one piece of this, the rest of the system has distress.

If you were going to start working out daily, you’d have to either get up earlier or move something else in your schedule around. You’d have to probably start considering to eat healthier, and maybe stop having so many beers. It’s not about the gym, or about the weights; it’s about your system and how it’s willing to change so it all becomes a seamless whole that operates in tandem to serve you.

Buyers live in a unique system of rules and roles and relationships, history and initiatives, feelings and vendors and budgets. Change anything and everything else gets touched in some way. Before buyers buy, they must figure out how to manage all this so it ends up butter-side-up; understanding their needs, doing SPIN or Sandler or Relationship sales, or or or, only manages the problem end of the buying decision – the very very last action that buyers need to take – AFTER they’ve managed their systems change bits. And again, no matter what we ask or what we are told, we can never, ever understand someone else’s system, just as they can’t understand ours.

My new book discusses all of this in detail, and explains what’s going on behind-the-scenes, and why. And it teaches how to help buyers discover and address all of their unconscious issues so they can make a congruent decision. Think about it. Think about your decisions and how you make them, and the beliefs you must consider first. Then apply the same beliefs to your buyers.

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There is still time to get the freebies for: Dirty Little Secrets: why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell and what to do about it. Check out the site for more details.

Or consider purchasing the bundle: Dirty Little Secrets plus my last book Buying Facilitation®: the new way to sell that influences and expands decisions. These books were written to be read together, as they offer the full complement of concepts to help you learn and understand Buying Facilitation® - the new skill set that gives you the ability to lead buyers through their buying decisions. You still get the freebies with the bundle order.

Related posts:

1. Help Buyers Make Buying Decisions
2. Buying Decisions
3. Why Must You Understand Buyer’s Buying Decisions?

Whenever we stand in front of a room and pitch data, we have no idea how the folks are viewing us or our solution, what the politics in the room are and how the personalities are weighted, how we are being perceived in relation to our competitors, their old vendors or their on-site team mates who are currently providing a work-around until a new solution gets chosen.

We’ve made great pitches to buyers who have needed us, but haven’t gotten the work because we haven’t managed the off-line issues that we are blissfully unaware of until we lose the sale. That doesn’t need to happen.

Watch my brief video and begin thinking about how to use the presentation process differently. After all, you’re there, in front of the prospect anyway: consider adding a decision facilitation session to the front end of your conversation before you show them your solution details. They won’t make a buying decision until they do that anyway, and if you don’t help them, they’ll do it off-line, without you.

Do you want to be on the Buying Decision Team? or do you want to sit and wait while they make their decisions without you. Because they need to make them anyway. Might as well be with you.

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Today, Oct 29, is your last day to get your freebies for purchasing Dirty Little Secrets.  I hope you’re all enjoying the new book. I’m sure enjoying our emails and your questions. I’ll soon put together call-in coaching sessions so I can help you learn. Stay tuned. And thank you for your care.

Related posts:

1. Spin and the Consultative Sales Model
2. Decision Making The Expert Way
3. Buyer’s Buying Decision

Needless to say, when it came time to choose a way to put the book into print, I was committed to finding the best. The problem was, there is no way to get a book published world-wide through available POD printers here in the States. One POD house gave me great capability in the U.S. and in the technosphere. One POD house gave me capability in bookstores and in the U.K. but not in any other country.

OK. So I compromised. For those folks who were able to find my www.dirtylittlesecretbook.com site, I hired someone to do non-U.S. fulfillment and get the books out.

But then I got a bit of a shock. One of the publishers – the one I like the most and who have given me fabulous, incomparable customer care – has a less-than-adequate product and the print job and paper are sub standard to my personal specifications. They are trying to fix it, and are in caring contact, but it’s like trying to fix the Titannic once it’s afloat. The other publisher has a higher standard of print, but give absolutely horrific customer service, and every time I deal with them I get a stomach ache.

What is a client to do? Unfortunately, in this case, I am choosing the publisher I dislike because I owe my clients, and my book, the best possible quality. But I am annoyed about it, and resent having to use them. They communicate badly, don’t make it easy for us to order – or order correctly – and we have to keep calling them to find out if we got it right, and then discover we didn’t and the order is still sitting in their in-box because their technology was unintelligible.

I sure wish I had an alternative to them both. Can’t I combine them and get the publisher of my dreams? Good product AND good service? Anyone have any other ideas?

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Remember: Thursday is the last day you can purchase Dirty Little Secrets and get the freebies from: Tony Parinello, Jill Konrath, Anne Miller, Lee Glickstein, Lee Colan, Mitch Gooze, Jim Altfeld. And stay tuned: I’ll be announcing a call-in coaching program soon for folks who want to learn Buying Facilitation®.

Related posts:

1. The Vendor Client Relationship
2. Who Do You Choose To Trust On The Net?
3. It’s the Buying Decision, Stupid

I’ve got the answers for you. eCompetitors is this amazing site that has me gobsmacked (did i spell that right?). It does all of the research  you could ever wish for, on 11,445 global industries and companies at the line-of-business level. That means that it checks out everything – e v e r y t h i n g – about a company that you could ever, ever need to know, and then some.

Here is some of what I gleaned from playing with the site with co-owner Alan Michaels – and please forgive me here for going on and on. I was truly amazed.

When you look up an industry, you get to choose whichever company names you want to include – Microsoft, Oracle, HP, Dell, etc. and even some you didn’t know about - and compare them in categories such as: product segments (many you didn’t even know about), competitors, customer segments, demographics, technology trends. There are reports on competitors, industry profiles and trends, channels. Interesting to me is the factors that go into the decisions buyers make to choose them over competitors, and even who the target decision makers are - in a phrase, all of the competitive intelligence you need to do research and analysis that explains industry analysis at the line-of-business level.

And the technology is simple to use, easy to read, laid out logically. It’s mind-boggling. It’s exciting. It will make every public company – and some not public yet – an open book and easily accessible for sales folks to get what they need to position their solution in the right way for the right people for the right time in the market.

So before you go into a company to do a pitch, you can know everything – which job titles will be involved in purchasing decisions (once eCompetitors factors in Buying Facilitation® they will know who makes which decisions and the system that underlies the decision making process), who your competition will most likely be. There is so much data there that you’ll be able to figure out how much up-line business you might expect in the future once you make them your client.

They are a brand new company. But I’d use them as soon as possible, because once your competition uses them, you’ll be at a disadvantage.

When you call Alan, call him Michael – he’ll know who sent you. www.ecompetitors.com

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And don’t forget: just a few more days to get your freebies with your purchases of my new book Dirty Little Secrets. I’m getting quite amazing reviews on my new book, and sales folks from all over the world, in every industry imaginable, are thanking me for opening their eyes to how to help influence buying decisions. I’m going to be starting learning groups shortly for those interested in learning some of the ‘hows.’ Stay tuned.

Related posts:

1. How Sales Must Shift In This Uncertain Economy
2. Voice Mail, Gatekeepers, And Other Obstructions To Sales Success
3. Why Sales Fail

• maneuver through their internal, behind-the-scenes buy-in issues to ensure a trouble-free change process, and
• choose a solution that will address their stakeholder’s criteria for systems excellence while maintaining the integrity of the system.

Sales addresses one of these jobs, but not the other. In fact, we’ve never been taught the skills to help with the off-line issues buyers address: as per the explanations and skills offered in my new book Dirty Little Secrets, helping buyers maneuver through their off-line buy-in issues requires a wholly different skill set.

We need to have the ability to be a GPS system for our buyers. You see, they need to meander through all of the internal systems issues that created their problem to begin with, to get to the route cause, figure out how it got there and has been maintained over time, and address all of the elements that hold it in place daily so that a new resolution can enter without fallout, without sabotage, and with acceptance and support.

As a simple example, let’s use fitness. Let’s say I’m not working out as often as I should. Getting good data about a gym, understanding why I’m not working out, or knowing that there are great trainers available to help me get fit, doesn’t address my baseline issues. I will not only have to figure out what has stopped me from working out and being fit until now, but I’ll have to manage some unconscious, unknown ‘stuff’ that has allowed me to ignore the gym issue until now.

• How do I currently handle my belief that I’m a healthy person if I only do those activities that make me comfortable?
• What has stopped me from attending the gym until now? And what sort of shift would I need to make to change my internal view of myself?
• What other issues do I need to manage to become a healthy person (i.e. eating issues, family issues, time issues, social issues) and what has stopped me from managing these until now?

As sellers, we treat the ‘need’ as if it were an isolated event and have no way to help buyers manage the off-line issues they must privately address as they consider changing to excellence. And, when we attempt to ‘understand’ what’s going on, it’s akin to you trying to understand why I choose to get up at 6:30 a.m. instead of 5:30 to get to the gym— and then attempting to convince me to do what would get me to the gym, rather than supporting me in managing my beliefs about my family obligations that you cannot influence because you are an outsider.

Indeed, we cannot – and should not – understand these personal, internal dynamics. But we can help buyers understand them. After all, until they do, and until they address them, they will do nothing, and we will sit and wait and wait until they do. We have waited helplessly in the mystery of what buyers do for decades, if not centuries.

BE THE GPS SYSTEM, NOT THE SELLER

We can use a different skill set to help buyers maneuver through their first steps. We cannot be there when they have to have those private meetings, or have an argument with the tech team, or handle a 3-year-old vendor issue, but knowing the environment – the system, if you will – that must be attained, generally speaking, before a buyer can buy, we can add a new skill set to our sales skills, and help buyers buy.

Think of the first decision issues as a GPS system understands the route. One mile, two left turns, etc. Think of the prospect as the driver who has to get somewhere (and who has not used a GPS system before, getting lost frequently but getting there eventually), the car as the system of internal, private issues that are on a journey and that will eventually find the ‘party,’ and the destination as the place you can sell your product.

The GPS system can’t know the scenery, or the fact that the car had been in an accident the day before. But it clearly understands what the generic route to excellence looks like and continues to know the route to the destination even after the driver has stopped for gas.

When we attempt to use our sales skills at the wrong time in the buyer’s decision cycle – and almost all buyers come to us well, well before they have figured out their route – we are helping buyers delay their purchasing decision, opening us up for objections and competition and money issues.

Sales only manages half of the buying decision process. For the initial issues buyers must manage, become the GPS system to help them navigate through their systems issues so they can buy. And with you as the decision facilitator, they will incorporate you into their solution design in half the time, with no competition or proposals or objections.

My new book will explain the buyer’s route, and offer new skill sets for you to help them buy. If you buy it before Oct 29, you’ll get freebies from wonderful sales luminaries. Not to mention you’ll learn how to reduce your sale cycle by half, and be ahead of your competitors.

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There is still time to get the freebies for: Dirty Little Secrets: why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell and what to do about it. Check out the site for more details.

Or consider purchasing the bundle: Dirty Little Secrets plus my last book Buying Facilitation®: the new way to sell that influences and expands decisions. These books were written to be read together, as they offer the full complement of concepts to help you learn and understand Buying Facilitation® - the new skill set that gives you the ability to lead buyers through their buying decisions. You still get the freebies with the bundle order.

Related posts:

1. How To Listen To A Buyer
2. When Does A Buyer Buy?
3. “Dirty Little Secrets” launches tomorrow: 3 more secrets unveiled

For the past 10 or so years, I have only run training programs in corporations, with no ability to help individuals learn the model. Now, so many of you are contacting me and want to learn that I’m starting to think about ways to support you. I’m going to lay out some ideas, but please, send me an email to sdm@austin.rr.com if you can think of any other ways. I’m excited to work with you on this: my goal is to create a community of Buying Facilitators.

Because Buying Facilitation® is a skill set, not a behavior (i.e. it’s like learning to play the piano, or learning how to be a good golfer, and reading a book doesn’t quite get you there), and because it’s a decision facilitation model and not a sales model, it’s necessary to learn a few things that we’ve not been taught before. In my corporate trainings, my clients take 5 days of study with me (including 2 days of real-time phone calls with clients and me), and 8 weeks of follow-on coaching. By week 5 of the coaching, they are just completing their skills training, and by week 6 they are already doubling their business. It’s kinda like studying with a fine pianist, or golfer, and being an expert within 6 weeks. Given the results, it’s no time at all. But for some who want 3 quick things to do, I can’t help you become an expert…. although certainly my new book Dirty Little Secrets will get you much farther along the buying decision cycle than you were before you read the book.

For folks who want to learn the model, or even teach/license the model to others, here are the ideas I’ve come up with. And let’s continue this conversation with the new ideas you might have.

1. I have already developed a 26 session Guided Study program for serious learners. It’s 3-5 hours of homework and interactive study in each session, and comes with one coaching session with me. This is for serious students. It took me over 300 hours to develop these learning sessions, and I have carefully calculated your learning arc to make sure everything fits together sequentially so you can learn easily. They take time, they will create real change, and they take dedicated effort – they are not light reading. Real exercises to do. Real homework…. Fun, creative, packed, but homework. And then a lecture. There is a sample of these on buyingfacilitation.com.

It’s quite possible to have a group of learners meet with me once or twice a month on-line, and I could answer questions, lecture on the topics of the sessions you’re all on (or we could have a closed group and be going through the sessions together) and discuss places you’re stuck. I’ve got quite a few thoughts on this. Let me know what you think.

2. Start a more casual group for folks who just want help implementing some of the ideas from Dirty Little Secrets. I could give you each one individual coaching session and lay out a strategic plan, and then have an open group that meets monthly, with one topic each month, and 1/2 the time for Q&A.

Let me know if you have specific thoughts and needs about this. It’s important to understand that the material in the new book is exciting and innovative, but still demands some new skills re facilitating decisions and delaying the job of sales until all of the stakeholders are involved and ready to move forward (with you on their Buying Decision Team of course). I look forward to hearing from you and figuring out how to best serve you or your team.

And thank you again for your interest and excitement in my work. I am honored and touched by your response, and quite humbled that you like the material.

sd

Remember: there is one more week in which the freebies are available. Once you buy the book send us your Amazon confirmation and we’ll send out the freebies. For those living outside the U.S., Amazon is not fulfilling non-U.S. orders but we are here, and we’re sending folks the freebies.

Related posts:

1. Good Practice Praises Buying Facilitation®
2. A Case Study In Buying Facilitation®
3. Buying Facilitation® Comes Before Sales

OK. Now let me give you the details. Eric Wolf and Stephanie Frost have written an important book: Marketing:Unmasked – insider’s tips & tricks for small business marketing. It’s a very clear, very thorough romp (filled with activities, ‘to-do’ stuff, etc.) through social media offering high-level information on necessary topics that business owners need to know to be successful in this market and economy. It is meticulous and simply written – one of those rare books that says exactly what it needs to say without fillers, yet playful enough to be enjoyable. As an author myself, I was touched by the elegance of the writing.  It will teach you how to make informed decisions to market strategically with truly honest, real-world, wise advice, learned from being in the field with clients.

The book says it offers “… little tastes of many different flavors, like branding, logo design, marketing planning, web design, and social media, and … hiring good marketing, branding, and design partners.” (pg 16).

I adore that Eric and Stephanie believe that branding is an ‘experience.’  In the book they say, “… the intire interaction someone has with your business…the graphics they see…the words they read, the words they hear, and the emotions they feel… every point of contact between you and your customer – your receptionist, your brochure, your order form… sales team, and your product or service… the soul, the intangible essense behind everything that your customers experience when they deal with your buyers.”

This book is one of those rare gems that is packed with important information on every page. Please, do yourself a favor and buy the book.

COME PLAY WITH ME AND TONY PARINELLO

Every few years, Tony Parinello (Getting to VITO)  and I sit down over coffee, each at our individual desks 1000 miles away from each other, and invite perfect strangers to hear us banter on Tony’s radio show. We goad each other, laugh with each other, tell each other stories – he’s the VITO guy and I’m the Buying Facilitation® gal – and between us bring some light into the field of sales.

Join us on Friday at 10 a.m. PT, 1:00 ET, as Tony and I play. It’s been a few years since we’ve last chatted, so it should be a real hoot. And you might learn a lot also.

Here is how to listen, and be a guest of Tony’s regular show for our segment: www.businessbroadcasting.biz

User Name: BeMyGuest
Password:  Sharon Drew

If you miss this, I’ll put up a link to the podcast of the interview on Monday.
And don’t forget: you have another week of freebies when you buy Dirty Little Secrets.

Thanks to you all for making the book #1 on Amazon’s Hot Titles list and #1 on their Sales list.

sd

There is still time to get the freebies for: Dirty Little Secrets: why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell and what to do about it. Check out the site for more details.

Or consider purchasing the bundle: Dirty Little Secrets plus my last book Buying Facilitation®: the new way to sell that influences and expands decisions. These books were written to be read together, as they offer the full complement of concepts to help you learn and understand Buying Facilitation® - the new skill set that gives you the ability to lead buyers through their buying decisions. You still get the freebies with the bundle order.

Related posts:

1. Tony Parinello Is A VITO
2. Maestro, BookSurge, and Friends: writing and marketing “Dirty Little Secrets”
3. Tony Parinello and VITO Principle #5

I decided to give you all of the podcasts, videos, and audio files of the interviews I’ve done recently so you can kick back and enjoy some ‘easy listening’ if you find listening easier than reading. I believe that you’ll be able to upload many of these onto your MP3 player for when you’re working out at the gym and need to get your mind off of the pain.

• Maestro: With a few dozen attendees, we ran a training session in which I lectured and did a Q&A about Buying Facilitation® and sales. It was great fun.
• Meri Aaron Walker: Meri Aaron and I have a video conversation about change and decision making.
• Brian Carroll: Brian and I speak about how decision facilitation can help sellers become leaders for their clients/prospects.
• Lee Glickstein: Lee is the fabulous thought-leader who developed Relational Presence and Speaking Circles. He and I discuss some ‘dirty little secrets’ and how sales folks can truly serve clients.
• Clayton Shold: Clayton and I discussed how sales people can be better/better/best!
• Lee Colan: Lee really wanted to understand Buying Facilitation® and how it could be used with sales.
• Jeff Ogden: Jeff and I discussed some of the failures with sales and what to do about them.
• High Velocity Radio: This was a fun interview: Stone asked me about the development of Buying Facilitation® and why it’s important.
• Gravity Free Radio: Eric was the perfect foil: he made typical assumptions about selling, and we used our time to show how sales fails and what you can do about it.

Don’t forget: Dirty Little Secrets is still in its launch phase. When you purchase the book between now and Oct. 29, you’ll get a bunch of free stuff from such folks as Lee Colan, Tony Parinello, Jill Konrath, and Anne Miller.

Tony Parinello and I will be doing a radio show this Friday, Oct 22, at 10 PT, 1 ET. Put it on your calendars and I’ll be giving you a link for the show shortly. Tony and I always have SUCH fun together – two visionaries at opposite ends of the sales spectrum, who love and respect each other, and butt heads (but never hearts) and chat, question, argue, discuss… It’s always interesting and thought – provoking.

Enjoy the learning, and the fun. If you have purchased the book and have questions, email me at sdm@austin.rr.com. And stay tuned: I’m creating monthly call-in coaching hours for those individuals interested in learning more and  joining a community.

sd

There is still time to get the freebies for: Dirty Little Secrets: why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell and what to do about it. Check out the site for more details.

Or consider purchasing the bundle: Dirty Little Secrets plus my last book Buying Facilitation®: the new way to sell that influences and expands decisions. These books were written to be read together, as they offer the full complement of concepts to help you learn and understand Buying Facilitation® - the new skill set that gives you the ability to lead buyers through their buying decisions. You still get the freebies with the bundle order.

Related posts:

1. Interview with Lee Colan
2. Eric Wolf and Stephanie Frost Unmask Marketing/Join Me and VITO
3. When Does A Buyer Buy?

Meri Aaron is known as “The Virtual Meeting Coach” and a social media evangelist, using free media and virtual meeting tools to strengthen local and distance relationships. She is also the co-author of Teamwork is An Individual Skill: Getting Your Work Done When Sharing Responsibility (Berret Kohler, 2001) and speaks about collaboration with business and government leaders and at universities across North America and Europe in diverse industries such as real estate, healthcare, long-term care, and technology companies.

She told me to tell you this: “These days, Meri Aaron blogs as “The Virtual Meeting Coach” and trains clients face-to-face and online through her company, Virtual Meeting Startup. Her popular short course, 21 Sure-Fire Ways To Build Trust Working With Others Online, is available free at VirtualMeetingStartup.com.” What I’d like to say, on my own, is that Meri Aaron (she has two names also!) is smart, witty, demanding, clear, and she ‘gets it.’

Watch the video we made together. Two cool Dudettes sharing brilliance. A bit of caution from my ego-self. This was the first time using my new camera and the lighting is way off. Between my odd-looking eyes that seem to be all over the place (I hate seeing myself on that video!) and my focus on systems and change, that I forgot to say that in my new book I’m actually writing about change in the sales industry: buyers don’t buy until their status quo is willing to change and buys-in to doing something new – hence the focus in my new book Dirty Little Secrets on how buyers change so they can choose your solution.

Please watch this video with these caveats, and then go to read some chapters of the book and see that indeed, my ideas, skills, concepts, and models about change are placed in the sales field throughout the whole book. And in real life, my eyes are really pretty.

Related posts:

1. Sharon Drew speaks with Lee Glickstein
2. Discussion about Sharon Drew on SalesPractice
3. Fun Stuff to Hear

On the sales end of the equation, you NEED to understand the prospect’s situation to make sure you are placing the appropriate solution in the right place. This same data will give you ability to fine-tune your presentation and pitch to ensure the buyer understand how your solution will fit in their environment. You also need to understand the buyer’s vision, and criteria for Excellence.

There is no way to truly understand anything else.

I know I”m bucking up against some resistance here, but hear me out. You will never understand the private, idiosyncratic issues going on within the buyer’s environment. You might ask questions about these things, hoping you’ll glean enough data to help you target your pitch. But if that worked, you would have closed a lot more sales. And, an outsider can never understand what is really going on inside of anyone else’s situation. There are relationship issues, company politics, history, working relationships, ego issues, rules, vendor issues, partner issues. An outsider can never ‘grok’ the import, the nuance, the residual feelings, the unconscious biases, that go on between people…especially people you don’t know and in groups you aren’t a part of.

I’ve been writing and speaking about the off-line decision issues for decades. This last year, folks are beginning to talk about them and start using the terms I’ve been using all along. Yesterday I got a cold call from a local vendor who actually had something I might be able to use. As the call was ending, I said I didn’t have the bandwidth to think about it now (book launch took over my time) but I’d take his number and call him when I was ready. He then said to me: “Can you please tell me when you’re going to make a decision?” I smiled, knowing he was probably told by a manager to start ‘finding out’ about people’s decision making (and knowing that my work had finally come into the mainstream of sales thinking) and didn’t have a clue what it meant or how to go about it.

Here is the rest of my conversation with the sales guy:

SDM: What will ‘knowing when I’m deciding’ give you?

Rep: What? I just need to know.

SDM: Why?

Rep: If you’re not going to be deciding within a month, I’ll call you back. Would a better question have been: Can I put you down for an order in a month?

This is a real conversation. Did the seller need to know when I was deciding? What would he have done with that data? What did he expect that question would do…make me commit? He never managed my issues: What did I need to know? How was I going to choose to buy?

Imagine if our new jobs as sellers include helping buyers understand how they will line up their internal, off-line decision issues – the people that need to be involved, the historic issues that must be resolved, the buy-in that must be encouraged - that need to take place so they are free to choose a solution. Not the issues involved with a purchasing decision, necessarily. Often, the internal issues have absolutely nothing to do with the buyer’s need, yet they must be handled.

Here is a simple way to look at the new skills I’m suggesting: in the first stages of the buyer’s decision making – you know, that behind-the-scenes part that we are not privvy to  - buyers are unfamiliar with the steps they need to take as they lurch toward solving a problem. If you could take the part of a GPS system and just offer coordinates for choice, the buyer (driving the car that the GPS system is not involved with) would easily find where they were going (they must drive alone, and watch the scenery that you can’t see) and you could be there at the end with the solution.

We can’t understand the exact specs of a solution until the buyer has traversed the journey. Knowing ‘how they buy’ or ‘how they decide’ won’t help the buyer choose you. Add Decision Facilitation to your sales skills. It will make your job easier to not have to understand so much at the front end, and save it for the back end when the buyer really can hear about, and use, your solution.

sd

Check out my new book: Dirty Little Secrets: why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell and what to do about it. Read two free chapters, testimonials, and much more. Then buy the book.

Or consider purchasing the bundle: Dirty Little Secrets plus my last book Buying Facilitation®: the new way to sell that influences and expands decisions. These books were written to be read together, as they offer the full complement of concepts to help you learn and understand Buying Facilitation® - the new skill set that gives you the ability to lead buyers through their buying decisions.

Related posts:

1. How do we sell if we don’t understand needs?
2. I Simply Don’t Understand
3. Why Must You Understand Buyer’s Buying Decisions?