Posted by: sharondrew
in Blogs on Jul 27, 2010
There are two aspects to a buyer’s journey as they consider a solution purchase:
1. getting internal buy-in from colleagues, bosses, and budgets to decide to make a change, figuring out how or what will be included in the change, and agreeing how to move forward;
2. choosing a solution and vendor.
In today’s buying decision journey, technology is beginning to ably handle the solution choice: Since sales focuses on the needs analysis and solution choice end of the buying decision, it’s easy-enough for the process of selection and information-gathering to be co-opted by the web.
That leaves the seller not meeting quotas, not involved until the very end after many of the decisions have been made, and not using their talents as purveyors of industry knowledge. Sellers are not entering the buying decision journey early enough, are too often reduced to order takers.
Posted by: CoursesPlus
in Blogs on Jul 14, 2010
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The employment figures released today by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) state that the number of people that are unemployed in the U.K. has fallen by 34,000 over March, April and May. The new figure puts unemployment at 2.47 million, better by 0.1% than the governments forecast. The jobless rate in the U.K. is now at 7.8% which compares favourably with the U.S. at 9.5% and the Eurozone at 9.7% but it does not compare so well with some strong Eastern economies such as China at 4.3% and Japan at 5.2%.
Posted by: markhunter
in Blogs on Jun 30, 2010
Tagged in:
strategic planning ,
selling skills ,
salesperson ,
sales profitability ,
sales ,
pricing strategy ,
prices ,
management ,
low price ,
discounts ,
Customer ,
closing deal ,
business
The phone rings and the sales manager hears on the other end the all-too-familiar plea of a salesperson. The salesperson tries to convince the sales manager that it makes so much sense to offer the prospect a discount to get them to finally become a customer. Of course, the salesperson has the expectation that this new customer will quickly become a high-profit customer. The sales manager has heard the same plea hundreds of times before, and yet for some reason, the salesperson and the lack of current sales suddenly make offering a discount very attractive.
Posted by: sharondrew
in Blogs on Jun 29, 2010
There are two distinct categories involving buying decisions:
1. the behind-the-scenes issues buyers must manage internally to get stakeholder buy-in for change and for going outside their status quo for a solution;
2. the solution-choice issues.
We are all very familiar with the latter: that’s what sales handles so well. But sales does not handle #1 at all:
- we are not there when buyers choose the Buying Decision Team, or the machinations of how they will work together;
- we are not there when the powers that be decide it might actually be time to resolve a problem that has been working well-enough;
- we are not there when internal politics get into gear and people jocky for position in re a new initiative or resolving an historic problem;
- we are not there when the decision is made to either use a familiar provider, or go outside to seek a new one, or do nothing.
Posted by: sharondrew
in Blogs on May 24, 2010
I was going to call one of my books “I’d close more sales if it weren’t for the buyer” thinking that people would laugh at the silliness. But when I got an immediate standing ovation from 600 people when I said this, I realized that sales people believed it, ridiculous though it is. It’s like saying I’d have had a better birth if it weren’t for my mother.
We give prospects our time, our respect, our knowledge. We call them on time, we follow up with information. We dote on them. Truly we do. Hoping, hoping, hoping, that this one, THIS ONE, will close. Because they all begin with the same possibility, we believe that each one will close. We’re always surprised when they disappear. No rhyme or reason, it seems.
So what, exactly, does a buyer owe us? Nothing.
Indeed, we’re not treated well. When sellers approach prospects to sell a solution they really need it’s all about us: we want something from them. Oh, sure, we’re nice – helpful, understanding, supportive. But we end up getting disrespected because we’ve attempted to enter their ‘closed system’ (see Dirty Little Secrets to understand a buyer’s environment and why they push back). Until a system knows how to seek and accept change – and a new solution is change – it will avoid anything from the outside trying to make change happen.
Posted by: sharondrew
in Blogs on May 03, 2010
I had so much fun with you all in April with my Steps to a Sales Call contest that I’m going to run another one. This time I’d like you to use your own words to define my concepts re helping buyers manage their behind-the-scenes decision issues. I’d like to either 1. use your definitions in addition to the ones I use, 2. help you correct your mis-perceptions, or 3. redefine terms the way you’re comfortable using them.
To be part of the official contest, please ’define’ at least 4 of the terms and start a public dialogue with me. I will send each participant one of my Dirty Little Secrets books.
Here’s the deal: without taking definitions from my books (you can use previous blog posts, however) write up some definitions to the following terms:
- Buying Facilitation®
- Facilitative Questions
- decision facilitation
- buyer’s buying decisions
- navigating the buying decision
- the system buyers live in
- the change management issues buyers must address
- the difference between buy-in and buying decisions
- Buying Facilitation® and Sales: how do they work together?
Posted by: markhunter
in Blogs on Apr 28, 2010
Tagged in:
trust ,
time ,
tactics ,
success ,
strategy ,
selling skills ,
salesperson ,
sales management ,
sales ,
organization ,
negotiating ,
managers ,
business
Successful negotiating requires you have a strategy. The clearer your strategy before negotiating, the more successful you will be. At the core of the strategy is what I refer to as the "3 Ts of Negotiating: Trust, Time, and Tactics."
Posted by: joanneblack
in Blogs on Apr 12, 2010
Believe it or not, social networking isn't the next best thing... You are! It's the personal connection that still seals the deal.
Posted by: markhunter
in Blogs on Mar 25, 2010
Tagged in:
selling skills ,
salesperson ,
sales profitability ,
sales perspective ,
sales ,
prospects ,
prospecting ,
profit ,
Customer ,
closing the sale ,
business obstacles ,
business
Keeping your pipeline of prospects full is no easy task. I'm not going to suggest it is. I talk to salespeople all the time and most say that prospecting is their number one source of new business. So if you are like most salespeople, one of your hardest tasks is simultaneously one of your most necessary – keeping your pipeline full. There's no way to slide into loads of profit without some effort – serious effort – on the front end.
Posted by: sharondrew
in Blogs on Mar 22, 2010
Sales is a great model for understanding need, discovering problems, and introducing/placing solutions.
Buying Facilitation® is a great model for helping buyers navigate their behind-the-scenes political and relationship issues that must achieve buy-in before they get consensus to purchase a solution – you know, that mysterious stuff buyers go through privately while we sit and wait for them to buy.
By using both two models consecutively, selling and buying becomes a very different experience than the one we are accustomed to: the timing is different, the skills are different, the outcomes are different, the relationship is different and the competitive and money factors fade away.
Indeed, sellers can enter the buying environment much, much earlier, be a coach as buyers gather the appropriate players and handle their buy-in issues, and lead them through all of the behind-the-scenes decisions they must make by being a part of the Buying Decision team – not as a seller, but as a management consultant and change agent dedicated to buyers achieving excellence. They have to do this stuff anyway: might as well be with you. You sit and wait while they do it anyway.
Posted by: sharondrew
in Blogs on Mar 15, 2010
Sales is a needs assessment-problem discovery/solution placement model. We use relationships and industry knowledge and well-conceived product data to align with prospects to help influence them to choose us.
Now, with technology, we have even more capability to offer product data and find our what’s happening with the buyer. The internet, e-marketing, webinars, websites, are offering buyers whatever data they may need to choose. With our fabulous technology, we can track them, cookie them, send them stuff, entice them with blog posts. But at the end of the day, until or unless they make a purchase, we’ve done it all for naught.
Posted by: Bill Bishop
in Blogs on Mar 12, 2010
If you want an answer, ask a question. Questions invite answers; questions demand answers. Only a completely rude person ignores a question — and often not even then, because rude people like to prove they’re right!
Posted by: sharondrew
in Blogs on Mar 08, 2010
Posted by: sharondrew
in Blogs on Mar 01, 2010
Do you believe that to close a sale you must ‘get in front of prospects?’ Why? Really. Have you ever asked yourself why? Do you tell yourself that you MUST have that eye contact? That ‘face-to-face’ juice? Do you tell yourself that if you’re not in the field, you’re not selling?
In 1937, Dale Carnegie advocated it. What else are you using from a 1937 playbook?
Untold billions of dollars have been misspent following this industry-wide belief: planes, hotels, time. And? The industry still has a 7% average close rate.
Here is a rule: Don’t use your body as a prospecting tool.
Here is a secret: your sterling personality, your great outfit, your Rolex watch and Prada shoes don’t close an account. Nor does your great insight or knowledge of the buyer, their need, your industry, or your solution. Nor does that great rapport you create over lunch. Otherwise, you would be closing a lot more sales. Amazing how much push-back I get from an industry with such a low success rate.
Posted by: sharondrew
in Blogs on Feb 08, 2010
Do you spend a lot of time collecting names that might be prospects?
Do you spend a lot of money learning how to follow prospects on line, so you can guess where they are in the decision making process?
Has all of this activity substantially increased your ROI?
What you’re forgetting – or ignoring – is that no matter what information the buyer needs, or how often they (and their colleagues) visit your site, or how deftly follow their activity with your ability to track ‘Digital Body Language,’ at the end of the day, you will not be there when they sit down to decide. Nope. The internal decisions that buyers make to choose a solution, to decide to make a change, to select one vendor or solution over another, are off-line. That’s right: you are not there when two department heads have an arguement about which vendor they prefer, or when the tech folks start clamoring to take over a project, or when a partner shows up with a good-enough solution.
Recently, I’ve noticed many folks using the term ‘