When people first hear about Buying Facilitation®, they ask: ‘But if
we can’t ask about needs and discuss our solution, how do we sell?’
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 internal 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:
[http://dirtylittlesecretsbook.com/] 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.