Guest

When people first hear about Buying Facilitation®, they ask: ‘But if<br />
we can’t ask about needs and discuss our solution, how do we sell?’<br />
The short answer is, you don’t. At least not when you are accustomed<br />
to. Because that’s not the first thing buyers need from you. The buyer<br />
first needs assistance navigating around their off-line decision issues.<br />
See, we actually enter our buyer’s sphere far too early in their decision<br />
cycle. And we end up attempting to gather needs, understand, and place<br />
product before a buyer really knows how to have this conversation with you.<br />
<br />
The first thing buyers do – well before they are ready to choose a<br />
vendor or a solution – is to figure out what needs to happen internally<br />
for them to be assured that they can achieve excellence AND keep their<br />
organization in tact. THEN they are ready for you to understand their need<br />
and place your solution. The sales model does not help the buyer at this<br />
initial part of their decision cycle because it’s private, unconscious,<br />
idiosyncratic, and for insiders only. But they must do it – and we<br />
needlessly wait as they do. It would like finding the house or car of your<br />
dreams before you discussed a move or a purchase with your spouse or bank.<br />
<br />
GOING INTERNAL<br />
<br />
Where do buyers go when they say, “I’ll call you back?” They go<br />
internal, to make sure the department heads are in agreement, that the<br />
status quo can allow change without creating a mess, that the historic<br />
fight between rival teams is cleaned up, that the new software will work<br />
with the old. Until or unless they manage the internal stuff of<br />
relationships, initiatives, rules, etc., they will not be in a position to<br />
buy anything. Regardless of their ‘need’ or ‘pain.’<br />
<br />
Think of moving. You and your spouse find the perfect house. Are you<br />
going to buy it? Well, that depends on if you can get a loan, or if the<br />
school district is viable, or if your spouse really wants that separation,<br />
or … And these things are private and off-line and have absolutely<br />
nothing to do with the house or the realtor.<br />
<br />
It’s possible to add a front end to what you’re already doing<br />
successfully and use a different skill set to help buyers maneuver through<br />
their internal pitfalls. But it’s not sales. And it has absolutely,<br />
absolutely nothing to do with understanding: as an outsider you’ll never<br />
understand. Can I understand if, in the example above, your spouse is<br />
thinking of separation? Or how to handle the bank if you were overdrawn for<br />
3 months last year?<br />
<br />
Once a buyer manages the internal issues sellers can use rapport and<br />
sales and understanding skills to make sure the solution is superb. But<br />
trying to understand the personal stuff is impossible.<br />
<br />
GATHERING DATA AT THE WRONG TIME DOESN’T HELP BUYERS BUY<br />
<br />
Sales is faulty (see my new book on this:<br />
[http://dirtylittlesecretsbook.com/] Dirty Little Secrets: why buyers<br />
can’t buy and sellers can’t sell and what you can do about it) and only<br />
manages needs assessment and solution placement where it is imperative that<br />
you understand. I’m suggesting you acquire an add-on skill set to merely<br />
act as a GPS system that says left/right/left, through the maze of the<br />
types of decisions buyers must make as they consider their internal,<br />
systemic issues that hold their status quo in place. Until they do this,<br />
they can’t buy from you anyway. But when you use Buying Facilitation®<br />
first with them and do some neutral navigation that is system- and<br />
change-based, you will be placed on their Buying Decision Team.<br />
<br />
I recently spoke with a potential vendor who I was referred to. She<br />
automatically assumed I was ready to buy because of the referral (I<br />
certainly was not), and she went ahead gathering data (that I found myself<br />
very reluctant to give since I didn’t know her or trust her yet) and<br />
trying to sell her services. When I told her that until I knew how I would<br />
have a good chance of getting the results I wanted I wouldn’t be able to<br />
buy, she was quite adamant: “You’ll know when I give you results.”<br />
<br />
Well, in my mind that’s kinda foolish. That means I have to buy her<br />
services, pay her a lot of money, go through internal disruption, and I<br />
won’t know until AFTER all that whether I’m going to be successful or<br />
not??? Before I’d be able to choose her, I’d need to figure out the<br />
criteria I’d use to know if her suggestions, her personality, my needs,<br />
my market, my folks who would be working with her, my company, would act<br />
together in a way that would bring me the change I’m seeking. And if it<br />
would be worth the money and disruption. She’d have been far better off<br />
to have used a Facilitative Question:<br />
<br />
How would you know before we begin that you would have a good chance of<br />
reaching your goals? What would need to happen within your organization to<br />
make sure they are ready for the type of change you are requiring?<br />
<br />
It’s not about my need or her solution. It’s about the issues I need<br />
to manage internally in order to allow change to take place in a way that<br />
minimizes disruption.<br />
<br />
Until you realize there are actually two different types of decisions<br />
buyers must make – the vendor/solution decision that you handle, and the<br />
behind-the-scenes issues that they must handle first – you will be trying<br />
to understand too early and not be present to help them with the main<br />
decisions they must make first.<br />
<br />
You can add a new set of skills to what you’re doing already, and<br />
actually become a part of your buyer’s buying decisions. And, when it’s<br />
time for you to understand, you will be there with just the skills you need<br />
to do it. But first, let’s help manage the private process that you’ve<br />
left unattended until now.<br />