Guest

Sales professionals face a lot of failure. You work very hard to discover<br />
plausible opportunities, understand needs, respect and care for prospects,<br />
and position your products so prospects recognize how your solution manages<br />
their need. You are good. You are professional. You are conscientious. Yet<br />
you only close a fraction of your sales; you seem to have no idea who to<br />
spend time on, who to let go, who will be able to buy, or who will have no<br />
ability to buy (even though they act like prospects), regardless of the<br />
fit between their need and your solution.<br />
<br />
You end up wasting a lot of time, being annoyed, and facing far too much<br />
rejection. Where do seemingly appropriate prospects go? How can they choose<br />
a different vendor after all you’ve done for them? How can they take so<br />
long when it’s so obvious what the answer should be? Why do people treat<br />
you so badly when you really want to serve them?<br />
<br />
It’s a tough job, and you end up being protective of yourself – maybe<br />
even a bit defensive, and maybe slightly arrogant – hanging on to what<br />
you believe: so much of everything else around you seems to make little<br />
sense.<br />
<br />
And, it’s not your fault. It’s the fault of sales because sales only<br />
manages a fraction of the decision issues buyers must address before they<br />
make a decision to accept or choose a solution. Indeed, sales does not<br />
offer the tools to facilitate the off-line, behind-the-scenes decision<br />
issues buyers must manage in order to get internal buy-in for change. And<br />
with this lack, you are left fighting the results of prospects who are<br />
basically incapable of making efficient decisions because they have so<br />
much unknowable stuff to deal with at the start of a decision to find a<br />
solution.<br />
<br />
‘WE ARE RIGHT’ MENTALITY, REGARDLESS OF SUCCESS<br />
<br />
I began thinking of this fact this past week as I found myself embroiled<br />
in a Linked-In group discussion, with sales folks adamantly defending<br />
several Consultative Sales models. Pitch better! Buyers are stupid!<br />
Understand your customer! Be their Trusted Advisor!<br />
<br />
Each time I tried to remind these otherwise intelligent people that sales<br />
does not address the long-standing argument the prospect is having with her<br />
department head, or that the prospect team really, really wants to use<br />
their regular vendor, or when the tech team comes in and attempts to take<br />
over everything. And I ever-s0-gently remind folks that their closing rates<br />
are very abysmal given the amount of time they spend. So why are they<br />
defending what they do when it obviously fails?<br />
<br />
Sales is a very faulty model. And yet sellers buy-in to the failure as if<br />
you’re expecting to lose, just like folks going to Las Vegas hope they<br />
will walk out winners but knowing the odds are bad.<br />
<br />
It is almost a crap shoot. After all, you have no idea, when you start,<br />
which of your prospects will buy, do you? You’d like to think you do, but<br />
you do not.<br />
<br />
The only answer I have is Buying Facilitation® since it gives sellers an<br />
additional tool kit. And it works, with proven success of hundreds of<br />
percentage points over sales in studies from major, global corporations.<br />
But to want to learn it would mean some agreement that just maybe, an<br />
additional tool kit would offer better results and be worth the<br />
time/money/effort to learn.<br />
<br />
How would you know that an additional skill set would offer you the<br />
possibility of having more success?<br />
<br />
What would you need to know about a new skill set to understand if you<br />
would be able to recognize a good prospect from a time-waster? That you<br />
could lead buyers through their behind-the-scenes decisions before they are<br />
ready to buy, and become part of their Buying Decision Team?<br />
<br />
How would you know if it was worth the effort to learn how to help<br />
maneuver buyers through their off-line decisions before going down the<br />
sales route.<br />
<br />
What would you need to believe differently to be willing to give up being<br />
right, and be open to adding new possibilities – all of which would<br />
include your being a true, true partner rather than having an answer at the<br />
start?<br />
<br />
If any of you decide that you would be open to learning something that<br />
will give you good success at truly helping buyers in a way you have not<br />
been able to before now, please consider learning Buying Facilitation®. I<br />
know it might fly in the face of ’sales’ and operate in a different<br />
area of the buying decision. And I know it will be uncomfortable at first.<br />
<br />
But you have a choice: Would you rather sell? or have someone buy? They are<br />
two different activities. And unless you know how to stop selling and use a<br />
different set of skills to be the GPS system for your buyer’s off-line<br />
and largely unknowable trip, the arrogance of sales will keep you from<br />
being as successful as you deserve to be.<br />