Sales professionals face a lot of failure. You work very hard to discover
plausible opportunities, understand needs, respect and care for prospects,
and position your products so prospects recognize how your solution manages
their need. You are good. You are professional. You are conscientious. Yet
you only close a fraction of your sales; you seem to have no idea who to
spend time on, who to let go, who will be able to buy, or who will have no
ability to buy (even though they act like prospects), regardless of the
fit between their need and your solution.

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
department 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.