Sharon Drew Morgen here. As a kickoff to my new book that gives sellers tools to help buyers make business decisions in this uncertain economy – HOW MANY HANDS ON THE ELEPHANT – I’m planning a world tour. My hope is that between us, we could figure out a way to create a half-day workshop to *introduce ways to help clients or staff successfully manage this mysterious economy *help customers learn some new decision strategies *expand our business opportunities * use the opportunity to shift our buyer/seller relationships to servant leader collaborations.
4. decision teams are shifting, jobs are falling by the wayside, and neither political capital or brain capital are relevant.
My new book introduces the different types of decisions buyers now must make - not necessarily involving product or need - and gives sellers tools to shift their conversation from solution provider to be a true Decision Strategist and servant leader. See the article below as an intro to my new thinking. I deeply believe that now is the time to serve our buyers and shift the conversation to a much larger one: from need to sustainability, from providing solutions to helping the world be a better place. And sales folks are uniquely positioned to handle this.
My plan is to come to major cities around the world and give a ½ day workshop (Proposed title: The new seller/buyer relationship: using the economy as the instrument to help us serve our clients and engender trust.) to start the discussion around how the economy can be used as a reason to collaborate .
Hopefully, this would help you have new discussions with your clients as well , and bring in some income for us both. I’m also seeking international business partners who might have interest in running new programs to use this material in Negotiating, Coaching, Risk Management, Decision Making, OD.
Is it worth a conversation? You’d have to help me find participants and venue. I’m available to run a Webinar, make conference calls, and do the 'heavy lifting'; I don’t need to get your client emails, etc.
Thanks for your consideration. My goal is to help ensure we all have business and income during this difficult time, and find ways to serve clients in a way that puts us on the client’s decision team.
I look forward to a conversation to see what’s possible. And thanks.
What’s different is the decision making process the buyers need to go through. Do they have a problem that needs to be resolved now, and the economy has mitigated the types of solutions they seek? Do they have a problem that can be fixed with a partial, cheaper solution, or with internal resources that can be modified to create a solution? Do they wait until…. until they have some belief that their business won’t be at risk?
Your wonderful product data or needs analysis are moot here: they need you, they need your product, and they need a solution. But they now need additional levels of buy-in before they can spend money: it's no longer 'who' or 'what' or 'how much', it's 'when' or 'if'. ‘Solution’ is not their criteria, ‘Preserving Assets’ is.
1. until your buyer figures out what immediate needs must be addressed – whatever that means to them – they will take no action. In other words, getting their ‘needs met’ might include resolving the problem with a creative or temporary solution rather than a product purchase.
If you can help buyers actually figure out their immediate needs (i.e. staffing might be a priority, or outsourcing, or finding an alternate route to a problem resolution), and the appropriate choices using the criteria they must work from– separate from focusing on a product sale or the criteria you would prefer they work from – you will be in line as the first vendor they will connect with once they decide to purchase a product.
2. until the buyer’s entire decision team agrees to take action, no action will be taken. That means that your regular contact – who may have been the driver in the decision to purchase your product – now has a larger buying decision team: any decisions now must include corporate economic factors: the risk is too high for anyone to make decisions without agreement from the team.
If you help your buyer bring together their entire decision team so they can reach agreement – even if their ultimate solution cannot be to purchase your product at this time - there is a greater likelihood of a quick decision to act, although the action might not be the one you would prefer. But it puts you in high regard with the buying decision team.
3 . until the entire decision team recognizes that it would make economic sense to resolve the problem using an external solution such as your product, no action will be taken. After all, they have been resolving the problem in a less effective way in their current daily activities, and there is a case to be made for continuing the status quo until the economy gets stable.
If you help the decision team evaluate the difference between the cost and results of continuing doing what they are doing vs. the COST (human, time, political, organizational) of reorganizing around a new solution that ensures the people involved with the status quo are stable, you will become part of the buyer’s decision team. And, if the client sees that all COSTS can be mitigated, or seen in a way that overrides their economic concerns and leaves them better off, they will be able to choose to make a purchase now. But it would be vital for them to understand the full picture of ‘givens’ and include the human systems as well as the financial ones.
If you can augment your job to include being a decision consultant, you can make good use of this time of economic uncertainty.
Buying Facilitation® is a model that works with the buyer’s buying decisions and is a perfect add-on to the sales process at this time. In a world where buyers are inundated by choices, Buying Facilitation® gives the seller a new set of tools – different from selling methods - that provide a decision support capability for buyers to help them understand, manage, and regulate their new economic environment.
Use this time to differentiate yourself as a true consultant. You’ll not only get more business (and faster as you help prospects shorten their decision/sales cycle) than you otherwise would in a gloomy economy, but you’ll also gain access to the buying decision team, line up future business that will close once the economy turns around, and be seen as an important company resource.
Learn more about the modalities you and your team can use to learn Buying Facilitation® at www.newsalesparadigm.com. Start by reading the e-book: Buying Faciliation® : the new way to sell that influences and expands decisions at www.buyingfacilitation.com. Then, consider if you wish to have MFI develop scripts for prospecting or decision support, or developing the appropriate Facilitative Questions to lead your buyers through the necessary decision issues.