Sharon Drew Morgen

Where does selling begin? Why do we begin a buyer conversation by focusing on finding needs? What are we gaining/losing by starting there? Buying Facilitation® will help you begin facilitating the buyer’s decision path - defined as those back-end human issues (relationship, political, and financial) that must be managed prior to any agreement to purchase – from first moment of the call. By starting connections with a different focus, you can activate the purchasing decision process...

The sales profession focuses on placing product. While some would disagree and claim it’s based on ‘meeting a buyer’s needs’, it comes down to the same thing: how to get a product placed. And, after being in every aspect of the field since the 70s, it seems to me that placing product, or understanding needs, or providing solutions (with the seller’s product of course) is a near-predatory job: sellers spend their time seeking and following, pitching and positioning, networking and calling –...

Sales has been around since the Serpent convinced Eve to eat the apple. And, unfortunately, the goals have remained pretty much the same ever since. The sales model was designed for a different time in history, when there were fewer decision makers and products could be easily described in a magazine ad. With the advent of the web, global business practices, and the ability to communicate ideas across distances, there has been a sea change in not only what we can create and deliver, but also...

Your prospects need your solution. Desperately. But they are stalling. And it makes no sense. But are they stalling? Are they really ignoring their needs, working with sub-optimal functionality, for a reason? No. No. No. Yes. Not stalling, not ignoring their needs. Not working with sub-optimal functionality. Yes, there is a powerful reason. Buyers can’t buy until all of the people, policies, market drivers, partners and historic choices that maintain their status quo have bought in to, and...

Do you sit and wait for your buyer’s to close? They need your solution. They like you. They are OK with the price. What’s going on? Here are the ‘Dirty Little Secrets’ of why buyers don’t buy, taken from my book of the same name: Sales focuses on solution placement and needs assessment, and has no skill set to help buyers maneuver through their off-line, personal, idiosyncratic, behind-the-scenes planning and decision making that must take place in their environment before they can buy....

Your solution matches the buyer’s need perfectly. You like them, they like you, you’ve had coffee/a meal/a powerful meeting or two. They talk about implementation and how they need to add your other product next year. And then they buy from someone else. Or not at all. What happened? Are they stupid? Did they lie to you? Are they making an emotional decision? Not stupid. Didn’t lie. No emtional decision making. Maybe the need shifted, or the two new members of the Buying Decision Team added...

1. Starting the sales process by attempting to get an appointment. I know that Dale Carnegie told you to meet face-to-face. But what else are you doing that was initiated in 1937? Oh. That’s right. The typical sales model of focusing on solution placement. Buyers only buy when their entire Buying Decision Team is on board and when there is buy-in to bring in something new without causing major disruption. Trying to make an appointment before they know how to manage the elements that will...

For decades, I have been a proponent of, and keynoter in the field of, Spirituality in the Workplace. There seem to be different names for it these days: the heart of business, corporate social responsibility, conscious capitalism, patient capitalism, bringing the heart to work. What it means, underneath all of the words, is that we recognize that we have a responsibility to care about each other, and the earth, and run our businesses in a way that end up with a net plus — not just increased...

You’ve done your homework. You’ve found the right buyers – prospects with needs you can fulfill and can afford your solution. You’ve nurtured them, contacted them, met with them, scored them, pitched them, networked with them, sent them gifts. But only a small fraction buy. Where do they go? Industry lore believes that 80% of your prospects will purchase a solution similar to yours within two years of your relationship with them – but not from you (and they leave behind a trail of dead sales...

There are two distinct categories involving buying decisions: 1. the behind-the-scenes issues buyers must manage internally to get stakeholder buy-in for change and for going outside their status quo for a solution; 2. the solution-choice issues. We are all very familiar with the latter: that’s what sales handles so well. But sales does not handle #1 at all: we are not there when buyers choose the Buying Decision Team, or the machinations of how they will work together; we are not there when...

Sales people get confused when I suggest they can’t ’understand’ the buyer’s needs if they approach a sale with this outcome. Without everyone on board who will lend their voice to a possible solution, buyers cannot understand it themselves. And using the sales model, we can’t help: we’ll never understand what’s going on behind-the-scenes as they figure out who should be involved, what must be managed, and how to maintain the rules and norms of the environment, as they consider change. We are...

For decades, salespeople scrunched their faces when I mentioned “how buyers buy”. I heard comments like: “I know what they need.” or “I understand exactly how they buy: price, price, price.” But sellers only close 7% of their prospects (and far, far less if using marketing automation). If you understand how buyers buy, why do you have less than a 40% close rate? Indeed, it’s not enough to understand: so long as you are using the conventional sales model (and bas your interactions on placing a...

Would you buy a house without discussing it with your wife or family? Would you even know all of the buying criteria without their input? Would you bring in a leadership training without getting the buy-in from the people who would be trained? Or know their criteria without their voices? Would you choose a web designer without getting the buy-in from the current design team and the techies? Would you know what they would want included until they offered their opinions or knew what parts they...

These days we all use some form of social networking: it’s delightful to go onto LinkedIn and find colleagues from Europe who might have interest in a program with me for when I travel across the pond – colleagues that ‘know’ me well enough through my various on-line profiles to be eager to dialogue with me, discover ways to partner, just chat about places to stay. And the use and quality of Skype has made it all as simple and cheap as calling a friend in a different city. IF WE TRUST EACH...

Around 85% of a buyer’s pre-purchase, back-end decision issues get addressed privately, outside of the seller’s purview, and a seller has no place at the table. Here is where we lose our sales – as buyers manage the internal politics, and the strategic/change issues – not because our solutions aren’t relevant or because we haven’t done a good job selling. The sales process discovers need, gathers data to determine a solution fit, and places the solution. Buyers need that data and the sale…