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Buying Facilitation® vs. buyer facilitation
Lately, I’ve noticed folks using the term buyer facilitation. While I can make a good guess that the term is a version of Buying Facilitation®, it is being used in a ’sales’ context. So maybe, the term is to be used in conjunction with Buying Facilitation®. After all, the buyer must manage both the internal decision issues and the need-related decision issues before a purchase happens.
Get Onto The Buying Decision Team On The First Call
When I tell sales folks their sales cycle is double what it should be, they assume I’m lying. But I’m not. I’m just using a different model than sales to being my client contact: Given that the typical sales model builds in time delays and leaves the seller out of the behind-the-scenes discussions going on, there is no way to get onto the Buying Decision Team on the first call.
The Job of Sales Must Expand
Sales is a needs assessment-problem discovery/solution placement model. We use relationships and industry knowledge and well-conceived product data to align with prospects to help influence them to choose us. Now, with technology, we have even more capability to offer product data and find our what’s happening with the buyer. The internet, e-marketing, webinars, websites, are offering buyers whatever data they may need to choose. With our fabulous technology, we can track them, cookie them, send them stuff, entice them with blog posts. But at the end of the day, until or unless they make a purchase, we’ve done it all for naught.
Buying Facilitation® and Sales: the dynamic duo
Sales is a great model for understanding need, discovering problems, and introducing/placing solutions. Buying Facilitation® is a great model for helping buyers navigate their behind-the-scenes political and relationship issues that must achieve buy-in before they get consensus to purchase a solution – you know, that mysterious stuff buyers go through privately while we sit and wait for them to buy. By using both two models consecutively, selling and buying becomes a very different experience than the one we are accustomed to: the timing is different, the skills are different, the outcomes are different, the relationship is different and the competitive and money factors fade away.
Selling with Integrity
What, exactly, is selling with integrity? Is it about creating great solutions that make a difference in companies and lives? Or respecting and serving our prospects and clients and employees?
The Definition Game: name that concept
I had so much fun with you all in April with my Steps to a Sales Call contest that I'm going to run another one. This time I'd like you to use your own words to define my concepts re helping buyers manage their behind-the-scenes decision issues. I'd like to either 1. use your definitions in addition to the ones I use, 2. help you correct your mis-perceptions, or 3. redefine terms the way you're comfortable using them.
Compensating Our Sales Folks
Our continued fascination with making an appointment as a precursor to making a sale is based on the belief that a buyer will buy based on the strength of the presentation. And although we get extremely low closing rates, we continue to do it and often throw more sellers at the problem, doing the same activity. That’s the definition of insanity!
Forecasting Closed Sales: How You Will Know When a Buyer Will Close
As a sales manager, do you forecast sales that will close when your sales folks tell you they'll close? As a sales professional, do you forecast which sales will close when your contact tells you they'll be ready? Or when it seems to you they'll be ready? How accurate have you been with your predictions?
Does the sales model do what we need it to do?
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.
A Buying Decision is a Change Management Problem
The sales model focuses on needs assessment and solution placement. Buying is a change management activity. They are two different activities, done at two different – and opposite – points along the buying decision journey.
12 Dirty Little Secrets: Why Buyers Don\\\'t Buy
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?
Where does selling begin? Activate the buying journey immediately
Where does selling begin? Why do we begin a buyer conversation by focusing on finding needs? What are we gaining/losing by starting there?
You think know your buyer. You don’t.
Sales folks are taught to have a certain amount of curiosity. But what, exactly, are you curious about?
How does social networking help make the sale?
With automatic ‘trust' built in - we're sort of family once we are connected - our conversations seem to flow smoothly: we've used Facebook, the net, and Twitter to discover who the other is, have determined whether and how we want to connect, what we can offer each other, and how to prepare. An off-handed comment about the person's upcoming wedding, or a congratulatory mention of their new business venture compounds the trust.
How Much Time Do Sales People Waste?
As sellers, we waste over 90% of our time. We need to find prospects, get them bought-in to the possibility of using our solution, get them what they need to understand our solution and how it might fit, get past gatekeepers, manage objections, get to the right people who will know how to buy us, and wait. And then, we only close a small fraction.
The Differences Between the Solution Sale and the Buying Decision: Let’s Go to a Wedding
Let’s say you were going to a wedding. You had the gift, decided on the outfit, picked a time to leave to get there on time, decided to use your car rather than you’re spouse’s, because it was more comfortable. Then you had to plug in the directions to your trusty GPS system.
Why Your Sales Cycle is So Long (Hint: It’s Not About Your Solution)
Do you know why it takes so long for a buyer to buy? If the buyer knows they have a need, and they like you and your solution, shouldn’t it be easy?
9 Sales Steps That Influence a Buying Decision
The steps of a buying decision differ from the steps of a sale. The sales model has no way to influence the private decisions and buy-in issues that buyers must address before they can buy.
First Contact: What to Do, Why, and How to Get Better Results
Depending on the selling approach you're using, you are closing between .6% - 7% , regardless of size of solution or industry. These numbers are far lower than they need to be: so long as your primary focus is on making a sale and you focus on needs assessment and solution choice (factors which are the buyer's final considerations), and ignore the change management issues buyers must handle before they choose a solution, you are delaying a close by a factor of 8.
An Intelligent Contact Sheet
The field of marketing automation would like to get the right data, at the right time, to prospects who sign up on contact sheets. But with the available technology, it’s not possible.

Other Buying Facilitation Related Articles

3.1 Developments in trade negotiations IV: Economic Report on Africa 2007
Talks on trade facilitation progressing significantly
The Friend in the Room Who Can Help You Look Good
The little known secret of great facilitation.

MONEY OBJECTIONS: IT'S NEVER ABOUT THE MONEY
After having several conversations with a new prospect and his team, we all decided to move forward and get them trained in Buying Facilitation. As per our agreement, I wrote up a contract and sent it out to “Joe”. Then I got an email from him saying he needed to put the program on hold for six months at least, so that his new hires could prove their value and start earning money.
PITCHING TOO SOON: how I got it wrong
I recently received notices of multiple purchases from the same man. On one form, he completed a questionnaire saying he was considering using some of the thinking within my Buying Facilitation Method® in a sales training program he was designing.
Turning A 'No' Into A 'Yes'
I recently experienced a very clear example of Buying Facilitation®, when i used it to turn a failed buying situation into a purchase. I tell a shortened version of this story in my new book, Dirty Little Secrets; it bears repeating during this economic confusion when buyers are having difficulty getting to ‘yes’. I was at a client site running a Buying Facilitation® training. A part of the training includes real-time calls to clients prospects. In this situation, my client had requested that the team listen to me on a call first, so they could hear what BF actually sounded like real-time. They set up a phone meeting between me and a prospect who had called recently to say “Sorry. We won’t be purchasing your product,” after one year of 3 sales visits and 3 product trials.
Buying Facilitation® vs. buyer facilitation
Lately, I’ve noticed folks using the term buyer facilitation. While I can make a good guess that the term is a version of Buying Facilitation®, it is being used in a ’sales’ context. So maybe, the term is to be used in conjunction with Buying Facilitation®. After all, the buyer must manage both the internal decision issues and the need-related decision issues before a purchase happens.
Buying Facilitation® and Sales: the dynamic duo
Sales is a great model for understanding need, discovering problems, and introducing/placing solutions. Buying Facilitation® is a great model for helping buyers navigate their behind-the-scenes political and relationship issues that must achieve buy-in before they get consensus to purchase a solution – you know, that mysterious stuff buyers go through privately while we sit and wait for them to buy. By using both two models consecutively, selling and buying becomes a very different experience than the one we are accustomed to: the timing is different, the skills are different, the outcomes are different, the relationship is different and the competitive and money factors fade away.
Two Types of Decisions: Buy-IN, and BuyING
Recently someone told me that Buying Facilitation® is an old concept, that its been written about in books since sales books have been written, and that he's been helping buyer's buy for decades. Of course he has, except that he, like the entire sales field, has a paltry success rate - certainly under 10%. Why? If the seller understands the need, has the right solution, and has a great relationship, what's stopping the buyer from buying as often as they should? Why isn't the buyer deciding on the obvious solution?
The Steps of a Sale: from the buying decision to the close
Here are the steps in selling with Buying Facilitation® at the front end. The first phase helps decisions get made to promote buy-in, change, and recognition of what needs to be addressed. We usually wait for buyers to do this, but now we can help. Have a look at the steps, and see how you can add them to what you’re doing.
How not to make a prospecting call
A woman from Australia recently called me on a cold call. She started by calling me ‘Sharon.' For those of you who know me, I refer to myself as Sharon Drew. Folks who call me ‘Sharon' are either making a cold call, or haven't read my books or blogs. I have a long history with this problem, so playfully said, "Ah. You don't know me well. I call myself Sharon Drew and I use both names." [Note: for those of you who study Buying Facilitation® I suggest you begin calls with strangers by giving your own name, saying it's a 'sales call' and then asking who you are speaking with, even though you may have a name in front of you.]
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