Using Buyer Personas During Pre-Sales Stages

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Buyer Personas do a great job targeting marketing and sales campaigns to reach the most probable buying audience. But it’s possible to make them even more efficient.

Here’s a question: Do you want to sell/market? Or have someone buy? The belief is that if you can sell/market appropriately – the right campaign to the right buyer with the right solution at the right time – buyers will buy. If that were true, you’d be closing a helluva lot more than you’re closing. Sure, Buyer Personas make a difference in your close rate. But it could be higher.

Currently, your targeted campaigns blanket probable audiences and find buyers at the exact moment they are considering buying, merely closing the low hanging fruit. It’s possible to enter earlier and facilitate (and influence) the complete buying journey.

Stages in the Buying Decision Path

Sales and marketing address activities surrounding solution placement: solution pitch details, solution features, etc., vendor details, gathering needs. But neither facilitate the entire decision path which constitutes issues beyond choosing a solution. Some might call these ‘Pre-Sales’ events. I call it the Buying Decision Path, along which sales is merely one of the entry points needed to close a sale.

Briefly, here are the stages buyers go through prior to purchasing a solution (Dirty Little Secrets: why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell and what you can do about it fully details each stage www.dirtylittlesecretsbook.com):

1. Idea stage.

2. Brainstorming stage. Idea discussed with colleagues.

3. Initial discussion stage. Colleagues discuss the problem, posit who to include on Buying Decision Team, consider possible fixes and fallout. Action groups formed. Research begins. New Team members invited.

4. Contemplation stage. Group discusses:
a. how to fix the problem with known resources,
b. whether to create a workaround using internal fixes or seek an external solution, and acceptable type/amount of fallout from each,
c. people who would need to buy-in.

5. Organization stage.

6. Change management stage. Group determines:
a. if more research is necessary (and who will do it),
b. if all appropriate people are involved (and who to invite),
c. a review of all elements of the problem and solution,
d. the level of disruption and change management as per type of solution chosen,
e. the pros/cons/possibilities of external solution vs current vendor vs workaround.

7. Coordination stage. Review needs, ideas, issues of any new members invited aboard and how they affect choices and goals; incorporate change considerations for each solution; delineate everyone’s thoughts re goals and change capacity; appropriate research responsibilities.

8. Research stage. Specific research for each possible solution; seek answers to how fallout or change would be managed with each solution.

9. Consensus stage. Buying Decision Team members meet to share research and determine the type of solution, fallout, possibilities, problems, considerations in re management, policies, job descriptions, HR issues, etc. General decisions made. Buy-in and consensus necessary.

10. Action stage. Responsibilities apportioned to manage specifics of Stage 9. Owners of tasks do thorough research and make calls to several vendors for interviews and data gathering.

11. Second brainstorming stage. Discussion on results of data gathering including fallout/ benefits of each. Favored vendors pitched by Team members.

12. Choice stage. New solution agreed on. Change management issues delineated and leadership initiatives prepared to avoid disruption. Vendor contacted.

13. Implementation stage.

Buyers have to manage these stages (most of which are not solution- or problem-specific) with you or without you. Without being directly involved with behind-the-scenes politics or processes you’re left waiting, pushing product data, and hoping to be there they’re ready. And knowing the details of your Buyer Persona is insufficient.

Do you want to sell/market? Or have someone buy? Right now your efforts to sell and market are bringing in no more than 5% close rate (net). To become the vendor who truly helps buyers buy, to get an early leg-up on the competition and become part of the Buying Decision Team during the Pre-Sales process, sales (entering at stage 1) and marketing (entering at stage 3) can add another layer of skills, tools, goals, and touch points.

Buying Facilitation® is a Pre-Sales Management model that I’ve developed and taught for 30 years. It employs a specific quided approach to lead buyers through their internal politics and change processes, with profoundly different results from using sales and marketing alone. It uses neither sales nor marketing thinking: it employs a new form of question, a different type of listening, and a systems-thinking role consistent with true consulting. And then you can sell or market earlier and faster, to the right people.

I can teach your sales team how to become facilitators, or show your marketing team ways to design the right questions to help buyers traverse each stage of their unique buying journey. See more articles on www.sharondrewmorgen.com. Or call me: Sharon Drew 512 457 0246.

About the Author

Sharon Drew Morgen is founder of Morgen Facilitations, Inc. (www.newsalesparadigm.com). She is the visionary behind Buying Facilitation®, the decision facilitation model that enables people to change with integrity. A pioneer who has spoken about, written about, and taught the skills to help buyers buy, she is the author of the acclaimed New York Times Business Bestseller Selling with Integrity and Dirty Little Secrets: Why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell and what you can do about it.

Learn how to hear buyers effectively with Sharon Drew’s new book What? offered free, digitally at www.didihearyou.com.

Proper, pointed, precise, purposeful response shortens the sales cycle.

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How do you respond to your customer’s words and barriers?
The answer is: CAREFULLY, TRUTHFULLY, and with AUTHORITY.

Whether it’s a bold statement in response to a challenge, or a it’s promise you make in order to gain buyer confidence, or it’s a guarantee that provides the prospect with peace of mind, whether it’s an irrefutable fact to prove your point, or it’s your ability to communicate passionately to the perspective buyer, the right words can create a buying atmosphere and complete a sale in a very few minutes.

The challenge to you, the salesperson, is to be prepared to respond to a challenge, not perplexed by what the customer is demanding and offer some weak excuse – or worse, give up.

I know you’re hoping for some examples, but as I mentally go through my ten biggest and most creative sales in New York City, I don’t believe any of them serve as good enough generic examples. So rather than be specific, and have non-applicable examples, I can tell you that if someone asks me a question that doubts my ability to deliver, or questions my price, or puts up some barrier to “yes,” I make an irrefutable, comforting guarantee, statement, or video that answers their concern, and moves me closer to mutual agreement.

Or better, I offer a video testimonial of someone else loving my offer and buying. This provides both proof and peace of mind. Having the videos requires work, and many salespeople will try to get by without them. You’ll be able to recognize them at once – they’re the ones that never make sales, and blame others for their failings.

If someone makes a statement that indicates interest, I immediately ask for a commitment. Or at least uncover if that is one of their motives for buying.

When someone throws a barrier at me, I take it as both a test and a challenge. Often times I have found that an objection or a barrier actually indicates customer interest and so I begin my response with a question that helps me understand what their true feelings are, and I might say something like, “wait a second! Are you saying that (___) is the only thing between you and an order?” And then I proceed from there. But I have taken the barrier or objection and immediately qualified it as the only one.

It amazes me how many salespeople take an objection or a barrier as a defeat. Maybe it’s my attitude or self-confidence level, but I have always looked at an objection as a road-bump on the path to a sale.

And if the buyer says that he or she has to consult with others, I immediately ask, “if it was only you, what would your decision be?”

You have to think “bottom line.” What can you ask or what can you say that will get your perspective buyer to the point of commitment? Or at least to an indication of purchasing interest. And all it takes to make that happen is proper preparation and brass balls. And both of those were developed in NYC.

In New York City, you don’t have a choice, you have to walk in razor-sharp and razor-prepared and razor-ready. Dull razors get thrown away. Cheap razors hurt and cause cuts. Everyone knows that.

Here’s what to do:

1. List every possible barrier and objection.

2. Prepare responses for each one that have value or create WOW!

3. Look for customers that have purchased in spite of the barrier and get them to shoot a short video explaining why they bought and what happened AFTER purchase. (HINT: That’s where the value is!)

3.5 Stay at it until you have at least 25 examples and 25 videos.

Sound like a lot of work? It is! For years I have made the statement, “Most salespeople will not do the hard work it takes to make selling easy. Preparation is hard, but if it’s done right, selling is easy.”

How prepared are you?
How easy are your sales?

Reprinted with permission from Jeffrey H. Gitomer and Buy Gitomer.

About the Author

Jeffrey GitomerJeffrey Gitomer is the author of The Sales Bible, Customer Satisfaction is Worthless Customer Loyalty is Priceless, The Little Red Book of Selling, The Little Red Book of Sales Answers, The Little Black Book of Connections, The Little Gold Book of YES! Attitude, The Little Green Book of Getting Your Way, The Little Platinum Book of Cha-Ching, The Little Teal Book of Trust, The Little Book of Leadership, and Social BOOM! His website, www.gitomer.com, will lead you to more information about training and seminars, or email him personally at [email protected].

Leadership Inspirations – Idle Deliberation

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StrategyDriven Inspirational Quote“Life is not long, and too much of it must not pass in idle deliberation of how it shall be spent.”

Dr. Samuel Johnson
(1709 – 1784)
English poet, essayist, moralist, literary critic, biographer, editor and lexicographer

Boredom: A Route To Creativity

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We live our lives, these days, with continuous stimulation – on-demand access to movies, articles, friends, books, games and music. With all possible, all the time, how can we hear ourselves think long enough for new and creative ideas to emerge?

I don’t know about you, but my mental commotion from a week of stress causes interminable noise coming from where my ideas should be. And given I’m a thinker, hearing myself think is fundamental. I tried freeing up an hour or two during a week to sit quietly in hopes of hearing my creative voice, but that wasn’t sufficient. I needed a broader time span free of the stimulations involved with daily living. And given my schedule, the only time I had available was weekends. Hence, weekends of boredom.

I now spend at least two weekends a month alone and off-line – off-line, as in no phone, no (on-line) social activity, and no email. A friend said “I would be bored out of my mind!” Precisely.

Do I like being bored? Not particularly. It’s not necessarily fun: sometimes I’m jumping out of my skin and must force myself to not call a friend. But if I can wait it out, I’m on my way to something unimaginable.

How I Create Boredom and Listen to Myself

Here’s my Idea Generating Action Plan for a weekend: I stimulate my mental component with gobs of fresh ideas (reading voraciously, listening to interviews of interesting people and interesting programs on NPR, watching documentaries); I walk 6 miles around the lake to stimulate my physical side; I listen to music and meditate to recruit my spiritual side. And by Sunday afternoon I’m ready to do nothing. To sit quietly and be bored. I sit. And sit. And then, just before I am ready to exterminate myself, the magic happens. The ideas begin to flow.

New ideas. Surprising ideas. Interesting ideas. Stupid ideas. I don’t judge. I just write them all down. This past weekend I began sketching out an Advanced Coaching program (based on my new book What?) to offer meta tools so coaches and leaders could hear clients without bias, assumptions, or triggers, and then know how to make the best interventions. First thing Monday I connected with two coaching schools who may have interest in collaborating. I’m not always this successful. But sometimes I am.

Boredom as a route to creativity is not for everyone. But I think many of us need something extreme to have the space to listen to ourselves, to have a block of time to clear our brain and silence our Internal Dialogue to enable our unique ideas. Some folks do this by going for a long run, or swim a mile or two. New ideas do emerge for me at the gym, but the inspirational ones – the hidden ones – come only after space and silence appear.

How do you listen to yourself? What are you listening for when you listen? Do you allow the time and space for an opening that enables emerging ideas? Ask yourself these questions, then ask the big one: What would you need to consider to be willing to take the time to hear yourself without barriers and literally brainstorm with yourself?

I now have many volumes of Idea Binders. Only about 20% of those ideas made it to completion although I do seek ways for each of them to develop. But if I hadn’t come up with them all, I would not have invented Buying Facilitation®, or invented a new form of question, or coded how we can hear each other without misinterpretation, or written 9 books or 1300 articles, or started up companies.

Try it. At least once – at least when an important meeting is coming up and you want to shine. Spend a weekend alone somewhere in the countryside, with no texting, no email, no telephone, no TV, no people. Nothin’. Then allow yourself to go a bit crazy. The silence of the first day might be a relief. By day two, when you’re jumping out of your skin, you might end up hearing a very creative voice inside. Maybe not. Maybe you will have wasted a weekend and will email me to tell me I’m nuts. But just maybe, you’ll hear yourself come up with the new, new thing. If you do, you can give me an attribution.

If you’re interested in listening without bias or assumptions, download my free book (no sign up required) on www.didihearyou.com. The book, What? Did you really say what I think I heard? is filled with original thinking on how we misinterpret, bias, misunderstand others, and how to close the gap between what’s said and what’s heard. It’s fun, practical, and (I’m told) is a game changer. Enjoy.

About the Author

Sharon Drew Morgen is founder of Morgen Facilitations, Inc. (www.newsalesparadigm.com). She is the visionary behind Buying Facilitation®, the decision facilitation model that enables people to change with integrity. A pioneer who has spoken about, written about, and taught the skills to help buyers buy, she is the author of the acclaimed New York Times Business Bestseller Selling with Integrity and Dirty Little Secrets: Why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell and what you can do about it.

To contact Sharon Drew at [email protected] or go to www.didihearyou.com to choose your favorite digital site to download your free book.

Corrective Action Program – Benefits of Documenting Adverse Conditions and Work Requests

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StrategyDriven Corrective Action Program ArticleDocumenting adverse conditions and work requests is an administrative task viewed by some as burdensome and valueless. Nothing could be further from the truth. Capturing condition and request information is vitally important to the overall effectiveness and continuous improvement of every organization.

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About the Author

Nathan Ives, StrategyDriven Principal is a StrategyDriven Principal and Host of the StrategyDriven Podcast. For over twenty years, he has served as trusted advisor to executives and managers at dozens of Fortune 500 and smaller companies in the areas of management effectiveness, organizational development, and process improvement. To read Nathan’s complete biography, click here.