Do you understand your buyer’s buying journey well-enough to influence it?

/in /by

Are your buyers buying differently now – and you have not changed the way you sell?

On September 20-22, the developer of the decision facilitation model Buying Facilitation® will be running a rare public training program in Boston to teach you how to help buyers buy.

Sharon Drew Morgen, author of the NYTimes 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, will be running her learning facilitation program for 18 participants.

Buyers are buying differently these days, and sales people need additional skills to offer real value add over the solution focus of the internet. Buying Facilitation® is the missing piece in the sales process: it helps buyers manage their behind-the-scenes issues that have become more complex than ever before, and gives sellers the ability to get inside with them.

Dirty Little Secrets is Sharon Drew’s latest ground-breaking book on systems, change, and decision making. It introduces Buying Facilitation®, teaching readers how change happens and the action decisions take place. Whether you are a sales exec, or a change consultant, this material is state-of-the art decision making material that will help sales close quickly (regardless of the industry or solution), and give sellers and change agents the tools to become servant leaders.

Register Today: take the program that is only rarely available in a public program setting. Join an exclusive group and get privately trained by the developer of Buying Facilitation®.

Sales only manages the needs assessment and solution placement end of the buying decision. But buyers have work to do before they can make a purchase: they must handle the political, rules/relationship issues that go on behind-the-scenes to get buy-in. And selling – even with the best technology and data – doesn’t go behind-the-scenes.

Buying Facilitation® is based on systems thinking and how change happens. It details, and helps influence, the buying/buy-in decision journey.

This is a rare opportunity to study directly with Sharon Drew. This program is for sales folks, change agents, and consultants.

Join Sharon Drew for 3 days on Monday – Wednesday, September 20-22, to discover:

  • how change happens – within the buyer’s environment;
  • how decisions get made – to buy, to implement a change;
  • how to formulate Facilitative Questions, use decision sequences for decision making, and help internal systems buy-in to a purchase quickly;
  • how to prospect, close, avoid objections and become part of the Buying Decision Team on the first call.

To register, http://www.newsalesparadigm.com/3day_bft.php
Syllabus: http://www.newsalesparadigm.com/ebooks/bft_3days.pdf

To contact Sharon Drew Morgen with questions about the program or the outcomes, contact: [email protected].

About Sharon Drew Morgen

Sharon Drew Morgen is the visionary behind Buying Facilitation®, the change management model that navigates through the decision making process. She’s written 7 books and over 1000 articles on this material. Her clients consistently achieve a 400-600% increase in revenue. Learn more about Sharon Drew Morgen and Buying Facilitation® at: www.sharondrewmorgen.com.

Is Strategic Planning Still Relevant?

/in /by

In March 2010, Fast Company ran a piece entitled “Strategic Planning is Dead, Long Live Strategy Execution,” a few weeks earlier the Wall Street Journal declared that “Strategic Plans Lose Favor.” So is strategic planning another victim of the economic tsunami that has washed over the world?

It is easy to jump on the bandwagon and declare that in today’s volatile and uncertain world strategic planning is irrelevant. Amidst all the talk of flexibility, agility, speed and responsiveness, strategic planning seems oddly out of place. After all how useful can a long-term view of future be when our predictive ability is so poor?

However, before we discard strategy lets back up, maybe the problem is not strategic planning itself but the way in which we apply the technique. As Michael Porter author of numerous books that are essentials in the library of any strategic planner commented: “Strategy is a word that gets used in so many ways with so many meanings that it can end up being meaningless.”

Hi there! This article is available for free. Login or register as a StrategyDriven Personal Business Advisor Self-Guided Client by:

Subscribing to the Self Guided Program - It's Free!


 

About the Author

David Axson, author of The Management Mythbuster, is President of the Sonax Group, a business advisory firm. He is a former head of corporate planning at Bank of America and was a co-founder of The Hackett Group. He is a sought-after speaker and writer on business strategy and management and is widely regarded as a thought leader in the industry. To read David’s complete biography, click here.

StrategyDriven Podcast Special Edition 42b – An Interview with Geoff Loftus, author of Lead Like Ike, part 2 of 2

/in , /by

StrategyDriven Podcasts focus on the tools and techniques executives and managers can use to improve their organization’s alignment and accountability to ultimately achieve superior results. These podcasts elaborate on the best practice and warning flag articles on the StrategyDriven website.

Special Edition 42b – An Interview with Geoff Loftus, author of Lead Like Ike, part 2 of 2 explores the leadership lessons of General Dwight D. Eisenhower, the American CEO of D-Day, and how by applying these lessons, business professionals can achieve far greater success in today’s challenging and rapidly evolving business world. During our discussion, Geoff Loftus, author of Lead Like Ike: Ten Business Strategies from the CEO of D-Day shares with us his insights and illustrative examples regarding:

  • Eisenhower’s criteria for keeping or terminating problematic subordinates and why these provided beneficial
  • the most important business strategy taught by the CEO of D-Day
  • why an Eisenhower-like leader could rise and thrive in today’s fast-paced business world

Additional Information

In addition to the invaluable insights Geoff shares in Lead Like Ike and this special edition podcast are the resources accessible from his website, www.GeoffLoftus.com.   Geoff’s book, Lead Like Ike, can be purchased by clicking here.

Final Request…

The strength of our community grows with the additional insights brought by our expanding member base. Please consider rating us on iTunes by clicking here. Rating the StrategyDriven Podcast and providing your comments online improves our ranking and helps us attract new listeners which, in turn, helps us grow our community.

Thank you again for listening to the StrategyDriven Podcast!

About the Author

Geoff Loftus is author of Lead Like Ike. Previously, Geoff served as Managing Editor of Across the Board, a monthly business magazine of thought and opinion at The Conference Board. He has addressed large audiences from Fortune 500 companies on numerous business topics, has been a regular contributor to Forbes.com, and has been interviewed by Fortune, The New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal. To read Geoff’s complete biography, click here.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 23:53 — 32.8MB)

Subscribe: RSS

StrategyDriven Podcast Series

StrategyDriven Editorial Perspective – Expanding Uncertainty in the U.S. Financial Sector, part 1

/in /by

On July 21, 2010, President Obama signed into law a sweeping financial reform bill that creates massive uncertainty and inequity in the marketplace; positioning the United States for yet more turmoil and future catastrophic financial collapse. In this and future StrategyDriven Editorial Perspective articles, we’ll examine various aspects of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act and as always, we’ll provide our perspective on the actions business leaders can take to help ensure their organizations survive this ill-conceived legislation.

The Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act enacts 243 new rules governing the financial sector, far more than the 16 rules and 6 studies required by the post-Enron Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002.1 Provisions of the law provide for creation of a number of new government organizations and expansion of government authority including:

  • creation of a new consumer watchdog organization, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau
  • establishment of a new financial early warning system, the Financial Services Oversight Council
  • bestows new corporate breakup authority to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation
  • mandates tighter controls over financial firms and
  • directs mortgage finance reforms, though does not address the issues related to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac; organizations that significantly contributed to the financial meltdown in the first place2

“No one will know until this is actually in place how it works.”
 
Senator Chris Dodd (D-Connecticut)
on the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act3

We agree with Senator Dodd. No one could possibly know or be able to anticipate fully how this massive reform bill will impact not just the financial marketplace but the American business landscape as a whole. It is in part because of this massive, self-induced, and unnecessary marketplace uncertainty that we believe this bill is so utterly wrong.

Reforms are needed but can be put into place in a more incremental fashion that allows for an understanding of the ramifications of the acts taken. The hundreds of rules mandated by this law will likely take years to write and still more years for companies to understand and comply with – all driving increased uncertainty and turmoil in an already fragile and depressed economy for a long time to come.

StrategyDriven Recommended Practices

The great marketplace uncertainty created by the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act will not end anytime soon. Therefore, StrategyDriven recommends organization leaders take the following actions:

  • Seek a reputable assessment of the financial reform’s impact on your organization. Before substantive definition to the hundreds of new regulations is developed, it will be difficult to identify specific impacts to any particular organization. However, experts in the field can provide some insight based on historic precedents as they relate to current market circumstances. One such firm already providing such insight is Deloitte Consulting LLP in their recent publication: Assessing the Impact of U.S. Financial Regulatory Reform.
  • Establish a business posture that positions your organization to rapidly and flexibly respond as regulations become defined. Again, precedents will suggest the direction government agencies will take when defining the new regulations. Ensuring your organization has a programmatic foundation allowing it to move in the direction of the new regulations while still being flexible enough to respond to the nuanced details that will be defined in the coming months and years positions your company for success over those not making such preparations.
  • Monitor the regulations as they are developed. Being watchful of the government’s positions during the regulatory definition phase allows for ongoing adjustments to be made to the foundational programs previously recommended. This will minimize the scope and scale of adjustments that will need to be made once the regulations are finalized.
  • Monitor the marketplace for impacts and shifts associated with the new financial reforms. Inevitably, the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act will impact many businesses and reshape consumerism. Changes in the marketplace will create new and eliminate existing business opportunities. Maintaining a watchful eye on the market will better enable your business to take advantage of these changes while simultaneously avoiding the risks.

Final Thought…

In the coming editions of the StrategyDriven Editorial Perspective, we’ll look at the potential impacts of several provisions of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act including:

  • risks created through establishment of minority and gender quotas
  • extension of government control beyond direct players in the financial market
  • impacts of ‘too big to fail’ provisions on market risk
  • proportionately larger burden of the new law on small companies

As always, we’ll provide our thoughts on how business leaders can best prepare for the implementation of the financial reform law and weather the storm in the long-term. We also hope you’ll share your thoughts, lessons learned, and recommended resources with us and the StrategyDriven audience.

Final Request…

StrategyDriven Editorial Perspective PodcastThe strength in our community grows with the additional insights brought by our expanding member base. Please consider rating us and sharing your perspectives regarding the StrategyDriven Editorial Perspective podcast on iTunes by clicking here. Sharing your thoughts improves our ranking and helps us attract new listeners which, in turn, helps us grow our community.

Thank you again for listening to the StrategyDriven Editorial Perspective podcast!

Sources

  1. “Obama signs sweeping bank-reform bill into law,” Ronald D. Orol, MarketWatch, July 21, 2010 (http://www.marketwatch.com/story/obama-signs-sweeping-bank-reform-bill-into-law-2010-07-21-12200)
  2. “Financial reform law: What’s in it and how does it work?,” Peter Grier, The Christian Science Monitor, July 21, 2010 (http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/2010/0721/Financial-reform-law-What-s-in-it-and-how-does-it-work)
  3. “Lawmakers guide Dodd-Frank bill for Wall Street reform into homestretch,” David Cho, Jia Lynn Yang, and Brady Dennis, The Washington Post, June 26, 2010 (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/06/25/AR2010062500675_pf.html)

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 8:32 — 11.8MB)

Subscribe: RSS

StrategyDriven is Now Available on the Amazon Kindle

/in /by

StrategyDriven is pleased to announce our great daily articles are now available for easy download to the Amazon Kindle! Now you can enjoy StrategyDriven on-the-go – at the airport, in the coffee shop, or in the comfort of your own home – all with a simple daily download from Amazon.com. Click here to subscribe to StrategyDriven (Kindle Edition) or on the Amazon icon in the Stay Connected to StrategyDriven portion of our website’s right sidebar.

About Kindle Blog Subscriptions

  • Kindle Blogs are auto-delivered wirelessly to your Kindle and updated throughout the day so you can stay current.
  • It’s risk free – all Kindle Blog subscriptions start with a 14-day free trial. You can cancel at any time during the free trial period. If you enjoy your subscription, do nothing and it will automatically continue at the regular monthly price.
  • Don’t have a Kindle? Get yours here.