Sample of study questions from Week 2

What would you need to know or believe differently to be willing to approach the buyer's buying decision process as a neutral guide, rather than as a sales person?

Explain what you understand the differences to be between selling and supporting a buyer's buying decision:

• How would this shift your belief about your job?
• What would you need to reconsider about your current skill set to know when it was time to add new skills?
• To delete current skills?
• What skills would you need to help you separate out the jobs of navigating a decision and selling a product?

Homework Assignment (partial)

Begin to notice how you approach your client conversations. Notice several interactions that exhibit the aspects of control that you use to get the person to:

• Want to speak with you
• Be willing to tell you what you want to hear - data about their company, their problem, their need
• Be willing to listen to you while you share info that you believe they need to understand about you and your company to have them think you're professional
• Agree to speak with you again

Think about...

• How do you begin each call?
• How do you get into rapport?
• How do you pose your questions?
• How do you listen - just to those bits of the conversation that will tie you and your product into a potential need?
• How do you end each call?
• How similar/different are the responses you get?

Guided Study Testimoninal from Jeff

"Everyone who has a desire to truly communicate with another person should consider these Sessions. They are quite profound and have changed my life, and the lives of those I am now communicating with. It's not sales, but it has increased my sales dramatically while shortening my sales cycle."

Background

Sharon Drew Morgen reveals the largely hidden aspect of sales that determines what is going on behind-the-scenes in the buyer's environment that must be addressed before they can buy. Her Buying Facilitation™ model offers sellers a new set of tools to help buyers navigate through these issues so they can buy, and in the meantime we can dramatically shorten sales cycles and increase sales revenues along the way. Problem is, it's not easy to learn because we are influenced our knowledge of the sales model.

The model is complex, and definitely a different skill than I had ever had to learn before. I found my brain constantly stretched from the start: it wasn't long after starting the first Guided Study Session that I noticed a shift in perspective, a cascade of "Aha!" moments and a sense of being disturbed. I found it disturbing that I had spent so much time (+20 years) engrossed in the study of professional sales training only to find out that I had been charting the tip of the iceburg and had no way to influence the unseen portion.

The Sessions

Buying Facilitation™ is the future of sales, make no mistake about it, and Sharon Drew's Guided Study program puts Buying Facilitation™ into the palm of your hands. Sharon Drew's writing style throughout these study guides gives you the impression that she's standing next to you every step of the way, understands what you're going through as you try to absorb what you're learning and goes to great lengths to unfold Buying Facilitation™ in a way that makes for easier understanding and assimilate. Her Sessions give me the ability to uncover my own learning process and actually change - I suspect she's using the model on me to help me decide to learn and change the same way that I am learning to do it with buyers and others. There are uncomfortable but quite defining Facilitative Questions in each Session; these make me change my ideas, my beliefs, and my behaviors, just in the answering! Then the homework section actually forces me to adopt the new learning and take it on board, ready to use the moment I'm done with the Session. She ends each Session with a lecture. I tried a few times to cheat and start with the lecture, but found it took away from what I needed to learn (although it made the homework easier!) and I went back to doing it in the correct format.

These Sessions are fun, although kind of hard to do, in that they take time, thought, and actually cause me to grow and change, right there and then. I've never learned so much in such a short amount of time, nor have I ever experienced being taught the way Sharon Drew is teaching me.

If you cannot attend Sharon Drew Morgen's revolutionary 3-day Buying Facilitation™ Training in person this is the next best thing. I also suspect that even if you have taken her 3-day program, you might want these to do ongoing learning. They are life changing, and offer a wholly new skill set in ways to communicate and serve others than I have ever learned in my 25 years in sales.

My Personal Journey

I found it disturbing (and exciting) that with only a few Sessions under my belt I was already relating better to everyone across the table from me (and my family and friends) and closing deals with clients that previously were out of reach.

My mind wanted to calculate... how many additional people could I have served... how much additional time I could have saved over the years... but instead I recognized how fortunate I was to be exposed to Buying Faciliation™ at all. I began applying Buying Facilitation™ to my own sales practice immediately.

Everyone who has a desire to truly communicate with another person should consider these Sessions. They are quite profound and have changed my life, and the lives of those I am now communicating with. It's not sales, but it has increased my sales dramatically while shortening my sales cycle.

Please contact me with questions: jeffblackwell@salespractice.com