Sharon Drew Morgen Articles

Decisions Are Never Emotional - Click To Read Article
Imagine if instead of believing that unexpected decisions are emotional, we assume they have a very specific reason, even if we don’t understand or agree. Then what? Is it just easier to believe the other person to be irrational? Do you remember, back in the day, when docs said that women suffering from PMS were hysterical and they needed to have a hysterectomy (that’s where the word ‘hysterical’ comes from btw)? They didn’t understand the physiology underlying the physical issues, and relegated the problem to emotions.

Be The GPS For Your Buyer - Click To Read Article
Buyers have two identifiable responsibilities: * maneuver through their internal, behind-the-scenes buy-in issues to ensure a trouble-free change process, and * choose a solution that will address their stakeholder's criteria for systems excellence while maintaining the integrity of the system. Sales addresses one of these jobs, but not the other. In fact, we've never been taught the skills to help with the off-line issues buyers address: as per the explanations and skills offered in my new book Dirty Little Secrets, helping buyers maneuver through their off-line buy-in issues requires a wholly different skill set.

Why Sales Fail - Click To Read Article
Are your sales cycles longer than necessary? Are you losing business to the competition when you shouldn’t be? Are you having trouble differentiating yourself? Are you getting price objections when your product is clearly superior? If you face any of the above, it’s because you are using sales methods.

Why Open Questions Don't Work - Click To Read Article
For decades, if not centuries, we’ve written books about, lectured about, and trained about, the virtues of Open Questions. I’m here to denounce the myth that they are good in all instances: I actually believe they are used most effectively at the back end of the selling/buying cycle and have no role to play in the buying decision activity that occurs before buyers make their solution choice.

THE VENDOR PROBLEM: Managing Buy-in From The Outside - Click To Read Article
I don't know about what it's like for you as a vendor. But for me, it's become a hard place to be. This fact was brought home to me lately after spending the better part of a year working toward securing a contract for training a pilot in a large multinational, and needing to get a complex buying decision from different levels of managers who were being run ragged in their normal business lives.

SITES AND TESTIMONIALS: Turning Referrals Into Business On The Net - Click To Read Article
We all gather referrals/recommendations/testimonials in the hopes that they will sway the opinion of others and help us get business. But how do we know what a prospect needs to hear in order to decide in our favor? Why do we assume that if we have a ‘good’ referral, it will meet a prospect’s criteria to choose us? Indeed, how do we know what will help our buyers buy? And, for the sake of this essay, how do we get the right material onto our sites?

Selling In A Gloomy Economy - Click To Read Article
What is the difference between selling in a robust economy and selling in a failing economy? A lot. But not what you think. * Your product is the same * Your pitch/presentation is the same * The buyer’s need is the same What’s different is the decision making process the buyers need to go through. Do they have a problem that needs to be resolved now, and the economy has mitigated the types of solutions they seek? Do they have a problem that can be fixed with a partial, cheaper solution, or with internal resources that can be modified to create a solution? Do they wait until…. until they have some belief that their business won’t be at risk?

Sales 2.0: 5 Things You Shouldn't Expect - Click To Read Article
Here's the good news: Sales 2.0 is good for driving people to you. By simply offering a webinar, a free e-book, a White Paper, or some incentive, you can get folks to your site. If your material is good enough, they will Twitter about you, link to your site, write you up on their blog. You can gather their data, have some sort of passive or active follow up, use the names on an opt-in list, and get hundreds or thousands of new names on your database. If you want new names and a large database, Sales 2.0 is for you. I know many, many marketers pouring their hearts out to develop wonderful content to send out as bait to attract attention. And it works: after your event, you can follow people up with an email, or hire a telephone sales group to follow up with a phone call. Allegedly, SalesGenius has a dedicated phon

PITCHING TOO SOON: how I got it wrong - Click To Read Article
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.

MONEY OBJECTIONS: IT'S NEVER ABOUT THE MONEY - Click To Read Article
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.

Marketing: New Ideas For A New Market - Click To Read Article
Now that we are all famous, what happens when we all have access and input to the same data? How do we find our target markets? And how does marketing change given our murky demographics? I have answers, and I’ll begin by being a bit provocative: information doesn’t teach someone how to make a decision. Indeed, I believe that ‘information’ is useful only when people have already decided they are actively seeking a new solution. It’s certainly useless as a means to convince someone to do something they weren’t going to do, don’t believe in, don’t understand, or who have people and policy hurdles that created a status quo that needs collaborative decisions and systems change to move forward.

Face-To-Face Vs. Phone Sales: A Case Study - Click To Read Article
I recently was halfway around the world, meeting a new business partner, and found myself in the midst of a seller’s nightmare: I had to do an in-person prospecting call on one of the world’s largest banks, with an unfamiliar business partner, with no idea of the reason behind the cold call, or the people who would be there. When I was picked up from the airport I was told of this meeting, and there was no one available to discuss anything with me until we were at the client site. Nightmare.

DECISION MAKING: How, Exactly, Do We Decide? - Click To Read Article
Columbia University is just beginning scientific experiments on my theories of how decisions actually get made, and how, or if, decisions can be influenced. I contend that there is a specific process the brain uses to make decisions, and this can be influenced by sequentially directing the brain to different sub/unconscious criteria.

Customers Don’t Know How To Buy – Or Do They? - Click To Read Article
A friend recently returned from the recent Sales 2.0 conference and told me of a complaint she heard several times from attendees: “Customers don’t know how to buy.” This, said by sellers blaming buyers for not behaving as sellers would prefer. Or not responding appropriately to seller’s selling patterns.

Cold Calling Works - And It's Fun! - Click To Read Article
I’m here to tell you that cold calling can be one of the most effective ways to meet new prospects. And a whole lotta fun. I know, I know. Most sellers eschew cold calling, preferring instead to network, get referrals, golf, meet face-to-face. Did you ever ask yourself why?

Buying Decisions: What Happens Behind-The-Scenes - Click To Read Article
For some reason, it's very difficult for sales people to think beyond 'need' and 'solution:' We tend to think that because the buyer's need matches our solution, and because we're professionals who 'care,' the only thing buyers need to do is choose our solution. But if it were that easy, buying decisions would get made more often in our favor. We certainly would not lose as many sales as we do. The problem is that the buying decision is so, so much more complex than we can imagine as we stand on the outside looking in. Sales mysteriously treats an Identified Problem (my word for 'need') as if it were an isolated event. But it's not. There are ramifications to any change, and the ramifications are ones only buyers can see from the inside and we will never be privy to.


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