In last Friday’s blog post, Is Your Sales Team Prepared to Sell to a Team, I discussed a few of the barriers that I believe exists for Salespeople and their lack of training in selling to groups of decision makers. I have investigated several ways of approaching sales people and have tried a few myself in a role of a sales person. One of the areas that I feel has a fair amount of merit is for the sales person to take the role of a facilitator during a group session.
In this role and much of this paraphrased the book, The Action Learning Guidebook: A Real-Time Strategy for Problem Solving Training Design and Employee Development, an old time favorite of mine. In the book, the author includes an assessment that I found useful discussing with a salesperson before and after a customer meeting. The assessment goes something like this:
- What type of body language and nonverbal behavior did you notice within the group?
- Did it change when certain people left the room?
- Which members were actively listening and which ones were not?
- Who supplied the skillful and thoughtful questions for the organizations? For their Own department? For themselves?
- Where was the highest focal point of the group? Of any individual?
- Were you able to summarize, the thought and feeling from the meeting? And was it agree with?
This is not meant to be a complete list, but I think it does a good job summarizing a few thoughts. As you can see, it has little to do with selling but more to do with bringing the group to a common decision. Most decisions made within a group are far from what we might call people coming to a consensus. Certain parts of the group are going to be more affected by the decision than others. So, in any situation it is important to identify them early as they often will have the strongest voice.
Another key fact is that just about always, you will have a few naysayers and a few proponents of the decision or purchase. Your job should not be trying to change the minds, of either of those parties. It may be just to handle damage control with the naysayers, and influence the middle ground. Just like in politics it is the independents that decide the vote, not the parties.
Can Group Facilitation be an Opportunity for Sales?
Should you Quit Selling and Start Facilitating?