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Sharon Drew Morgen

Sharon Drew Morgen

Morgen Facilitations, Inc.
  • 0 comments 882 reads
    Posted on 2011-11-07

    I’m here to tell you that cold calling can be one of the most effective ways to meet new prospects and close sales. And it’s a whole lotta fun.

    I know, I know. Most sellers eschew cold calling, preferring instead to network, get referrals, golf, meet face-to-face or make friends through facebook and twitter.

    Did you ever ask yourself why you don’t like cold calling?

    Think historically: Dale Carnegie, in How to win friends and influence people published in 1937, told us to meet prospects in person (and his choices then were….. were what?). You can think about trying to ‘get through’ the gatekeeper. You can think about trying to gather information or pitch product with no ability to understand or share personal expressions on a phone.

    So let’s say you do your networking, getting referrals, golfing, face-to-face meets and tweeting. What does it give you? Well, it...

  • 0 comments 1,120 reads
    Posted on 2011-10-31

    The steps of a buying decision differ from the steps of a sale. The sales model has no way to influence the private decisions and buy-in issues that buyers must address before they can buy.

    Buyers live in a ‘system’ that maintains their Identified Problem (or ‘pain’) over time, creating work-arounds that become part of the system and, well, comfortable. Indeed, if the buyer really needed to make a change, they would have done so already. It’s only when a group of dedicated, internal change agents are willing to push the river, that a purchase is even considered.

    Before buyers can buy, there must be buy-in to the proposed change, a plan that minimizes disruption, and a way to foster agreement between the people, policies and relationships that touch a new solution....

  • 0 comments 963 reads
    Posted on 2011-10-24

    Let’s say you were going to a wedding. You had the gift, decided on the outfit, picked a time to leave to get there on time, decided to use your car rather than you’re spouse’s, because it was more comfortable. Then you had to plug in the directions to your trusty GPS system.

    What does your GPS system do? It gets you from here to there without any input other than coordinates. It knows you must go left one mile, and then hang a right at Route 26. It knows you will drive about 40 minutes. It knows there is one alternate route. But it doesn’t need to know what you are wearing, or the gift you brought. It doesn’t need to know that there was an accident ahead that would cause you to slow down. It knows how to get you to where you want to be: it does not concern itself with the details of your personal issues.

    Why am I putting sales and weddings and GPS systems in one...

  • 0 comments 949 reads
    Posted on 2011-10-17

    These days we all use some form of social networking: it’s delightful to go onto LinkedIn and find colleagues from Europe who might have interest in a program with me for when I travel across the pond – colleagues that ‘know’ me well enough through my various on-line profiles to be eager to

    • dialogue with me,
    • discover ways to partner,
    • just chat about places to stay.

    And the use and quality of Skype has made it all as simple and cheap as calling a friend in a different city.

    IF WE TRUST EACH OTHER, WHY AREN’T WE CLOSING MORE?

    With automatic ‘trust’ built in – we’re sort of family once we are connected – our conversations seem to flow smoothly: we’ve used Facebook, the net, and Twitter to discover who the other is, have determined whether and how we want to connect, what we can offer each other, and how to prepare...

  • 0 comments 1,258 reads
    Posted on 2011-06-24

    In order for any change to occur – whether it’s a decision to purchase a product, or an implementation to add new technology - whatever touches the ultimate solution must buy-in to the change.

    Often our focus is on getting the end-result we think we want. We forget that without buy-in from the necessary  people and policies that maintain the status quo, we face the high cost of the resistance eminating from pushing change into a system that believes that it’s fine, thanks.

    I’d like to share a story about how I helped my own tech guys shift their project work and our revenue as a result of having decision facilitation skills. At the end of the day, unless there is a decision – one person at a time – to adopt to, know how to, and be willing to change, there will be resistance and possibly failure.

    FIRST SIGNS OF...

  • 0 comments 1,664 reads
    Posted on 2011-02-23

    Recently I got a cut-off notice from T-Mobile. For non-payment of $106.10. Apparently I didn’t receive 2 bills, and if it’s not in front of me, it doesn’t register that the bill hasn’t been paid.

    Let’s think about this for a moment. I have 3 accounts and 2 devices with T-Mobile. I give them around $150/month, not to mention the purchase of the android phone and Tab for hundreds of dollars. And, I have never, ever, missed a payment. In the 5 years they’ve been my service provider. And I paid my other 2 T-Mobile bills. Just one account and bill...

  • 0 comments 1,882 reads
    Posted on 2011-02-21

    Would you buy a house without discussing it with your wife or family? Would you even know all of the buying criteria without their input?

    Would you bring in a leadership training without getting the buy-in from the people who would be trained? Or know their criteria without their voices?

    Would you choose a web designer without getting the buy-in from the current design team and the techies? Would you know what they would want included until they offered their opinions or knew what parts they wanted to do themselves?

    Why not?

    I recently had a coaching call with a SVP at a well-known CRM Management company. The man had a Harvard MBA, had been a partner at Accenture, and now was running the Texas sales operation for this CRM company. This is not a stupid man, obviously, but a man steeped in the ‘sales’ thinking modality.

    During his session he wanted to put...

  • 0 comments 2,197 reads
    Posted on 2011-02-18

    I recently read a blog post by Andrew Hunt in which he stated: “…sales remains a relationship-driven business, the power of “who you know” is trumped by “what you know about who you know.” ”

    Andrew is preaching the gospel of the entire sales industry: this is a common belief in the field, and drives much of the business end of the social media revolution. But is it really true?

    WHY TRY TO DEVELOP RELATIONSHIP?

    The only reason sellers attempt to ‘get into relationship’ is to close a sale. Come on, folks. Why are you being so nice? Do you need more friends? Are you looking for a date? It’s because you think that by making nice, or finding someone who knows someone else who makes nice to the other person, that you can close a sale because the buyer will like you and feel indebted to your friendship.

    Stop...

  • 0 comments 1,175 reads
    Posted on 2011-02-08

    Recently, my wonderful neighbor Joe mistakenly left my spigot on while wrapping my pipes. He didn’t leave it on a little so it would drip: he had it running full force. And I have no independent water source — only rainwater collection.

    By the time I got to my place (it’s my second Austin home – my country think-house), there was no water (went through 20,000 gallons of water, but who’s counting – except that it’s around $100 per 500 gallons to purchase, and we get very very little water here) – the UV light was out ($100 annually, and I had recently purchased it), the pump ($750) was making weird noises, and there was no water pressure and no water. No water to drink; no toilet and no washing facility. And my pond/fish need water.

    I called the local water/rainwater collection folks and told them of the problem. It took them a few days to get back to...

  • 0 comments 1,955 reads
    Posted on 2011-01-24

    There are almost as many definitions of Relationship Manager as there are for ‘social media‘ or ‘sales enablement.’  The term used might be ’customer relationship manager’ or ‘business relationship manager’. Some RMs work with deals, some generate income. Some bring in new customers, some cross sell to existing clients. Some manage ‘new client onboarding’ whatever that means. And then there are the group of sales folks who stopped calling themselves ‘Salespeople’ and began calling themselves...