This book made me think hard about the buyer’s journey and how organizations make a buying decision.

In Dirty Little Secrets, Sharon Drew Morgen observes that Sales knows how to identify a need and how to place a solution. But that these skills are insufficient to help buyers make a change.

“Sales never taught me that a buyer lives in a system – a unique company culture (or family culture) filled with politics and rules and relationships and hopes and dreams and history – that needs to buy in to change before anything gets fixed or added.”

“Neither buyer nor seller has been taught that before buyers are in a position to buy, before a viable solution can be chosen, before budget or vendors can be discussed, buyers must go through some sort of change management.”

Although sellers can facilitate this change management, it is ultimately the buyer that must maneuver through the range of necessary decisions to make a purchase.

“Before buyers even get to the point of choosing a solution, they must get buy-in from everyone in their system that will be affected. Until or unless this happens, they will do nothing, causing the long delays in the sales cycle.”

“We can help them do it faster if we can help them understand the full range of people and policy issues that are attached to their Identified Problem – and then lead them through their change issues.”

After outlining the problem, Morgen then explains in detail how to use her buying facilitation method to help organizations work through their decision. Her method revolves around a type of questioning that asks the buyer their criteria for making decisions and taking action.

Warning: this is not a breezy book on selling that you can read in an hour and then add to your shelf of similar books. It is meaty material and takes some time to absorb. It is also powerful because it shows sellers how to stay active and involved with the buyer throughout the buying process.

This book easily ranks among the top five I’ve read in the last few years on marketing and sales.

You can find another review here and here. Sharon Drew Morgen has more on her site, including workshops and a companion book called Buying Facilitation.