Don't read this book if you are satisfied with earning an average income, if you are okay with being taken advantage of, if it doesn't bother you to live in fear of losing your biggest customers, and if you are not tired of always being on the defensive. However, if you are willing to invest 10 minutes of study per day for 47 days you will blow the lid off your sales and your confidence will skyrocket!
What do winners of major sales do differently than the sellers who almost won, but ultimately came in second place? Mike Schultz and John Doerr, bestselling authors and world-renowned sales experts, set out to find the answer. They studied more than 700 business-to-business purchases made by buyers who represented a total of $3.1 billion in annual purchasing power. When they compared the winners to the second-place finishers, they found surprising results. Not only do sales winners sell differently, they sell radically differently, than the second-place finishers. In recent years, buyers have increasingly seen products and services as replaceable. You might think this would mean that the sale goes to the lowest bidder. Not true! A new breed of seller—the insight seller—is winning the sale with strong prices and margins even in the face of increasing competition and commoditization. In Insight Selling, Schultz and Doerr share the surprising results of their research on what sales winners do differently, and outline exactly what you need to do to transform yourself and your team into insight sellers. They introduce a simple three-level model based on what buyers say tip the scales in favor of the winners: Level 1 "Connect." Winners connect the dots between customer needs and company solutions, while also connecting with buyers as people. Level 2 "Convince." Winners convince buyers that they can achieve maximum return, that the risks are acceptable, and that the seller is the best choice among all options. Level 3 "Collaborate." Winners collaborate with buyers by bringing new ideas to the table, delivering new ideas and insights, and working with buyers as a team. They also found that much of the popular and current advice given to sellers can damage sales results. Insight Selling is both a strategic and tactical guide that will separate the good advice from the bad, and teach you how to put the three levels of selling to work to inspire buyers, influence their agendas, and maximize value. If you want to find yourself and your team in the winner's circle more often, this book is a must-read.
Forget about the hard bargain. Whether you’re discussing the terms of a high-stakes deal, forming a key partnership, asking for a raise, or planning a family event, negotiating can be stressful. One person makes a demand, the other concedes a point. In the end, you settle on a subpar solution in the middle—if you come to any agreement at all. But these discussions don’t need to be win-or-lose situations. Written by negotiation expert Jeff Weiss, the HBR Guide to Negotiating provides a disciplined approach to finding a solution that works for everyone involved. Using a seven-part framework, this book delivers tips and advice to move you from a game of concessions and compromises to one of collaboration and creativity, resulting in better outcomes and better working relationships. You’ll learn how to: Prepare for your conversation Understand everyone’s interests Craft the right message Work with multiple parties Disarm aggressive negotiators Choose the best solution
A guide to holding your ground with hardball negotiators, from a “talented advisor with a rare ability for connecting people with ideas” (Patrick Lencioni, bestselling author of The Five Dysfunctions of a Team). Negotiation is the middle ground between capitulation and stonewalling—a back-and-forth between two parties trying to reach agreement. If a price or other term is non-negotiable, there is no give and take, just “take it or leave it.” You may think you are negotiating, but if the other side isn’t playing, you aren’t either. Regardless of the industry, situation, or product, the two most common mistakes negotiators make are: 1) they give ground too easily, and 2) they get nothing in return. When dealing with tough customers, it is even more important to be able to defend your position and bargain for reciprocal concessions. Negotiating with Tough Customers provides proven methods for holding your ground against (seemingly) more powerful negotiators. But it goes further, making sure that when you do give ground, you get equal or better value in return. Using a cooperative, collaborative approach in a hardball negotiation just doesn’t work. Tough negotiators will play win-win, but only if they have nothing to lose. Negotiating With Tough Customers will make you a better salesperson by making you a better negotiator . . . and vice versa.
The future of sales is radically transparent. Are you ready for it? Today, anyone buying anything relies on reviews and feedback shared by strangers and often trust those anonymously posted experiences more than the claims made by the providers of the products or services themselves. They expect to see the full picture and find out all of the pros and cons before making any purchase. And the larger the purchase, the greater the demand for transparency. What if the key to selling was to do exactly the opposite of what most sales courses tell you to do? It may be hard to imagine, but something as counterintuitive as leading with your flaws can result in faster sales cycles, increased win rates, and makes competing with you almost impossible. Leveraging transparency and vulnerability in your presentations and your negotiations leads to faster buyer consensus, larger deals, faster payments, longer commitments and more predictable sales forecasts. In this groundbreaking book, award winning sales leader Todd Caponi will reveal his hard-earned secrets for engaging potential buyers with unexpected honesty and understanding the buying brain to get the deal you want, while delighting your customer with the experience.
Describes a method of negotiation that isolates problems, focuses on interests, creates new options, and uses objective criteria to help two parties reach an agreement.
From two leaders in executive education at Harvard Business School, here are the mental habits and proven strategies you need to achieve outstanding results in any negotiation. Whether you’ve “seen it all” or are just starting out, Negotiation Genius will dramatically improve your negotiating skills and confidence. Drawing on decades of behavioral research plus the experience of thousands of business clients, the authors take the mystery out of preparing for and executing negotiations—whether they involve multimillion-dollar deals or improving your next salary offer. What sets negotiation geniuses apart? They are the men and women who know how to: •Identify negotiation opportunities where others see no room for discussion •Discover the truth even when the other side wants to conceal it •Negotiate successfully from a position of weakness •Defuse threats, ultimatums, lies, and other hardball tactics •Overcome resistance and “sell” proposals using proven influence tactics •Negotiate ethically and create trusting relationships—along with great deals •Recognize when the best move is to walk away •And much, much more This book gets “down and dirty.” It gives you detailed strategies—including talking points—that work in the real world even when the other side is hostile, unethical, or more powerful. When you finish it, you will already have an action plan for your next negotiation. You will know what to do and why. You will also begin building your own reputation as a negotiation genius.
Selling is 85% emotional and 15% logical. Forget everything you've been taught about selling -- forget the hardsell, forget negotiation strategies, forget those closing techniques. In The Inner Game of Selling, Ron Willingham debunks the familiar myths about "sales skills," showing that those tired methods are too shallow and manipulative to do anything but alienate potential customers and drain you of energy and dignity. Today's consumers are wise to the old-fashioned gimmicks, extremely informed about their options, and very particular about what they want. The old tricks simply do not work anymore. Willingham, author of Integrity Service and CEO of Integrity Systems, opens your eyes to a whole new truth about selling: Your ability to sell is more a question of who you are than of what you know. Accordingly, why you sell is far more important than how you sell. Salespeople perform according to their inner beliefs about themselves, about what it is possible for them to sell and earn, and about what they deserve to achieve. These beliefs set the boundaries of their self-image and ultimately determine their success or failure. Willingham has synthesized his decades of experience, field-tested research, and a career-long dedication to ethical and passionate salesmanship to arrive at the groundbreaking insight that you will sell at your highest level only when you achieve emotional and spiritual alignment. Your sense of your own self-worth combined with a belief in your product will inspire that crucial ingredient in potential customers: trust. The Inner Game of Selling shows you how to overcome self-limiting beliefs and move on to a new relationship with your customers and, more important, a new relationship with yourself. Your new inner strengths will truly benefit you and your customers in any sales situation. Willingham is at the leading edge of a values shift in sales culture, from product-focus to personal empowerment. The Inner Game of Selling establishes a groundbreaking new paradigm that will utterly transform the philosophy and practice of selling.
Steve Kraner has the unique ability to bring fun and extraordinary insight into the sometimes arcane and often acrimonious world of software sales negotiations. This book is as delightful as it is useful!
