Hope Is Not a Strategy: The 6 Keys to Winning the Complex Sale: The 6 Keys to Winning the Complex Sale - Softcover

PAGE, Rick

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0071418717 ISBN 13: 9780071418713

Verlag: McGraw Hill, 2003

Inhaltsangabe

<p><i>"No longer is being 'a good closer' the basis of sustainable success. Instead intakes the kind of strategic thinking Rick Page outlines in</i>Hope Is Not a Strategy<i>."--Geoffrey Moore, author of </i>Crossing the Chasm <i>and </i>Inside the Tornado</p><p>Master of the complex sale, Rick Page is the author of the bestselling book, <i>Hope Is Not a Strategy</i>, and one of the most sought-after sales consultants and trainers in the world.</p><p>He has taught his breakthrough selling strategies to thousands of people in 150 companies across 50 countries--an amazing platform that has helped his message spread like wildfire. This paperback edition of Page's runaway sales bestseller schools readers in Page's simple, six-step process for making the sale--no matter how complex the deal or how many people are involved in the buying decision.</p><p>Integrating the winning selling strategies used by the world's top salespeople, Page shows readers how to:</p><ul><li>Identify and sell to a prospect's business "pain" </li><li>Qualify a prospect </li><li>Build competitive preference </li><li>Define a prospect's decision-making process </li></ul>

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

<p><b>Rick Page </b>founded The Complex Sale, an Atlanta-based company that provides sales consulting and training worldwide.</p>

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<p><b>Put your team on top with winning B2B sales strategies and techniques</b></p><p>"No longer is being 'a closer" the basis of sustainable success. Instead it takes the kind of strategic thinking Rick Page outlines in <i>Hope Is Not a Strategy</i>."--Geoffrey Moore, author of <i>Crossing the Chasm </i>and<i> Inside the Tornado</i></p><p>How do leading world-class sales and consulting organizations consistently land the big clients and the huge contracts, even in the fast-changing, risk-laden new economy? The world's leading authority on B2B team selling is about to show you. In his runaway bestselling guide to sales excellence, Rick Page reveals the breakthrough selling strategies that have made superstars of thousands of his students.</p><p>Combining a commonsense approach with the best kept secrets of the world's most successful sales people, this book presents a proven, six-step process for winning sales opportunities and shows you how to:</p><ul><li>Sell to a prospect's strategic business "pain" for greater value </li><li>Qualify the prospect for forecasting accuracy </li><li>Differentiate your solution to build competitive preference </li><li>Link your strategy to the prospect's decision-making process </li><li>Sell to power by finding the key to buyer politics </li><li>Communicate your strategy throughout your team </li></ul>

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Hope Is Not A Strategy

The 6 Keys to Winning the Complex SaleBy Rick Page

McGraw-Hill, Inc.

Copyright © 2002 Rick Page
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-07-141871-3

Contents

Chapter One

Out of Control

Things were going fine in this sale at the beginning but now you feel something's not right. The prospect didn't call back for three days and then suddenly came up with a new requirement—one you can't meet. There's a new person on the evaluation committee you don't know. And you've just discovered that of the two people on the committee who seemed to like you, one is helping the competition and the other is not respected within the company.

The capabilities presentation was uncoordinated and unfocused, and you spent too much time on the wrong topics. Countless hours have been spent coming up with a proposal and the executives are still not accessible. Nothing seems to be driving the prospect to a final decision, but the client is asking for a discount. This deal is out of control.

Many more prospects like this in the forecast and you'll have to tell the CEO a bad quarter is on the horizon. Or that you'll have consultants on the bench with nothing to do. And to make matters worse, your account manager has forecast this business for the current quarter.

Once again, overoptimism has overcome critical thinking.

Hope is not a strategy.

A meteor shower of change is hitting the world of selling, and many salespeople find themselves and their deals spinning out of control.

In the last ten years, the art and science of selling have evolved through several generations, from moving commodities to selling strategic solutions to business partnerships. Unfortunately, some salespeople and managers don't change. They are sales dinosaurs—an endangered species.

The models of buyer-seller relationships are changing rapidly, with the latest impacts coming from five major selling transformations:

1. Product commodification. The shrinking half-life of technology means that the window of competitive advantage for products is getting narrower. This means that differentiation often lies in the extended solution, including services, integration, partnerships, supply chain, financing—or trust.

2. Disintermediation. The disappearance of the traditional middleman is a result of commodity buyers focusing on driving costs out of the entire supply chain. But some types of buyers still recognize and pay for value. Which strategy do we employ? The answer lies in a sales model for selling the way each customer buys.

3. e-Commerce. The Internet will eliminate some salespeople and change others. For repeat orders and products where clients can understand the benefits of the product and configure the order themselves, the Internet will replace the salesperson. Whether they then move to more productive tasks of winning competitive business or helping the clients manage more complex solutions depends on how well the salesperson can learn to add new kinds of value. It's grow or go.

4. Customer relationship management. A system is not a strategy either. Although effective in the customer service area, there is a high failure rate of sales force automation systems among field sales forces. The missing link between a repository of customer information and competitive advantage is a sales process that prompts the salesperson for the political, competitive, and consultative information early enough to drive an account strategy that leads to trust in our company, our products or services, and our people.

5. Business partnering. There are two types of business partnering. One is teaming with other firms to provide an integrated solution. The other is teaming with clients to solve problems for their customers or constituents. Both mean new sales models for new ways of doing business where the common foundations are shared rewards and trust.

The evolutionary changes facing today's salespeople mean reengineering personal careers so they can bring greater value to their clients. For individuals, this means personal growth and development from often coercive relationships with customers, to collaborative problem solving, to helping clients co-manage their business. For sales managers, it means restructuring sales teams and account strategies. For CEOs, it means changing sales models and messages to new industry markets, competitors, and technology. For consulting partners, it means more proactive ethical competition for fewer high-value accounts. What is actually happening now is computerized relationship management.

You need to move your strategies to the next level, your client relationship to the next level, and yourself to the next level of sales competency.

The salesperson today who thinks he or she is through learning, is through. Look for their footprints in the shale.

The Impact of Change

Today's complex sale encompasses more than just multiple buyers. In the last ten years, the traditional definition of the complex sale has exploded to include new challenges that are overwhelming those salespeople and managers—unless they have a plan to simplify the process.

Buyer preferences for integrated solutions, rather than products, require teams of multiple sellers both inside and outside the vendor organization to help clients discern benefits and differences in complex products or services. Multidepartmental buying committees create shifting requirements and politics in ever-changing competitive evaluations, the primary focus of this book.

Failing to understand and adapt to the immense changes in the buying and selling processes of today results in out-of-control sales situations that experienced sales managers and consulting partners over the years have painfully learned to recognize:

Not returning phone calls. They used to call you back in two hours. Now it's two days. And when they do call you back, their voice is now chilled and formal. Of course, the worst is pure silence: Someone who was planning to buy from you would be asking more questions.

No access to power. You suggest, "My boss will be in town next week to meet your boss. Can we arrange that meeting?" "No, I don't think that will be necessary," is your contact's response. Clients who are thinking about buying from you would probably jump at the chance for managers to meet. Bottom-up selling is the hard road.

New requirement late in the buying process. Suddenly, a new issue appears in the evaluation process. A requirement you can't meet. Where do you think it came from? It came from the competition. You are now on their agenda. Do you think the client is asking you for this response to help you get the business? The veteran salesperson knows better. All the client is doing at this point is putting the logical justification on the emotional decision not to buy from you.

Of course, the rookie salesperson, wanting to be responsive to the client, dashes back to the office and cranks out a twenty-page response to the client's request, not realizing that is simply giving the client the bullets with which to shoot you.

Analysis paralysis. The client evaluates and evaluates but doesn't move forward to a decision. And you are running out of things to do. You've sent them the literature and done a presentation, a technical review, and an executive-level overview. You've also had a visit to the client site and corporate headquarters,...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: McGraw Hill
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2003
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0071418717
• ISBN 13: 9780071418713
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 192
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: McGraw-Hill Education; https://www.mheducation.co.in/; ; Via Verdi, 8; Assago Milano; 20090; Italien