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"The Collaborative Sale guides sales professionals toward alignment with buyers, by helping them overcome their problems and challenges, and creating value"--
List of contents
Foreword David Stein xi
Preface xv
Acknowledgements xix
Definitions xxi
Part I Foundations of the Collaborative Sale 1
1 "The Story" and What's Behind The Collaborative Sale 3
The Collaborative Sale 7
What is sales collaboration? 9
2 Solution Selling Meets the New Buyer 13
The Emergence of the New Buyer - Buyer 2.0 16
The Effect of Information Access on Buyer 2.0 Behavior 16
The Millennials are Coming 21
The Effect of Economic Uncertainty on Buyer 2.0 Behavior 23
Buyer 2.0 vs. Buyer 1.0 27
Adapting to the Buyer 2.0 Paradigm 28
The Relevancy of Solution Selling and the Evolution of the Collaborative Sale 33
The Story (continued) 35
3 What the New Buyers Expect: Situational Fluency 39
Seller Agility 42
Situational Fluency 44
Components of Situational Fluency 45
Hiring for Situational Fluency 50
Developing Situational Fluency 51
Technology's Role in Situational Fluency 53
Part II Three Personae of the Collaborative Sale 57
4 The Micro-Marketer Persona 59
Why Be a Micro-Marketer? 60
Micro-Marketers Demonstrate Situational Fluency - with Constraint 62
Micro-Marketers Create Their Own Personal Brand 63
Planning and Executing a Micro-Marketer Strategy 66
Enabling the Micro-Marketer Persona 74
The Story (continued) 82
5 The Visualizer Persona 85
What a Visualizer? 85
Buyer States and Strength of Vision 91
Visualizer Conversations 95
Embracing the Visualizer Persona 99
The Story (continued) 101
6 The Value Driver Persona 105
Focusing on Value 107
What is the Value Driver Persona? 107
Using a Collaboration Plan - a Buyer Alignment and Risk Mitigation Strategy 115
The Myth of Control 118
Create an Online Collaboration Site 119
Collaborating to Close 121
Enabling the Value Driver Persona 122
The Story (continued) 124
Part III Making the Collaborative Sale a Reality 127
7 Establishing a Dynamic Sales Process 129
Buyer-Aligned Sales Process 134
Dynamic Sales Process 135
Automating Dynamic Sales Processes 137
Expanding the View of Sales Process 138
Sales Process Enables Management and Marketing 140
8 Coaching the Collaborative Sale 143
Sales Management Cadence 144
Motivation 151
9 Implementing The Collaborative Sale 157
Right Process: Buyer-Aligned Learning and Development 159
Right People: Talent Assessment and Analytics 162
Right Tools: Focused Enablement 167
Committing to Success - Individually and Organizationally 177
Epilogue 179
Afterword 181
Appendix 183
EssentialCompetencies for The Collaborative Sale 183
Additional Collaborative Selling Tools 186
Contributors 195
KeithM. Eades 195
Timothy T. Sullivan 195
Robert Kear 196
James N. "Jimmy" Touchstone 197
Dave Christofaro 197
Kenneth Cross 198
Tamela M. Rich 198
Index 199
About the author
KEITH M. EADES is the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Sales Performance International, one of the largest sales improvement companies in the world. Founded in 1988, the company does business in over 54 countries. Keith is one of the leading authorities on transforming companies into world-class sales organizations and is a bestselling author of
The New Solution Selling.
TIMOTHY T. SULLIVAN is the Director of Business Development for Sales Performance International. Tim is a frequent public speaker and published author on advanced sales and marketing practices.
Summary
Buyer behavior has changed the marketplace, and sellers must adapt to survive The Collaborative Sale: Solution Selling in Today's Customer-Driven World is the definitive guide to the new reality of sales. The roles of buyers, sellers, and technology have changed, and collaboration is now the key to success on all sides.
