Elite Sales Strategies: A Guide to Being One-Up, Creating Value, and Becoming Truly Consultative

Description

Accelerate your sales career with this how-to book from an expert in sales In Elite Sales Strategies, expert sales leader Anthony Iannarino offers his philosophy about becoming a commercial success. This guidebook offers unique insights into how to approach every sale by serving your clients from a position of authority and expertise. As Iannarino himself notes, this technique speaks to an ethical obligation towards your client, ideally combining ethics and tactics to help place you in a position where your strengths can be fully utilized. This guidebook suggests putting yourself in a “one-up” position, where you, as the salesperson, come to a client in a position of authority and strength, where you yourself are qualified to offer nuanced and helpful advice to companies that have put themselves in a “one-down” position, whether that be by bad decision-making, poor understanding of the marketplace, or bad luck. At its heart, this book suggests you find the advantages that you can provide that will then, in turn, help your client become “one-up” themselves in their own field and ensure they achieve the better results they need. In addition, Elite Sales Strategies provides readers with: A step-by-step approach for how to become “one-up” yourself and what you provide to your clients A healthy analysis of what makes a person or a company “one-down” and tips on how to course correct Strategies, tactics, and talk tracks that will provide you with what you need to become “one-up” Terminology and vocabulary so that you can approach your client with tact and decorum while still addressing the weaknesses of their system As a successful international speaker, author, and sales leader, Anthony Iannarino brings a unique set of skills to bear in this book. Iannarino's tried-and-true methodology is an ideal resource for sales professionals in all fields, as well as for executives, managers, and operations managers looking to improve their sales success and position within the business world. Cover Title Page Copyright Page Contents Foreword by Charlie Green Preface Introduction Three Miles High and One-Down What Is the One-Up Position? The Ethics of the One-Up Sale Inventory: Are You One-Down? No One Wants a One-Down Partner Why One-Down Salespeople Lose Deals One-Up Tactics A Meeting of Equals Chapter 1 The Modern Sales Approach The Legacy Laggard Legacy Solutions The Modern Approach True Confessions of a Legacy Salesperson How Your Client Knows You Are One-Down Mistakes to Avoid The Virtuous Circle of Increasing One-Upness How Being One-Down Makes You One-Up Learning From Your One-Up Client Chapter 2 The One-Up Sales Conversation: Your Only Vehicle for Value Creation The Commoditization of the Sales Call The Single Vehicle for Value Creation Is the Sales Conversation How to Command Your Contact’s Attention How a One-Up Salesperson Creates Value Understanding Their World in the Context of a Decision Recognizing Forces and Their Impact on Results Starting the New Sales Conversation An Explanation of this Approach Chapter 3 Insights and Information Disparity Trade Secrets The New Information Disparity You Don’t Know What You Don’t Know The New Information Disparity in Six Questions What Is Going On? Why Am I Struggling to Produce Results? What Am I Missing? What Should I Do Now? How Should I Change? How Can I Be Certain of Success? The Value of Being One-Up and Information Disparity Learning from Yourself Chapter 4 Supporting Client Discovery Why “Best Practices” Fail A Well-Worn Pattern A Modern Discovery Call Checking the Boxes on Dissatisfaction The Aha Moment and Insight Transfer Questions That Help Clients Discover How to Help Your Client Discover Subjective Beliefs Objective Evidence Conflicts of Culture and Consensus Conflicts with the Environment Chapter 5 Your Role as a Sense Maker The Value of a Higher-Resolution Lens Complexity, Confusion, and Paralysis One-Up Sense-Making: Opening Up the Aperture Handling Your Habitat Sense-Making and One-Upness Start Making Sense Why Decision Makers and Decision Shapers Seek Trusted Advisors Chapter 6 The Advantage of Your Vantage Point Your Sales Problem Is a Buying Problem The Worst Advice for Salespeople Why Buyers Can’t Buy A Facilitated, Needs-Based Buyer’s Journey Maps of the Sales Conversation Obstacles and Pitfalls Agility and Your (Ad)vantage Point Chapter 7 Building Your One-Upness Obliterating Assumptions Identifying Implications Erasing Mistakes in Advance Constructing the Context for Decisions The Sources of Power Unnoticed Patterns Anomalies or Unexpected Events The Big Picture The Way Things Work Events that Already Happened or Will Happen Where to Find Insights Outside Your Four Walls Forces That Impact Your Client’s Results Trend Lines That Provide Challenges and Opportunities Predictors and Predictions Third-Party Data Buying Process Insights Technical Insights Execution Insights If You Are Not One-Up You Are One-Down Chapter 8 One-Up Guide to Offering Advice and Recommendations Things to Consider When Providing Advice Obstacles When Not to Give Advice How to Teach Your Prospective Clients to Take Your Advice Giving Advice: Two Tactics The Advice and Recommendations You Must Provide How Best to Pursue Change Who to Include Changing Priorities and Goals Event Timing Improving Competitiveness What Problem They Should Solve Recommend and Replace Poor Beliefs Change Their Metrics Change a Business Process Factors to Consider What Delivery Model Best Suits Them Increase Their Investment The Trading Value Rule Chapter 9 The One-Up Obligation to Proactively Compel Change The State of Uncertainty in the Sales Sequence Certainty of Negative Consequences Back to Uncertainty: The Need to Change Certainty of Positive Outcomes Unaddressed Uncertainty in Legacy Sales Why Clients Resist Change Creating Certainty to Compel Change Our Immunity to Change Individual Immunities Expressed as Objections Urgently Pursuing Urgency Addressing Negative Consequences Bringing the Future Forward Chapter 10 Triangulation Strategy: Helping Clients Decide While Avoiding Competition The Value Continuum Singing Their Praises and Confessing Their Sins Four Models of Value Commodities Scalable Commodities Solutions Strategic Partners Fighting on Two Fronts A Choice of Two Concessions Buyer’s Remorse Teaching the Models and One-Up Positioning Chapter 11 Being One-Up Helps Your Clients Change How to Be Truly Consultative Turn and Face the Strange Addressing Larger Organizational Concerns Individual Concerns How to Present and Propose Your Initiative Responding to Stakeholder Questions Chapter 12 Advice for Those Who Are Presently One-Down Chapter 13 The Secret Chapter How to Position Yourself How to Engage in Narrative Warfare How to Expose Your Client’s Lack of Knowledge and Experience How to Control the Sales Conversation How to Level the Playing Field with Senior Leaders How to Help Your Client Avoid a Bad Decision How to Help Those Who Refuse to Learn New Beginnings Top Secret Chapter 13 The Secret Chapter How to Position Yourself How to Engage in Narrative Warfare How to Expose Your Client’s Lack of Knowledge and Experience How to Control the Sales Conversation How to Level the Playing Field with Senior Leaders How to Help Your Client Avoid a Bad Decision How to Help Those Who Refuse to Learn New Beginnings The Modern Sales Approach Acknowledgments About the Author Index EULA