I’m very excited and humbled to announce the last book in the “Must-Win Deals” series, Can’t-Lose Accounts: Deliver Value and Make It Simple To Renew And Buy More, has been listed as Amazon #1 Best Seller in four categories including “Customer Relations” and “Sales & Selling”.  Check it out on Amazon [Susan, please add the link].

I can’t thank my clients, connections and followers enough for their support in making this first week of launch a huge success!  The results are because of you as we chose to not promote the book (I decided to spend the money on restoring my recently acquired vintage sailboat – but that’s another story for another day).

Finally, should you feel inclined, please leave a review on Amazon as this has a huge impact on rankings as well as search results.

I truly appreciate your support!

Steve

I’m very excited to announce the last book in the “Must-Win Deals” series, Can’t-Lose Accounts: Deliver Value and Make It Simple To Renew And Buy More, is live on Amazon with an official launch date of Tuesday, August 9! For the first week, my publisher has extended special pricing (Kindle version only) for my friends, colleagues and followers. Check it out on Amazon.

I’m very curious as well as passionate about the topic of Value in B2B relationships and my goal was to explain how we can effectively manage value throughout the Customer lifecycle. This book (the final of five books in the series) completes that lifecycle and I can now truly check this “bucket list” item off! Many of you (as well as my publisher) have asked if I could update and combine the series content into a single book. I’m seriously considering that but please allow me to take a little bit of time to savor this accomplishment.

A belated Happy New Year to everyone!  In my previous post I ended with “…there is one thing that is common to every B2B sale, at some point you will submit a proposal for consideration.  The time has come for the B2B proposal to be elevated to a strategic imperative – especially when it comes to enabling customers to quickly and easily answer their questions and sell internally for you when you aren’t there.”

Earlier this week, a former colleague and I were discussing the challenges of “virtual B2B selling” and he quickly declared the real issue was “virtual B2B buying” – with which I absolutely agree.  The pandemic has only accelerated buying issues on the customer side.  Let me explain why.  This conversation reminded me of an experience from the beginning of this year. Prior to COVID-19 (and my current position), I ran a series of workshops for the sales managers at several clients during their annual sales kickoff.

The objective was for the sales managers to develop their version of the right questions to ask account teams when coaching and inspecting opportunities. Senior executives were concerned with inconsistent (and insufficient) adoption of the questions they were given in previous sales training. In short, these executives wanted the sales managers to develop and then own the questions, which would increase the likelihood they would consistently ask them.

Early this year, I was contacted by Udemy and asked if I would develop an online B2B Negotiations course for sellers they could offer to their business clients.  I was humbled to be asked and excited by the prospect of working with this world-class organization (they have over 50M subscribers).

Little did I realize how challenging the current pandemic would make the production, but the course was officially launched late last week, and you can find it at The Painless Negotiation.  My goal was to impart my best thinking and experience on current B2B negotiations in short clips of less than 5 minutes as well as have the student immediately apply those concepts to a real live deal (which is the best context to promote learning).

I hope I have been successful in achieving both.  If you or your team are interested, please check it out!

Good Selling!

Steve

Prior to COVID-19, Gartner reported that only 17% of any B2B buying team’s time was spent meeting with all potential suppliers. Additionally, over 70% of these “meetings” between buyers and sellers were not in person (Forrester). In other words, most of our conversations were already using the phone or video teleconference, so the current pandemic has only served to accelerate the trend.

In the current virtual environment, most sellers are reporting more sales calls with customers, but less than 50% believe this approach can be effective at B2B selling (Bain).  Yet the same poll showed that over 70% of B2B buyers believe the “new normal” of video teleconferencing is as good or even better than in person meetings. I think you can see where the future of B2B selling is heading…