Collaborative Selling

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. The Collaborative Sale guides sales professionals toward alignment with buyers, by helping them overcome their problems and challenges, and creating value. From building a robust opportunity pipeline and predicting future revenues to mastering the nuances of buyer conversations, the book contains the information sales professionals need to remain relevant in today's sales environment. Buyers have become more informed and more empowered. As a result, most sellers now enter the buying process at a much later stage than the traditional norm. The rise of information access has given buyers more control over their purchases than ever before, and sellers must adapt to survive. The Collaborative Sale provides a roadmap for adapting through sales collaboration, detailing the foundations, personae, and reality of the new marketplace. The book provides insight into the new buyer thought processes, the new sales personae required for dealing with the new buyers, and how to establish and implement a dynamic sales process. Topics include: Selling in times of economic uncertainty, broad information access, and new buyer behavior Why collaboration is so important to the new buyers The emergence of new sales personae – Micro-marketer, Visualizer, and Value Driver Buyer alignment, risk mitigation, and the myth of control Situational fluency, and the role of technology Focused sales enablement, and buyer-aligned learning and development Implementation and establishment of a dynamic sales process The book describes the essential competencies for collaborative selling, and provides indispensable supplemental tools for implementation. Written by recognized authorities with insights into global markets, The Collaborative Sale: Solution Selling in Today's Customer-Driven World is the essential resource for today's sales professional.

Collaborative selling comprises targeting your market, contacting your prospect, exploring your customer's needs, collaborating with your customer, confirming the sale, and assuring customer satisfaction.

Based on a dynamic new approach proven in sales training programs in some of the nation's most successful companies, Collaborative Selling delivers a result-driven, six-step communication and problem-solving program that helps you accurately target your market... identify and contact your best prospects, explore and meet their needs and expectations, then work collaboratively to select the solutions that reward you both. This is just a sampling of the powerful techniques you will learn from this book: Create your competitive advantage statement-page 4 Determine how you stack up against your key competitors-pages 5-6 Who are your best, most profitable customers-pages 9-14 Creative direct mail/email copy-pages 31-35 Learn how to adapt your selling style to all four customer buying styles-pages 56-57 Take the listening skills assessment-pages 74-75 Dealing with acceptance and rejection-pages 125-128 The 1-5-15-30 follow-up schedule-pages 148-149 Expanding your business with current customers-pages 167-170 ""Collaborative Selling lays out a clear road map for value-added marketing."" - Buck Rodgers, Former Vice President of Marketing, IBM Corporation, Author, The IBM Way ""Tony and Rick are masters of win-win communications. Their new book will take you above and beyond the competition."" - Denis Waitley, Author, The New Dynamics of Winning ""Collaborative Selling offers a fresh, new look at the art of selling that focuses on solving customers' problems and meeting your customers' needs."" -Dr. Charles Garfield, President, The Charles Garfield Group

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. The Collaborative Sale guides sales professionals toward alignment with buyers, by helping them overcome their problems and challenges, and creating value. From building a robust opportunity pipeline and predicting future revenues to mastering the nuances of buyer conversations, the book contains the information sales professionals need to remain relevant in today's sales environment. Buyers have become more informed and more empowered. As a result, most sellers now enter the buying process at a much later stage than the traditional norm. The rise of information access has given buyers more control over their purchases than ever before, and sellers must adapt to survive. The Collaborative Sale provides a roadmap for adapting through sales collaboration, detailing the foundations, personae, and reality of the new marketplace. The book provides insight into the new buyer thought processes, the new sales personae required for dealing with the new buyers, and how to establish and implement a dynamic sales process. Topics include: Selling in times of economic uncertainty, broad information access, and new buyer behavior Why collaboration is so important to the new buyers The emergence of new sales personae – Micro-marketer, Visualizer, and Value Driver Buyer alignment, risk mitigation, and the myth of control Situational fluency, and the role of technology Focused sales enablement, and buyer-aligned learning and development Implementation and establishment of a dynamic sales process The book describes the essential competencies for collaborative selling, and provides indispensable supplemental tools for implementation. Written by recognized authorities with insights into global markets, The Collaborative Sale: Solution Selling in Today's Customer-Driven World is the essential resource for today's sales professional.

The book ‘Selling Through Partnering Skills’ looks at the evolving world of sales and sets out what people need to do to refine their approach. It explores how they can take it to the next level through understanding partnering intelligence (PQ) and using the innovative VALUE Framework. Classic, Consultative, Value Based and Enterprise selling are all considered using existing and more modern thinking, brought together with advice on practical application of the most relevant techniques. Put simply, it helps individuals and businesses improve how they sell in the modern sales environment so they will achieve better results.

Progress in collaborative networks continues showing a growing number of manifestations and has led to the acceptance of Collaborative Networks (CN) as a new scientific discipline. Contributions to CN coming from multiple reference disciplines has been extensively investigated. In fact developments in CN have benefited from contributions of multiple areas, namely computer science, computer engineering, communications and networking, management, economy, social sciences, law and ethics, etc. Furthermore, some theories and paradigms defined elsewhere have been suggested by several research groups as promising tools to help define and characterize emerging collaborative organizational forms. Although still at the beginning of a long way to go, there is a growing awareness in the research and academic world, for the need to establish a stronger theoretical foundation for this new discipline and a number of recent works are contributing to this goal. From a utilitarian perspective, agility has been pointed out as one of the most appealing characteristics of collaborative networks to face the challenges of a fast changing socio-economic context. However, during the last years it became more evident that finding the right partners and establishing the necessary preconditions for starting an effective collaboration process are both costly and time consuming activities, and therefore an inhibitor of the aimed agility. Among others, obstacles include lack of information (e.g. non-availability of catalogs with normalized profiles of organizations) and lack of preparedness of organizations to join the collaborative process. Overcoming the mismatches resulting from the heterogeneity of potential partners (e.g. differences in infrastructures, corporate culture, methods of work, and business practices) requires considerable investment. Building trust, a pre-requisite for any effective collaboration, is not straight forward and requires time. Therefore the effective creation of truly dynamic collaborative networks requires a proper context in which potential members are prepared to rapidly get engaged in collaborative processes. The concept of breeding environment has thus emerged as an important facilitator for wider dissemination of collaborative networks and their practical materialization. The PRO-VE'05 held in Valencia, Spain, continues the 6th event in a series of successful working conferences on virtual enterprises. This book includes selected papers from that conference and should become a valuable tool to all of those interested in the advances and challenges of collaborative networks.

International Operations Management: Lessons in Global Business uses a fascinating selection of case studies researched during the 'International Operations Management Project', sponsored by the European Commission, to produce a valuable view of businesses in Western and Eastern traditions. Ranging from China Post and Flextronics International (Singapore) to Electrolux, Ford, and GlaxoSmithKline, the studies link conceptual and practical approaches in five areas: international operations management strategy, sourcing and manufacturing, new product development, logistics, and networked organisations. Throughout, the authors compare the Western and Eastern approaches to business, and introduce theory to clarify the comparison and the real consequences of internationalisation. With its balance of theoretical and applied content, this volume, created from an exciting collaboration between universities and schools of management in Europe and China, serves as both a primary and supplementary source for higher level students and educators, and as a worthwhile read for interested practitioners.

Whether you're new to sales or have at least one year's experience in selling, this book will leapfrog your selling skills and understanding of sales techniques to a more sophisticated, satisfying and more genuinely customer and client-oriented level. If you're more experienced, then this book provides a comprehensive refresher which uses fresh insights, the latest ideas and practical useable tools like checklists to help you sell more and sell better. Fully reference and researched, The Art of Influencing and Selling covers: The psychology of selling a product or service; the sales pipeline and how to ensure it's realistic; making an effective sales presentation; up-selling, cross-selling, cold-calling and warm calling; effective approaches to prospective customers and clients; how to interrogate a database of contacts to get more sales; how to write effective sales materials; the power of business networking; how to get senior level appointments in your diary and closing a sale and follow up. If you want to improve your sales performance by learning how to listen to your customer and client and collaborate with them profitably, The Art of Influencing and Selling is the book for you.