The Collaborative Sale

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.

Foreword Dave Stein xi

Preface xv

Acknowledgments 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 versus 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 Is 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

Essential Competencies for The Collaborative Sale 183

Additional Collaborative Selling Tools 186

Contributors 195

Keith M. 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

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.

Buyer behavior has evolved and the challenges facing sales professionals have never been greater. Thanks to the Internet and the wealth of information it provides, buyers are more informed and more comfortable evaluating purchasing options on their own. The more information buyers have access to, the less dependent they are on traditional sources of information – including salespeople. The Collaborative Sale takes a close look at recent changes in buyer behavior as they relate to the primary tenets of the Solution Selling^® methodology and provides a detailed, modern view of what effective sellers need to do to succeed in today’s world.

To succeed today, sellers need to be worthy collaborators with the highly knowledgeable buyers they encounter with increasing frequency. No longer can sellers drive and control the sale, simply because many buyers are too empowered and savvy. Global economic uncertainties and the recent global recessions have also made individual buyers as well as the companies they represent realize, perhaps once and for all, that they must see results and maximize their return on investment in every purchase. This means buyers are more cautious than ever and they are acutely aware of the risks of making bad decisions.

Sellers must align with where the buyers are in their buying process and collaborate with them in an open and transparent manner. The sellers who do this are winning business and they are transforming selling forever.

In The Collaborative Sale, you will learn:

• How buyer behavior has changed, and how sales professionals must adapt to survive
• Why a Solution Selling philosophy is more relevant today than ever before
• How to build and leverage knowledge to become situational experts
• New sales personas: Micro-Marketer, Visualizer, and Value Driver
• How to use social media to gain access to the new buyers
• How to manage buyers’ risk in uncertain economic times

As executive leaders of Sales Performance International (SPI), the authors have helped thousands of clients around the world to implement the highly successful Solution Selling^® methodology on which this book is based. By applying the core elements of the methodology to the changing dynamic of more knowledgeable and savvy buyers, Keith Eades and Tim Sullivan have created The Collaborative Sale, a playbook for helping sales professionals align with today’s buyers.