My new book - Selling to the C-Suite - which I co-authored with Nic Read will be published by McGraw Hill and available this September. It can already be pre-ordered at amazon.com! Selling to the C-Suite is written from a combined 60 years of experience selling on corporate frontlines around the world. It is not only a comprehensive report of US-centric executive buying behaviors, but is the only truly global study of its kind for selling around the world. The book is based on empirical research. We couldn't find any books written on this topic that held anything more than personal anecdotes of what the writers of those books did in their glory days. While trips down Memory Lane may hold some value, they only tell you the salesperson's opinion about how executives buy. Nic and I wanted to dig deeper and get inside the heads of living, breathing executives to see what's really going on in there during the decision-making process. So we commissioned groundbreaking research of our own, and joined other projects where executive buying habits were the focus of study. Our efforts were joined by Hewlett Packard in North America, the Hewlett Packard Business School in Beijing China, Target Marketing Systems, the Kenan-Flagler School of Business at the University of North Carolina, and the Center for Business & Industrial Marketing at Georgia State University. After ten years delving into the executive brain, this book now reveals what C-Suite leaders in 500 diverse companies and government bodies said in response to those interviews and surveys.

Answers to the following five questions are direct benefits of reading this book:

• When do executives get involved in the buying process for major purchases?
• How do salespeople gain access to senior executives?
• How can salespeople establish credibility with executives?
• How can salespeople create value at the executive level?
• Is executive buying behavior consistent across cultures?

As business-to-business salespeople (the primary audience) do more of the things that senior executives respond to, they can command greater credibility, close more business and make more money.

Thousands of sales professionals have already field-tested these concepts. Nic and I decided the best way to test the research was to turn it into a training workshop and have salespeople around the world put it to the test, which they did in 2002. This book is a distillation of sales best practices tested in the real world.

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Cultivating Client Loyalty (CCL) is a one-day, fast-paced interactive workshop that focuses on helping professional salespeople develop an understanding of the impact of client loyalty and then to create loyalty-based relationships with senior executives in client organizations.

In today's stressful economic times, cultivating and retaining loyal clients has to be a major focus for professional salespeople and this workshop will give salespeople the tools to accomplish that goal.

Learning Objectives of the Workshop

At the end of the workshop, participants will be able to...

• Select the right executives in the client organization to focus on to build loyalty-based relationships
• Use perceptive questioning techniques to uncover where your company's solutions can deliver the most value
• Utilize tools like the Executive Call Plan and the Executive Presentation Guide to optimize loyalty-based relationships
• Describe and communicate value to executives in the client organization on a consistent basis, so as to cultivate loyal relationships

Learning is supported by a compelling business case about a global manufacturer, RTC Technologies, and how the lack of cultivating client loyalty could result in losing future sales opportunities to a number of competitors, as well as the more important loss of a long-term client relationship. Participants study and review the case study as part of the pre-course assignment and then apply activities against the case study during the workshop.

This workshop will also be available in a webinar format.

Click to download:

Sales Flyer	Design Document

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Book Review

Sell the Brand First: How to Sell Your Brand and Create Lasting Customer Loyalty
By Dan Stiff

Book Review by Steve Bistritz

Brands are the crown jewel of a company, and while marketing departments spend millions to make them unique and powerful, the people who connect with buyers - the salespeople - are taught to sell everything but the brand. They sell on price, delivery, quality, features, and warranty, but seldom do they speak to what the brand means to the buyer in terms of her lifestyle, her experiences, and even her emotional connection to it.

A brand has the tremendous power to create a positive experience that will resonate with your customers. So why do most salespeople focus on selling their company's products or services, but not on selling their brand?

When sales innovator Dan Stiff saw that a brilliant opportunity was being missed at most companies, he developed a selling methodology that teaches salespeople how to use language that brings brand alive for the buyer and reaches the buyer where it counts - his heart.

In Sell the Brand First: How to Sell Your Brand and Create Lasting Customer Loyalty (copyright 2006 and published by McGraw-Hill ), Dan Stiff demonstrates the largely untapped potential of brand and shows how to use it as a sales lever that can have long-term positive effects on sales numbers, the company's reputation, and its marketplace position.

Written in pragmatic, hard-hitting fashion that salespeople, sales and marketing leaders, business owners, and senior executives can easily absorb, the book illustrates key teaching points through exercises, case studies, proven personal selling experience, anecdotes, and common brand examples in the marketplace.

Readers learn:

• What brand is and why it connects to buyers' emotions
• How to understand a buyer's mindset and motives
• How to use the Brand Staircase model to make selling easier and more effective
• How to learn brand language and tell your brand's story
• How to use brand selling with B2B customers
• How senior executives can build a "branded" company culture, and turn employees into brand ambassadors

In my SellXL workshop, I make a key point that salespeople bring three specific components of value to the clients with whom they interface. Those three components are: the personal value of a salesperson, their company's resources and lastly their company's products and services. Each contributes an element of value.

In Sell the Brand First, Dan makes the point that the brand is where buyers connect with your products and services, making it the logical place for a salesperson to begin to focus. If you lead with your brand, you can also begin to differentiate the value of your brand - and leverage that differentiation.

With its invaluable tools and strategies for salespeople, senior managers, and people in operations, manufacturing, distribution, customer service, logistics, and supply-chain management, this book can dramatically change the way all companies sell their brand.

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Workshops Now Available as Webinars

Three of my workshops are now being offered in a webinar format to companies who prefer to use that format in these difficult economic times. While there are still advantages to instructor-led workshops, in some cases the webinar format can provide an effective alternative.

The webinar format offers huge financial savings to those companies who have an interest. Obviously, immediate savings are derived from the travel and living expenses of the participants that are avoided when using the webinar format.

Webinar formats are offered for the following workshops:

• Selling at the Executive Level (SellXL) - focused on helping professional salespeople create, maintain and leverage relationships with senior client executives
  
  
• Sales Opportunity Snapshot (SOS) - focused on helping professional salespeople manage and communicate their sales opportunities
  
  
• Cultivating Client Loyalty through Executive Selling (CCL) - focused on helping professional salespeople maximize relationships with specific client executives, thereby maximizing client loyalty

For more information about any of these webinars, contact Steve Bistritz in Atlanta at (404) 256-1801 or via email - steveb@sellxl.com

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Using a Company's Quarterly Earnings Call to Learn More About the Client Company You're Calling On

Before those critical face-to-face calls with client executives, learning about the client's company is a key component to your preparation for that call.

Nothing is more important than that preparation and in addition to learning more about the client's company, you'll also want to get information about the client's industry and the client's top competitors.

One of the most effective ways to learn about an industry and a company is the Quarterly Earnings Call Transcript. The Earnings Call Transcript is a record of the quarterly conference call between a public company executive team (typically CEO and CFO) and the analysts that follow that company. In those calls, the company executives talk candidly about their company's last quarter performance and about future plans. Growth plans, sales performance, and new business initiatives are usually discussed. In many cases, you'll also find out about the key business drivers that are impacting their current business.

The following link provides more information about these Quarterly Earnings Calls and how to secure transcripts for those calls: http://www.eyesonsales.com/archives/article/sales_process_best_practice_use_earnings_call_transcripts_to_dev

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New Alliance

I'm delighted to announce a new business alliance with a company called Selecting Winners. They offer a workshop by the same name which focuses on helping sales managers implement sound techniques that enable them to hire the right people!

Visit their website at www.selectingwinners.com and find out more about their workshop and other materials that can help you do a better job of hiring the right salespeople.

The founder and president of Selecting Winners - Barry Shamis - is a true professional who absolutely has the best process for hiring salespeople, and more importantly, the best insight on how to hire them - a critical ingredient for success - particularly in today's difficult economic environment.

During their one-day workshop, your management team will learn an intuitive, easy to implement process for recruiting and hiring great employees. With Selecting Winners, you learn to know exactly what type of person you need to hire. You learn how to recruit using the absolute best, low-cost, and effective recruitment tools and strategies. And, your team will leave with the confidence to make great hiring decisions without any of the fear, doubts and uncertainty.

The Selecting Winners workshop is a highly interactive, one-day event that uses a variety of multi-media training formats. Everyone involved in interviewing candidates for your company will benefit from the information.

Unlike other training, Selecting Winners gives your team the insight and understanding to simplify what is otherwise an incredibly confusing task. You walk out of his session knowing how to make quality, hiring decisions ...the first time! Lasting individual and organizational change is what you can expect when your team has finished this training.

You can contact Barry at barrys@selectingwinners.com or via phone at (360) 452-7328.

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About Steve Bistritz

Steve Bistritz is founder and president of Learning Solutions International, an Atlanta-based sales training and consulting company that helps professional salespeople do a better job of creating, maintaining and leveraging relationships with senior-level client executives. Steve also has a powerful opportunity management workshop offering that has been described as "the next generation in opportunity management". Steve is available as a speaker for sales meetings and client conferences around the globe. He speaks on a variety of topics including the following:

• Selling at the Executive Level
• Establishing Credibility with Client Executives and Becoming a Trusted Advisor
• Developing Alignment with Key Client Executives
• Effectively Assessing Sales Opportunities

Click here to see video clips of Steve delivering his presentation on Selling at the Executive Level.

You can contact Steve by calling him in Atlanta (eastern time zone in the US) at (404) 256-1801 or sending him an email using steveb@sellxl.com

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