Steve Bistritz frequently speaks at 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.

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Steve Bistritz, developer of SellXL, will be a featured speaker at the Pi Sigma Epsilon Annual Conference in Cincinnati at the end of March, 2008. Pi Sigma Epsilon is the national professional fraternity for college students pursuing careers in the sales, marketing and management fields.

His topic this year will be “Selling at the Executive Level”.

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Steve has been added to the faculty of the Liminal Group as a guest lecturer and speaker on a variety of sales topics. Go to the following link to see his bio posted there: http://www.liminalgroup.com/faculty.php

The Liminal Group is a partnership of some of the world's top executive coaches and organizational consultants, an internationally acclaimed team of thought leaders and best-selling authors with more than two centuries of combined experience and service to the business community.

Liminal Group's Faculty & Advisory Members have counseled and coached more than half the Fortune 500 CEOs and thousands of executives, business leaders, political figures, and celebrities around the globe.

The Liminal Group serves as business consultants to corporations, coaches to prominent individuals, and advisors to governments.

They are in the business of preparing clients for leadership roles and helping individuals and corporations position themselves as leaders in their industries.

The Liminal Group measures their value and contribution by one standard only: the degree of success their clients typically enjoy through the partnership and counsel they receive, year after year.

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Free Downloads

1. Ways of Circumventing Roadblocks
2. Summary of Studies Examining How Client Executives View Their Relationships with Professional Salespeople

Ways of Circumventing Roadblocks. I have just completed a new handout on Ways of Circumventing Roadblocks that is now used in my SellXL workshop. I am making it available to readers of this Newsletter, simply by clicking the link to the left.

I have also developed a concise summary of some of the research I have conducted over the years with CXO-level executives, where I asked them about their relationships with professional salespeople. That document is also available by clicking the link to the right.

Selling to Senior Executives: Part 1
By Stephen J. Bistritz, Ed.D.

Originally published in the Journal of Selling and Major Account Management

Executive Summary

As salespeople strive to differentiate themselves and retain established customers, they need to reach higher levels in their customer’s organizations to remain competitive and build long-term relationships. Selling to senior executives requires a different set of skills and strategies than does the more traditional department-level or transactional sale. In this first of a two-part series, the author presents results of two studies that explored how senior-level executives view salespeople, when they get involved in the buying cycle, why they will meet with a salesperson and how they test salespeople during the initial and subsequent meetings.

www.sellxl.com/downloads

Selling to Senior Executives: Part 2
By Stephen J. Bistritz, Ed.D.

Originally published in the Journal of Selling and Major Account Management

Executive Summary

Customer executives require a new sales approach that includes a definition of unique value based on their business needs. Part 1 of this article described how to approach key decision-makers in the customer organization. Part 2 moves beyond the initial meeting to discuss building the credibility required in developing the loyal, long-term customer relationships needed to sustain a competitive advantage. The shift from an individual salesperson selling to an individual buyer toward a diverse global account team working with multiple levels of the customer organization requires both different skill sets for the salesperson and different processes for the sales team.

www.sellxl.com/downloads

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Book Review

The 4-Hour Workweek
By: Timothy Ferriss

If you've read book reviews in my Newsletter in the past, you will find this review rather interesting. That's mainly because I think this book has limited value unless you extract a number of key ideas that I'll outline in this article.

To begin with, the title The 4-Hour Workweek was creatively developed to get people's attention - particularly those people in airport book stores who might not have a lot of time between flights. If you're capable of extracting some specific ideas from a book (and simply excluding lots of others) you'll find the book worth reading and it will return some value to you.

The author's premise is that you need to adopt the 80/20 principle as it relates to productivity in your professional life - but what he means is that 80% of your productivity comes from 20% of your time and the other 20% of your productivity comes from 80% of your time. His argument is that by eliminating that 20% of your productivity (that captures most of your time), you can operate more efficiently. The book revolves around that concept and thus the title: The 4-Hour Workweek.

Another reviewer put it well: The book reads like a blog and it's broken down into lots of pieces - some of them containing step-by-step advice, some of the pieces containing anecdotal information and some pieces simply provide a philosophical perspective.

Here is some of his advice in a nutshell:

- Make a to-do list for tomorrow before you finish today's work. This was actually a reinforcement for me and I found it helpful. He goes on to add that you should only add items to this list (during that next day) if you view that items as helping you become more productive. If it isn't don't add the task and don't do the work.

- Check email no more than twice a day. He's right (in my opinion) on this issue. I tend to be event-driven and, while I find that's very helpful in responding immediately to critical emails, I find myself responding to all emails as if they are critical and taking a productivity hit as a result. He has helped me focus better in this area.

- Force yourself to end each day at 4PM or end your week on Thursday. I have my own business and have consciously tried to migrate to a four-day week - notice I didn't say a 4-hour workweek - but a four-day week. That's what I mean about needing to "pick and choose" some specific ideas. The goal here is to learn to compress your productive time.

- Never, ever agree to a meeting without a clear agenda. When I worked for IBM in the last millennium, we used to have meetings constantly. Everyone scheduled meetings and lots of people came. Very seldom were the meetings productive and most of them were clearly time wasters. I worked for a manager at IBM who would never allow me to attend a meeting unless I could clearly define the agenda and the expected outcomes. That's when I started to decline meeting invitations and became much more productive as a result.

- Don't be afraid to hang up a "do not disturb" sign on your office door or cubicle. I used to do that and found that most people would honor your request. There are many people in the corporate environment who simply like to "stop and converse" and while I think there are times you have to do that - there are also times when you can work in seclusion to be able to meet some critical deadlines.

I've taken the middle of the book and provided you with some of the gems that the author claims will increase your productivity. He brings these ideas together and further suggests that you change your job so that you can work remotely. He provides a fairly comprehensive set of ideas (and steps) for implementing that strategy. The conclusion he reaches is that time is the most valuable asset we have (not money) and that implementing this plan you can move more and more time into your personal life so that you can pursue your dreams.

As others have said: the book has some good core ideas surrounded by a ton of marketing hype - and as I mentioned at the beginning of this review - if you can navigate through the hype you can extract some good ideas.

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New Reinforcement Leader Guides for SellXL and SOS

New content has been been created to reinforce both Selling at the Executive Level (SellXL) and Sales Opportunity Snapshot (SOS) processes. In this new collateral, a series of six weekly telephone conference calls of 60-90 minutes in duration are hosted either by a consultant from Learning Solutions International or by the client’s sales manager. A complete Leader Guide with suggested topics to cover on each call, as well as detailed email communication messages that include a number of questions that the salesperson should use to prepare for each of the six calls, has also been created.

Documented evidence is available that shows improving the effectiveness of a salesperson requires both embracing a sales methodology and consistently applying and practicing the principles. These Reinforcement Processes are aimed at accelerating the infusion of each methodology into the client’s organization.

For additional information on either of these reinforcement processes, contact Steve at (404) 256-1801 or via email: steveb@sellxl.com

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Subscribing to CLO Magazine

For the past year or so I have subscribed to Chief Learning Officer (CLO) Magazine.  I have found this free magazine to be very useful to me, as a learning professional.  There are many useful articles and columns and I find myself saving articles from many issues and even forwarding some articles to peers who I think may have an interest in them.

As I mentioned, the magazine is free and I believe it is available in both hard-copy print and an on-line version.  Because many of the people reading this Newsletter are interested in training and learning, I felt it should be mentioned and would encourage you to sign up for a free subscription.  I don't think you will be disappointed!

Check it out at www.clomedia.com and click on the SUBSCRIBE link near the top of the Home Page.

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