As virtually any of my trainings will attest, making a sale in today’s environment is incredibly complex. It’s more important than ever to be aware of who the players are, what is most important to them, and how to speak their language, often while juggling several other tasks at once.
Of course, these are responsibilities we often shoulder on our own, pouring over research and building relationships with prospects. But how would the process benefit if others were bought into it?
The answers may lie in Dealstorming, a book by Tim Sanders. His main concept utilizes teamwork as a way to bolster business-to-business interactions, in many cases the more challenging the better. I’ve often said that a successful organization deputizes non-traditional sales roles to serve a business development function. On a similar note, Sanders also believes it’s important to deputize people outside of sales, only this time it’s to provide creative problem solving or a fresh point of view within your own team.
If everyone has a stake in the process (as well as their own take on it), a stalled project or a difficult sale can resolve in ways you may have never imagined on your own. With a quick read and some planning, Dealstorming will help you take that chance.
Here is the summary from Amazon:
“As a B2B sales leader, you know that by Murphy’s Law, despite your team's best efforts, some deals will inevitably get stuck or key relationships will go sour. And too often, it's the most important ones – the last thing you need when millions of dollars are on the line.
“Dealstorming is Tim Sanders’s term for a structured, scalable, repeatable process that can break through any sales deadlock. He calls it ‘a Swiss Army knife for today’s toughest sales challenges.’ It fixes the broken parts of the brainstorming process and reinvigorates account management for today's increasingly complicated sales environment.
“Dealstorming drives sales innovation by combining the wisdom and creativity of everyone who has a stake in the sale. You may think you are applying teamwork to your challenges, but don't be so sure. There's a good chance you're operating inside a sales silo, not building a truly collaborative team across your whole company. The more disciplines you bring into the process, the more unlikely (but effective!) solutions the team can come up with.
“Sanders explains his seven-step Dealstorming process and shows how it has helped drive results for companies as diverse as Yahoo!, CareerBuilder, Regus, and Condé Nast. You'll learn how to get the right team on board for a new dealstorm, relative to the size of the sales opportunity and its degree of difficulty. The key is adding people from non-sales areas of your company, making them collaborators early in the process. That will help them own the execution and delivery after the deal is done.
“The book includes real world examples from major companies like Oracle and Skillsoft, along with problem finding exercises, innovation templates, and implementation strategies you can apply to your unique situation. It's based on Sanders' many years as a sales executive and consultant, personally leading dozens of sales collaboration projects. It also features the results of interviews with nearly two hundred B2B sales leaders at companies such as LinkedIn, Altera and Novell.
“The strategies laid out in Dealstorming have led to a stunning 70% average closing ratio for teams across all major industries, leading to game-changing deals and long-term B2B relationships. Now you can learn how to make dealstorming work for you.”
