For the past few weeks, I've been on a reading frenzy. As a blogger, I get sent tons of new books to review. As a prolific learner, I order a bunch more. 

As a reviewer, I only share those I really like - which is something I'll be doing in the upcoming month. I hope you enjoy these two books as much as I did.

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Make What You Say, Pay

Anne Miller, author of Metaphorically Selling (one of my favorite books), is back again with another excellent resource for sellers. 

In Make What You Say, Pay, she shares strategies to help you inspire prospects to take action, open their minds to new options, overcome resistance and more - all through the use of language. 

Rather than bombarding crazy-busy customers with tons of data and statistics, you'll discover how to start painting more pictures -- which have a much higher success rate. 

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Republished with author's permission from original post by Jill Konrath.

Ever read a book and saw yourself in it? That's what happened recently when Mike started reading my new book, SNAP Selling. 

As I described today's frazzled prospects who are struggling to get everything done, it hit home. But what really bothered him was when I pointed out that their frenetic multi-tasking actually caused them to accomplish less. 

He knew it was true, but didn't know how could he stop this sales-derailing behavior. So he wrote to me for advice. 

Here are some of my suggestions: 

• Block out times in the day where you are uninterrupted. No reading email or allowing yourself to go off on a tangent. Unplug what you can. Do just the work that needs to get done. Be vigilant in protecting this time. It's AMAZING how much more work you can do.

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Republished with author's permission from original post by Jill Konrath.

Recently I had a chance to talk with Umberto Milletti, CEO of InsideView, about his perceptions on the changing sales landscape and the emerging concept of "social selling."

Jill: How do you see social media impacting salespeople? I'm talking about things like blogs, twitter, Digg, YouTube and more.

Umberto: Salespeople are now facing a new breed of prospect that I call Customer 2.0. These are socially-engaged and well-informed buyers. They have abundant visibility into the companies they are considering doing business with. They've done their homework.

Plus, the control of a company’s brand is quickly transitioning to customer-to-customer conversations that are taking place in social media…and salespeople are being pushed back further in the sales process.  

Jill: In my new book, SNAP Selling, I talk about crazy-busy prospects. How does that relate to your Customer 2.0?

Umberto: Customer 2.0 is crazy-busy. He's under pressure to do more with less money, time and resources. If you're a salesperson calling on Customer 2.0, your call better be timely and relevant with a good chance of addressing their urgent business issues and challenges.  

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Republished with author's permission from original post by Jill Konrath.

Recently I had a conversation with Chas. Cooper about how important content is to capturin the attention of today's crazy-busy people. Personally, I believe if salespeople don't have quality content for all three stages of their prospect's decision process, they're fighting a tough battle that's hard to win. 

Good content is delicious. It makes your prospects want more. They can't wait to take another bite. Mmmmm good. 

 That's why, when Chas posted the resulting article on his blog, I asked if I could share it with you. Here it is!

Maximizing the Time Value of Content

We all know about the time value of money. Getting money today is worth more than getting money tomorrow. But what happens when we turn the tables and look at the time value of content from the perspective of our prospects and customers?  

Answer: We find out that the further upstream a prospect is in our marketing funnel, the more the prospect places a heavy premium on the value of time. The implications of this lesson for content marketing professionals is profound.

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Republished with author's permission from original post by Jill Konrath.

OMG. That's exactly what I said when I saw the CSO Insights statistic that says that sales teams are spending over 20% of their time researching -- and that it's only getting worse. That's one full day ever single week.

And the truth is, they NEED that customer information in order to do their jobs. Today's prospects suffer no fools. If you want to get into see them, you need to do this research full multiple reasons:

• Find decision maker's names on company sites, LinkedIn or elsewhere.
• Locate potential points of entry within bigger companies.
• Identify trigger events that create dissatisfaction with the status quo.
• Learn what's happening, so you sound intelligent about their company.
• Strategize the best possible approach.

So we know it's essential. We know it eats up tons of time. We know that all the information is available online.

But why in the world are salespeople still doing it the "old fashioned way," one time-intensive search after another that's filled with tons of irrelevant information that then has to been sifted through.

What a colossal waste of time -- especially when there are excellent and affordable resources that can automate this process: (note - this is not a paid promo; it is my opinion only.)

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Republished with author's permission from original post by Jill Konrath.

When I first met Razi Imam several years ago, I was impressed with his sales savvy, business acumen and passion. As the founder of Landslide Technologies, he was clearly on a mission to increase salespeople's productivity and speed up the sales cycle. 

At that time, I had no idea about his extraordinary journey from an immigrant dockworker in Kuwait to the CEO of a rapidly growing Sales 2.0 company. Nor did I know what was really bubbling under the surface.

That's what he's written about in his hot new book, Driven: A How-to Strategy to Unlock Your Greatest Potentials. 

When he first showed me the manuscript this winter, I was totally taken in by "Junoon." This ancient Eastern concept deals with how ordinary people achieve extraordinary goals. Junoon keeps you moving forward, despite the obstacles, because you know that what you do matters.

So if you want your life to make a difference, you'll love Driven. It's a combination of Razi's personal story intermixed with a captivating story of Junoon.

The worse thing is, it's still haunting me days after I put it down.

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Republished with author's permission from original post by Jill Konrath.

I had a great conversation with John Cousineau of Innovative Information the other day. The focus? What works with crazy-busy prospects — the topic of SNAP Selling, my #1-ranked Amazon sales book. Here's his take on a highly valuable strategy that's working for sellers today.

Sellers: Spend More Time Thinking About Being Helpful

Look closely, today, at the activities and behaviors of sales superstars and you'll see there's one key thing that separates them from their peers - they spend more time thinking.

Many salespeople are so busy they haven't the time to be helpful to buyers. The irony in this is that, today, frazzled buyers need help more than ever sorting through the complexities of their businesses.

Yet when salespeople take more time to think, they make the seemingly impossible for buyers become possible — they help frazzled buyers make smart, timely, buying decisions.

Sales superstars who do this kind of thinking on behalf of buyers routinely out perform their peers. They're exceptionally successful because they take the necessary time, and invest the necessary effort, to think hard. They see possibilities others miss. 

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Republished with author's permission from original post by Jill Konrath.

One of the fun parts of being an author, is seeing how your book impacts readers. That's why I loved this post by blogger & Sales VP Jim Keenan. He's also a hot prospect for some salespeople who are quite sure they have the perfect offering for him. Check out his reactions to one seller's attempt to get his foot in the door.

What Am I Supposed to Do With This?

It’s funny how we can experience things on a regular basis, but it’s not until someone points it out that we see it clearly. This just happened to me.

I am reading Jill Konrath’s new book SNAP Selling. You can see a copy of it in the sidebar. It’s a great book. I’ve read a lot of sales books in my days. What makes this good, is it is timely.  Jill does a good job of assessing how today’s selling environment has changed.

Selling has changed and it’s important sales people recognize this.

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Republished with author's permission from original post by Jill Konrath.

Today's post is Part II of my recent interview with Jeff Thull, author of the newly updated book, Mastering the Complex Sale.

Jill: Many people believe that selling is both an art and a science. Your own opinion?

Jeff: As implied by the medical analogy we use in our core program – Diagnostic Selling – I believe a close parallel to the sales profession exists in the medical profession. Practicing medicine is both an art and a science, as is sales, and as are most professions.

I think what most people refer to as the “art” of a profession is a result of years of practice and experience in the respective profession.

Whenever you compare a really good professional, be that an artist, a musician, a pilot, an athlete – to someone not as good, it looks like magic, but it’s not.

There are three very specific dimensions that must be in balance for a professional to be successful. They are systems (i.e. a set process that leads to a predictable result), skills (i.e. the knowledge and ability needed to execute the system properly), and discipline (i.e. the mind-set or stance and an emotional strength to execute in a quality manner).

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Republished with author's permission from original post by Jill Konrath.

A couple weeks ago, I went to lunch with Jeff Thull, author of three top-notch sales books. I was delighted when he handed me the newly updated version of Mastering the Complex Sale. Of course, then I had to interview him to find out what's new. Enjoy!

Jill: Jeff, your book Mastering the Complex Sale first came out seven years ago. In your new edition, what's changed? And why?

Jeff: For starters, in the world in which we all sell, the severity of commoditization, the intensity of competition and the pace of our customers, three of the items that we addressed in the first edition, has reached new levels.

When the first edition came out, much of what we were suggesting was seen as radical. Things like “stop presenting,” “always be leaving,” and “go for the no” were concepts too far away from the traditional approach. People were looking for how to do what they were doing and do it better, not how to do it differently.

Today, sales professionals are recognizing that customers have changed how they buy so dramatically, that as sellers they need to dramatically shift how they sell.

As far as what has changed in the book, we have significantly beefed up the content around our Discover stage, what you do to prepare, prior to engaging the customer.

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Republished with author's permission from original post by Jill Konrath.