Winning the Battle For Sales. Lessons on closing every deal from the world’s greatest military victories. John Golden.
Winning the Battle For Sales. Lessons on closing every deal from the world’s greatest military victories. John Golden.2013. ISBN9780071791991. From the company that brought you Spin Selling comes a very interesting take on sales lessons. The power of story and metaphor is a known component of successful selling. Here it is used to wrap good sales advice around the telling of a battle. The point is clear and more importantly the lesson sticks. Golden is the CEO of Huthwaite, a company I know is doing interesting things in sales execution. It turns out that the author is quite a writer as the stories and lessons flow very well. I was surprised how much I enjoyed and appreciated this book. You will learn a lot. The advice is very up to date – being based on knowing more about your customer and the buying journey he/she is going through than your sales process. A few nuggets about useful sales pipelines.
- It is not the dollar amount in your pipeline that matters – it is the dollars associated with opportunities that are being worked on and are progressing.
- It is not the number of opportunities in your pipeline that matters – it is the number of opportunities that have a realistic chance of closing.
- It is not how many sales calls your sales salespeople have that matters-it is how many sales calls that end with a customer commitment that moves the opportunity forward.
Sales efficiency is about the tactics/activities that most quickly get you in front of the right buyer. Sales effectiveness is how to maximize results when you are there. Quite different.
This should be on every sales managers shelf , any sales training organizations library, and in your library if you want to be a top producer.
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Category: Sales, Sales Effectiveness, Sales Efficiency