PREFACE

Published in November 2003, The New Solution Selling quickly became required reading for many sales, sales management, and marketing professionals around the world. With over 300,000 copies sold, the book became a best seller and one of the most popular business books on the topic of sales and marketing. It still sells well today, more than 10 years after its debut.

However, propelled by the Internet and innovations in collaborative technologies, buyer behavior has changed significantly—some may even say radically—since 2003. In addition, the Millennial generation has arrived on the scene, bringing significant change to buying patterns as well. These changes in buyer behavior affect how we must market and sell in profound and highly disruptive ways. The reason for writing The Collaborative Sale is to address many of these significant changes in buyer behavior.

While writing this book about sales collaboration, I am also finalizing the architectural plans for my company's new international headquarters. What I've learned about the importance of sales collaboration throughout my career prompted me to ask our architect to design every aspect of our new space to foster collaboration among our associates and with our clients. Our open work spaces, impromptu meeting areas, innovation rooms, and even the height of the office walls are all designed to help people get more done through collaboration, and to enjoy themselves more while doing so.

I can't overemphasize the need for effective collaboration in this modern age. Effective selling is now a collaborative effort between equals—buyers and sellers—focused on an optimum result. Unfortunately, selling is viewed too often as an us-versus-them endeavor. But it doesn't need to be that way. This book, by my colleague Tim Sullivan and me, is our contribution to stemming the tides of disunity and mistrust.

The word collaborate is based on the Latin word collaborare, which means “to labor together.” Each year, Sales Performance International works with more than 200 corporate clients to assess, train, and enable more than 25,000 sales and marketing professionals to “labor together” with buyers to solve their business problems. We have captured in this book much of what we've learned from our clients about sales collaboration.

Social scientists have demonstrated that even though insight feels like a solitary exercise, it is actually rooted in collaboration. We discovered a recent academic study that shows that a group of average people who collaborate effectively can solve problems more quickly than an expert acting alone.

Time after time, we've seen that sellers who successfully align their products, services, and capabilities with buyers’ problems, critical business issues, and opportunities will elevate their status in the eyes of their customers. They will rise from “vendor” to “trusted partner,” enabling higher levels of trust and collaboration. As a matter of fact, buyers often ask their trusted partners to collaborate on new ideas and will regularly write specifications and even requests for proposals (RFPs) and tenders around their capabilities.

And yes, sellers can achieve highly trusted status no matter what they sell. Some of our clients work in highly regulated monopolies, while others sell commodities like fuel, rocks, and financial investments; most fall somewhere in between, selling differentiated products or solutions in a competitive marketplace. But they all attain high levels of trust and credibility with customers by collaborating effectively and adding value in every interaction.

The Collaborative Sale removes barriers to collaboration by providing sellers with the processes, methods, tools, and skills they need, as well as the specific sales personae that they should play, when working with the new buyers.

I hope that you will not only enjoy our book, but will also let us know how you have put it to use to collaborate with your customers. Please drop us a note at www.thecollaborativesale.com or www.spisales.com with your story.

And if you will come visit us in our new headquarters, I'll treat you to a cup of coffee and take you for a tour. I hope you'll take me up on my offer.

Keith Eades

CEO and Founder

Sales Performance International, LLC