Introduction

It’s been almost 18 years since I had the privilege of publishing my first book, Think Like Your Customer (McGraw Hill 2005). It was truly the fulfillment of a lifelong dream! I didn’t know it at the time, but that experience would change my life forever. That book was eventually translated into nine languages, and as I’ve traveled the world speaking and training for nearly two decades, I have been constantly amazed by how many people say they have benefited from reading it.

Two years later, I published Selling Results! (McGraw Hill 2007), which expanded on the first book and provided an extensive set of sales tools for applying many of those original ideas. It became the foundation of our Sales Excellence® Core Methodology, which has been adopted by organizations and individuals in over 40 countries. For an average kid from a tiny town in the mountains of Oregon, this whole journey has felt a bit surreal.

Of course, I always hoped all of this effort would produce some return-on-time-invested. But the personal satisfaction of seeing so many people apply these ideas to sell more, advance their careers, start businesses, and change their lives has been utterly overwhelming. I fully expected I would keep on publishing a new book every couple of years, but then something extraordinary happened: I got married!

I’ve often joked around by saying, “Number of books published before being married with kids = 2. Number of books published since being married with kids = 0.” But I wouldn’t change it for the world! I feel blessed beyond imagination to be married to my best friend, Terri. She is truly the love of my life! And we have the privilege of being parents to four wonderful kids. This time has been the most rewarding and satisfying period of my life. But now, after all these years, it’s time to publish again. I’m like a rock band that finally got around to releasing their third album. Yay!

In this brief introduction, I want to answer four important questions that you might be asking:

1.   Why do we need another book on sales?

2.   Who is this book written for?

3.   What is covered in this book?

4.   What will this book do for me?

Let’s take a look at these questions one at a time.

Why Do We Need Another Book on Sales?

Over the last 80 years or so, literally thousands of books have been written on sales and marketing. Why do we need another one? It’s very simple: what the most effective salespeople and business owners are doing today to attract, prospect, convert, and close new sales opportunities has changed pretty substantially over the last few years. Oh, you can still use the same tactics you were using in 2019 to find and close some business today. You can even automate many of the sales motions you used to do by hand so you can dramatically scale the number of people you approach. But I’m just not comfortable with the only strategy for selling in today’s market being simply “swing harder.”

Seismic changes in the sociopolitical climate, the business landscape, as well as the rapid proliferation of communication technology have dramatically changed the way our customers explore solutions to their problems and work through a buying process. This means we really have no choice but to change the way we engage with them, or we will be summarily left in the dust.

Everything I write and create is based on personal, firsthand experience—learning and applying new ideas and new technologies on a daily and weekly basis. I am as involved in day-to-day selling as I was when I started my first direct sales job at age 22. I choose to be! How can I have any credibility helping other salespeople and business owners create and close new business in today’s marketplace if I’m not doing it myself?

What I’m doing to forge new relationships and lead prospects through their discovery process today is dramatically different than what I was doing just a few years ago. I’ve read more, studied more, and experimented more in the last three years than I ever have in my life. In fact, I’d say about half of what’s in this book I didn’t even know 36 months ago. I’m going to share as much as I can of what I’ve learned about selling in today’s digital-first world so you can benefit from it, too!

Who Is This Book Written For?

Before they publish anything, any good writer should think about exactly who their audience is going to be. They need to be able to answer this question: “Who’s going to read this, and what will they be able to get out of it?” With that in mind, my target audience for this book is those people who fill a specific function with any or all of the following objectives:

•   Influencing customer perception and persuading customers to draw new conclusions and literally think differently

•   Communicating with customers—either verbally or in writing—via any given communication medium before, during, or after the sale

•   Creating sales opportunities by helping customers conclude that they need help

•   Demonstrating and presenting products and services as solutions to specific challenges that customers face

•   Helping customers work their way through their own buying process from the earliest recognition of a need (or even before) all the way through closure and beyond

•   Maintaining relationships with customers who bought—and even prospects who didn’t—until the next opportunity to serve them comes along

•   Leading or employing a team doing any of the above

With that in mind, the roles for which this book is perfectly suited include:

I also hope to support—and even inspire—those in the role I like to call the “sales entrepreneur.” These people usually come in one of two flavors. The first is made up of sales professionals working within a company who are willing to run their defined market or sales territory as if it were their own business. The term intrapreneur has become popular to describe a role where personal ownership of plans, strategies, and outcomes is encouraged.

I’ll be talking much more about this throughout this book, but I believe that truly standing out in a world full of so much digital noise requires an individual to be willing to step up and build a personal brand as the go-to resource for their target customers. Sales professionals who approach their role like they’re the CEO of their own company act and sound entirely differently than a typical “sales rep.”

The second flavor of sales entrepreneur is the rapidly growing ranks of the independent sales contractor. In recent years, we have witnessed the phenomenon of record numbers of corporate professionals resigning their positions to start their own company. Just as many have started their own part-time business on top of working their day job.

Last year alone the number of new business applications filed in the United States was over 5.4 million, up over one million applicants from the previous year.¹ Futurists are now predicting that many more corporations will be moving toward a model where their sales teams will be composed primarily of self-employed subcontractors as opposed to direct (common law) employees.

We actually have two different but similar models for this already. One is the “manufacturers rep,” which has been extremely popular for decades. This is especially common in industries like apparel, groceries, and hardware, where manufacturers engage a third-party representative to promote their products to regional distributors and local retailers, for example.

The other model, which is incredibly pervasive in the technology space, is one where solution providers offer their products and services through value-added resellers (VARs), dealers, agents, distributors, or the more generic term, channel partners. Some of the most successful technology companies in the world have built their business exclusively using the channel model, and Forrester Research recently released findings showing that a whopping 75 percent of all sales today flow through some form of distribution channel.²

The evolution toward what is being called the “gig economy,” where individuals are contracted to perform specific tasks or complete defined projects, is becoming commonplace and will likely become more so within the arena of sales and marketing in the coming years. This model makes sense for self-employed sellers and marketers who want more control over where they work, when they work, work-life balance, etc. And it makes sense for many companies that want to reduce the risks and expense of hiring people directly as well as the liability and financial obligation of long-term employment. It’s a win-win!

Whether you are a corporate employee, an entrepreneur selling solutions that your own company produces, or you are representing the goods and services of others, this book has been written with you in mind. I have endeavored to make this relevant to sales pros and business owners alike by combining my own background in corporate sales, my experience as a small business owner, and my knowledge from over 20 years working with a client base of companies ranging from one salesperson to thousands.

What Is Covered in This Book?

The scope of this work encompasses the best practices of selling digitally from the very earliest stages of a sales opportunity though closure and far beyond. It covers how we can use technology and digital assets to build and nurture what I like to call e-relationships with our past, present, and future clients.

I specifically chose not to go deep into an exposé of sales automation and enablement technologies for two major reasons. First of all, that’s not my primary area of expertise. There are plenty of authors and experts who specialize in evaluating and recommending sales technology platforms. My work has always been more in the area of understanding how customers think and teaching sellers how to influence their customers’ thinking and behavior throughout the overall buying process.

The second reason I won’t spend a lot of time on the composition of your sales “tech stack,” as it is frequently called, is that by the time this manuscript becomes available in bookstores or online, the technology and the players providing it will probably have changed substantially. The focus of this book is more on the substance of how you sell using technology, not the technology itself.

Here’s just a tiny glimpse into what each chapter is about:

Chapter 1: Selling the Way Customers Buy Today

This first chapter is designed to lay the foundation of the topic of digital selling and why embracing it is so vitally urgent today. It also serves as a bit of an executive summary of the entire book. If you can only make time to carefully read the first chapter, you will walk away with a ton of new ideas that will cause you to reexamine how you sell in today’s digital-first environment.

Chapter 2: Engaging Customers Early in Their Digital Buying Process

This covers how to connect and build relationships with prospective buyers long before a sales opportunity exists and, ideally, before they even know they need to consider buying something. We’d ultimately like to be the company that is helping individuals and organizations conclude that they need our help in the first place and in so doing become the benchmark to which all other would-be providers are compared.

Chapter 3: Mastering Digital Selling and Content Development

The third chapter is about writing and creating sales content. If you are familiar with the term content marketing, you know the power of engaging prospective buyers by educating and informing them as opposed to just advertising to them. Selling with content is a way to help customers reach specific conclusions that are part of their overall buying and decision-making processes. We use content to do the same selling we would do if we were meeting with them in person. I assure you, this approach is a total game changer!

Chapter 4: Designing Your Digital Selling Engine

Here’s where we dig into the various platforms and tools you can employ as part of your overall digital selling strategy. We’ll look at the various kinds of technologies you can use to attract, connect with, converse with, and communicate digitally with customers, including several of the most popular platforms available at the time of this writing.

Chapter 5: Building e-Relationships Throughout the Digital Buying Journey

This chapter contains as many strategies, tactics, tips, and techniques as I could pack into it. We’ll talk about how to lead prospective clients from being a total stranger, to a social connection, to having a live conversation. Then we’ll talk about how to convert them to happy repeat customers and even market ambassadors helping you get the word out to other people who can potentially use your help.

Chapter 6: Creating a Magnetic Personal Brand

This is my favorite chapter! In today’s digital marketplace, it’s not easy to stand out among so many other voices vying for your customer’s attention. The key is to differentiate yourself by letting your customers get to know who you are as you earn trust, credibility, and preference for doing business with you. If you start to lose momentum as you read, make sure you get to Chapter 6 before you run out of gas. You don’t want to miss it!

Chapter 7: Sales Prospecting in a Digital World

For those who are responsible for outbound prospecting, I have laced every chapter of this book with highly actionable ideas and advice for you. But Chapter 7 is where we go deep into the strategy of targeted prospecting with ideas about how to approach senior executives and how to create a 30-day prospecting plan. There’s even a section on the psychology of overcoming what’s keeping you from doing the prospecting you already know you need to be doing.

Chapter 8: Managing and Closing Deals Digitally

Digital selling is often thought of as technology-powered prospecting and using social media for lead generation. In this final chapter, we will explore how to use digital assets and the latest communication platforms to move opportunities forward through all stages of the customer’s buying process, even when you don’t have the opportunity to talk to all of the key stakeholders in person, on video, or via telephone.

What Will This Book Do for Me?

The purpose of this book is to intentionally change the way you think about the profession of selling and how you communicate with your prospective clients in today’s digital world. We’re going to explore a variety of ways to leverage digital communication channels throughout the entire marketing and sales process. You’ll learn how to:

•   Find and create more new sales opportunities using the latest in digital selling technologies.

•   Influence perception about the value you can deliver for prospective buyers in your market to generate demand for what you offer.

•   Build relationships and rapport with prospective clients even before they know they need anything.

•   Align and position your products and services in the mind of your customers as the ideal solution to help them achieve the goals they already want to achieve.

•   Write better emails, social posts, articles, and other digital assets that can be used to attract prospective clients and the substance of your prospecting outreach.

•   Leverage the latest in social and other digital technologies using a variety of media to reach and develop connections with an unlimited number of potential customers.

•   Foster relationships with prospective buyers who are ready to buy today as well as earn trust with those who may be prospects in the future.

•   Establish yourself as a resource for information and answers that draws prospective clients to you when they need your knowledge and expertise.

•   Put together a strategy for reaching out to targeted prospective clients that is designed to help you stand out from the crowd and get you noticed.

•   Improve your average win rate and close more of the sales opportunities that you choose to invest your time in.

Before we step into the first chapter, I want to congratulate you for taking this initiative. At a time when some companies are cutting back on investing in career development for their sales teams, I applaud you for making the time to invest in yourself! If you are a business owner, you already know that you have to make yourself better if you want to achieve better results. And if you are leading an organization, this is an opportunity to capture a vision of what’s possible for your team at the next level.

What’s in this book represents a departure from many of the tired, outmoded sales and marketing practices of yesteryear. I’m on a mission to eradicate bad selling that is simply being automated and executed “at scale.” You are about to be challenged to completely rethink how you sell using digital media for communicating with your customers.

Let’s go!