Champions Never Make Cold Calls tells you how to find prospects that turn into clients and how to do so without ever making a cold call. At the same time, you can quickly build a network of hundreds, if not thousands, of people who are excited to send you referrals.

Champions Never Make Cold Calls tells you how to find prospects that turn into clients and how to do so without ever making a cold call. At the same time, you can quickly build a network of hundreds, if not thousands, of people who are excited to send you referrals.

From the creator of the popular website Ask a Manager and New York’s work-advice columnist comes a witty, practical guide to 200 difficult professional conversations—featuring all-new advice! There’s a reason Alison Green has been called “the Dear Abby of the work world.” Ten years as a workplace-advice columnist have taught her that people avoid awkward conversations in the office because they simply don’t know what to say. Thankfully, Green does—and in this incredibly helpful book, she tackles the tough discussions you may need to have during your career. You’ll learn what to say when • coworkers push their work on you—then take credit for it • you accidentally trash-talk someone in an email then hit “reply all” • you’re being micromanaged—or not being managed at all • you catch a colleague in a lie • your boss seems unhappy with your work • your cubemate’s loud speakerphone is making you homicidal • you got drunk at the holiday party Praise for Ask a Manager “A must-read for anyone who works . . . [Alison Green’s] advice boils down to the idea that you should be professional (even when others are not) and that communicating in a straightforward manner with candor and kindness will get you far, no matter where you work.”—Booklist (starred review) “The author’s friendly, warm, no-nonsense writing is a pleasure to read, and her advice can be widely applied to relationships in all areas of readers’ lives. Ideal for anyone new to the job market or new to management, or anyone hoping to improve their work experience.”—Library Journal (starred review) “I am a huge fan of Alison Green’s Ask a Manager column. This book is even better. It teaches us how to deal with many of the most vexing big and little problems in our workplaces—and to do so with grace, confidence, and a sense of humor.”—Robert Sutton, Stanford professor and author of The No Asshole Rule and The Asshole Survival Guide “Ask a Manager is the ultimate playbook for navigating the traditional workforce in a diplomatic but firm way.”—Erin Lowry, author of Broke Millennial: Stop Scraping By and Get Your Financial Life Together

What's the secret to sales success? If you're like most business leaders, you'd say it's fundamentally about relationships-and you'd be wrong. The best salespeople don't just build relationships with customers. They challenge them. The need to understand what top-performing reps are doing that their average performing colleagues are not drove Matthew Dixon, Brent Adamson, and their colleagues at Corporate Executive Board to investigate the skills, behaviors, knowledge, and attitudes that matter most for high performance. And what they discovered may be the biggest shock to conventional sales wisdom in decades. Based on an exhaustive study of thousands of sales reps across multiple industries and geographies, The Challenger Sale argues that classic relationship building is a losing approach, especially when it comes to selling complex, large-scale business-to-business solutions. The authors' study found that every sales rep in the world falls into one of five distinct profiles, and while all of these types of reps can deliver average sales performance, only one-the Challenger- delivers consistently high performance. Instead of bludgeoning customers with endless facts and features about their company and products, Challengers approach customers with unique insights about how they can save or make money. They tailor their sales message to the customer's specific needs and objectives. Rather than acquiescing to the customer's every demand or objection, they are assertive, pushing back when necessary and taking control of the sale. The things that make Challengers unique are replicable and teachable to the average sales rep. Once you understand how to identify the Challengers in your organization, you can model their approach and embed it throughout your sales force. The authors explain how almost any average-performing rep, once equipped with the right tools, can successfully reframe customers' expectations and deliver a distinctive purchase experience that drives higher levels of customer loyalty and, ultimately, greater growth.

Win more deals with the perfect sales story! “Power Messaging is a foundational element in our global marketing campaigns and sales training programs. We believe the concepts are core to engaging in customer conversations that are focused on their outcomes and what they want to achieve.” —Karen Quintos, CMO and SVP, Dell Inc. “The concepts outlined in this book are critical skills to building a world-class presales organization.” —Ken Hamel, Senior Vice President, Global Solutions and Presales, SAP “Our new messaging, using the approaches presented in this book, is great and is being widely used by our sales team. We’ve never had a year end sales meeting with content that was met with such widespread acceptance and enthusiasm.” —Jerry D. Cline, Senior Vice President, Retail Sales and Marketing, AmerisourceBergen Drug Company “The best salespeople sit across the table and make change easy for their customer by creating a succinct story and vision for what to change, how to change it, and how it will impact customer results. An enterprise focus on sales messaging, using the concepts in this book, is the hidden secret to driving incremental sales productivity and overwhelming customer success!” —Ken Powell, Vice President, Worldwide Sales Enablement, ADP “The Power Messaging techniques in this book are the foundation of how our marketing team creates our sales messages, as well as the process our field sales teams use for delivering that message in a unique and compelling way. At Kronos our results are a reflection of the power of the tool.” —Aron Ain, CEO, Kronos About the Book: In today’s highly competitive world of complex sales, commoditization of your brand is one of the greatest dangers. You must differentiate yourself from the competition—or you will lose out. And the way to do that is through customer engagement. Rather than sell your own corporate story and brand message, you need to tell customers their story—the one in which they are the heroes and they achieve success. Erik Peterson and Tim Riesterer have been developing and honing their Power Messaging sales technique for more than 20 years, and now they reveal all their secrets in Conversations That Win the Complex Sale. Presenting a catalog of facts or playing 20 questions with prospective customers is the surest way to lose the sale. Peterson and Riesterer provide the tools you need to recraft your message into a compelling story that wins more deals. With Conversations That Win the Complex Sale, you’ll learn how to: Differentiate yourself from the competition by finding your “Value Wedge” Avoid parity in your value propositions by creating “Power Positions” Create a message that can literally double the number of deals you close Spike customer attention and create “Wow” in your conversations Prove all your claims without resorting to lists of boring facts and statistics Your competitors are out there telling their own corporate story—a story customers don’t want to hear. Now is the time to seize the moment. This book is the one and only source you need to reframe your sales story and turn the tables on the competition by fully engaging their would-be customers. Conversations That Win the Complex Sale helps you create and deliver messages that customers care about, giving your brand the clear edge in today’s crowded markets.

How do you break through to impossible-to-reach executive buyers who are intent on blocking out the noise that confronts them every day? In a world where everyone is completely inundated by phone calls, drop-ins, pop-up ads, and junk mail, how can you and your product begin to make its impression known in the business world? By learning how to combine time-tested sales processes with cutting-edge social media strategies. Sales expert and author Tony J. Hughes details today’s new breed of chief executive buyers, the channels they use, the value narratives that they find appealing, and the mix of methods that will grab their attention. In Combo Prospecting, you will learn how to: Locate leverage points that matter Secure decision-maker meetings Build a knockout online brand that distinguishes you from the pack Build a constantly growing list of profitable referrals And much more! Old-school prospecting tactics are growing increasingly irrelevant in today’s tech-savvy online business world. However, new-school techniques alone have proven to not be able to provide the answers. The key to your success is to learn how to unleash a killer combination of old and new sales strategies.

BOOKER PRIZE WINNER • NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A novel that follows a middle-aged man as he contends with a past he never much thought about—until his closest childhood friends return with a vengeance: one of them from the grave, another maddeningly present. A novel so compelling that it begs to be read in a single setting, The Sense of an Ending has the psychological and emotional depth and sophistication of Henry James at his best, and is a stunning achievement in Julian Barnes's oeuvre. Tony Webster thought he left his past behind as he built a life for himself, and his career has provided him with a secure retirement and an amicable relationship with his ex-wife and daughter, who now has a family of her own. But when he is presented with a mysterious legacy, he is forced to revise his estimation of his own nature and place in the world.

Sales training doesn’t develop sales champions. Managers do. The secret to developing a team of high performers isn’t more training but better coaching. When managers effectively coach their people around best practices, core competencies and the inner game of coaching that develops the champion attitude, it makes your training stick. With Keith Rosen’s coaching methodology and proven L.E.A.D.S. Coaching FrameworkTM used by the world’s top organizations, you’ll get your sales and management teams to perform better - fast. Coaching Salespeople into Sales Champions is your playbook to creating a thriving coaching culture and building a team of top producers. This book is packed with case studies, a 30 Day Turnaround Strategy for underperformers, a library of coaching templates and scripts, as well as hundreds of powerful coaching questions you can use immediately to coach anyone in any situation. You will learn how to confidently facilitate powerful, engaging coaching conversations so that your team can resolve their own problems and take ownership of the solution. You’ll also discover how to leverage the true power of observation and deliver feedback that results in positive behavioral changes, so that you can successfully motivate and develop your team and each individual to reach business objectives faster. Winner of Five International Best Book Awards, Coaching Salespeople Into Sales Champions is your tactical, step-by-step playbook for any people manager looking to: Boost sales, productivity and personal accountability, while reducing your workload Conduct customer/pipeline reviews that improve forecast accuracy, customer retention and uncover new selling opportunities Achieve a long term ROI from coaching by ensuring it’s woven into your daily rhythm of business Design, launch and sustain a successful internal coaching program Turn-around underperformers in 30 days or less Build deeper trust and handle difficult conversations by creating alignment around each person’s goals and your objectives Coach and retain your top performers Collaborate more powerfully and communicate like a world-class leader Training develops salespeople. Coaching develops sales champions. Your new competitive edge.

This book examines issues and implications of digital and social media marketing for emerging markets. These markets necessitate substantial adaptations of developed theories and approaches employed in the Western world. The book investigates problems specific to emerging markets, while identifying new theoretical constructs and practical applications of digital marketing. It addresses topics such as electronic word of mouth (eWOM), demographic differences in digital marketing, mobile marketing, search engine advertising, among others. A radical increase in both temporal and geographical reach is empowering consumers to exert influence on brands, products, and services. Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) and digital media are having a significant impact on the way people communicate and fulfil their socio-economic, emotional and material needs. These technologies are also being harnessed by businesses for various purposes including distribution and selling of goods, retailing of consumer services, customer relationship management, and influencing consumer behaviour by employing digital marketing practices. This book considers this, as it examines the practice and research related to digital and social media marketing.