The Collaborative Sale: Solution Selling in a Buyer Driven World

The Collaborative Sale: Solution Selling in Today's Customer-Driven World is the definitive guide to the new reality of sales. The roles of buyers, sellers, and technology have changed, and collaboration is now the key to success on all sides. The Collaborative Sale guides sales professionals toward alignment with buyers, by helping them overcome their problems and challenges, and creating value. From building a robust opportunity pipeline and predicting future revenues to mastering the nuances of buyer conversations, the book contains the information sales professionals need to remain relevant in today's sales environment.

Buyers have become more informed and more empowered. As a result, most sellers now enter the buying process at a much later stage than the traditional norm. The rise of information access has given buyers more control over their purchases than ever before, and sellers must adapt to survive. The Collaborative Sale provides a roadmap for adapting through sales collaboration, detailing the foundations, personae, and reality of the new marketplace. The book provides insight into the new buyer thought processes, the new sales personae required for dealing with the new buyers, and how to establish and implement a dynamic sales process. Topics include:

• Selling in times of economic uncertainty, broad information access, and new buyer behavior
• Why collaboration is so important to the new buyers
• The emergence of new sales personae – Micro-marketer, Visualizer, and Value Driver
• Buyer alignment, risk mitigation, and the myth of control
• Situational fluency, and the role of technology
• Focused sales enablement, and buyer-aligned learning and development
• Implementation and establishment of a dynamic sales process

The book describes the essential competencies for collaborative selling, and provides indispensable supplemental tools for implementation. Written by recognized authorities with insights into global markets, The Collaborative Sale: Solution Selling in Today's Customer-Driven World is the essential resource for today's sales professional.

About the Authors

Keith M. Eades is Founder and CEO of Sales Performance International (SPI), one of the largest sales improvement companies in the world. Headquartered in Charlotte, North Carolina, SPI is currently doing business in more than 50 countries.

Keith speaks regularly at industry, customer, and partner events, and he is considered one of the most knowledgeable authorities on transforming companies into world-class sales organizations. The Collaborative Sale is Keith's fourth book.

In 2001, Clemson University recognized Keith with the Alumni Fellow Award for his outstanding career accomplishments. He is an inaugural member of the Shapiro Center Entrepreneurial Round Table and serves on the Executive Advisory Board for the College of Business and Behavioral Sciences at Clemson.

Timothy T. Sullivan is Director of Business Development at Sales Performance International, where he works with clients to identify and develop solutions for sales performance issues. In this capacity, Tim has the unique opportunity to observe and collect best practices from many of the world's top-performing sales professionals.

The Collaborative Sale is Tim's second coauthored book with Keith Eades, the first being The Solution Selling Fieldbook (McGraw-Hill, 2005); he was also a contributor to The Solution-Centric Organization (McGraw-Hill, 2006). He contributes regularly to the Solution Selling Blog, found at solutionsellingblog.com. Tim is also a frequent speaker at industry conferences on advanced sales and marketing topics. He holds a business degree from the University of Notre Dame, and is a dedicated Fighting Irish football fan. He resides happily with his beautiful bride, Jane, in Atlanta, Georgia.