CustomerCentric Selling, Second Edition [Hardcover]

The Web has changed the game for your customers— and, therefore, for you. Now, CustomerCentric Selling, already recognized as one of the premier methodologies for managing the buyer-seller relationship, helps you level the playing field so you can reach clients when they are ready to buy and create a superior customer experience.

Your business and its people need to be “CustomerCentric”—willing and able to identify and serve customers’ needs in a world where competition waits just a mouse-click away. Traditional wisdom has long held that selling means convincing and persuading buyers. But today’s buyers no longer want or need to be sold in traditional ways.

CustomerCentric Selling gives you mastery of the crucial eight aspects of communicating with today’s clients to achieve optimal results:

• Having conversations instead of making presentations
• Asking relevant questions instead of offering opinions
• Focusing on solutions and not only relationships
• Targeting businesspeople instead of gravitating toward users
• Relating product usage instead of relying on features
• Competing to win—not just to stay busy
• Closing on the buyer’s timeline (instead of yours)
• Empowering buyers instead of trying to “sell” them

What’s more, CustomerCentric Selling teaches and reinforces key tactics that will make the most of your organization’s resources. Perhaps you feel you don’t have the smartest internal systems in place to ensure an ideal workflow. (Perhaps, as is all too common, you lack identifiable systems almost entirely.) From the basics—and beyond—of strategic budgeting and negotiation to assessing and developing the skills of your sales force, you’ll learn how to make sure that each step your business takes is the right one.

The sales classic—updated with new customer-focused methodologies!

Thanks to the web, today’s customers are savvier and more results-oriented: they do their homework. Do it for them by communicating with them in the ways that work best for them, and you’ll find that doing so works best for you, too. When they know they’re being listened to, they’ll listen back.

In CustomerCentric Selling, you’ll find practical, step-by-step tips on:

• Turning sales presentations into customer-focused conversations
• Asking the right questions—of the right people
• Empowering buyers to achieve goals, solve problems, and satisfy needs
• Developing optimal strategies for winning the vital three-month sales cycle—regardless of your client’s actual sales cycle
• Using Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and other social networking sites to engage buyers and strengthen client relationships
• Defining and managing your content and revenue engines
• Optimizing the talent of salespeople and building a quality pipeline