There is a strategy behind the order in which I am writing and publishing books, and I want to share my reasoning here.
Book 1: The Foundation – The Only Sales Guide
My first book, The Only Sales Guide You’ll Ever Need, has a provocative titled and an equally attention-seeking, red cover. The working title of this book before Portfolio entered the picture was 17 Elements. The book is really what might be described as a competency model, covering the mindset and skill sets necessary to succeed in sales. Even though I had already developed the content for the second and third books, this book had to come first because without the character traits and skills of an effective salesperson, nothing beyond this content would be as useful as if you had spent time developing these things.
Without self-discipline, optimism, caring, competitiveness, persistence, resourcefulness, initiative, communication, and accountability, selling is a difficult—if not a seemingly impossible—endeavor. If you don’t know how to gain commitments, prospect, present, diagnose, negotiate, develop your business acumen, manage change, and lead people to a better future, you will struggle.
Book 2: The Heart of Consultative Selling – The Lost Art
However, when you are someone worth buying from, then you can progress to the ideas in The Lost Art of Closing: Winning the Ten Commitments That Drive Sales. This title frightens people. They mistakenly judge this book not by its cover, but by its title, concluding that this approach is something that Blake from Glengarry Glenn Ross might teach salespeople. Nothing could be further from the truth.
The Lost Art of Closing is a super consultative framework for gaining the 10 commitments your clients almost certainly need to make to move from a current start to a better future state—and commitments that position you to win their business and guide them on their journey.
The commitments include Time (prospecting), Explore (why change), change (do I need to do this now) collaborate (what changes and how), consensus (organizational and executive support), invest (equal to the outcomes), review (something they can yes to), resolve concerns (address anything that prevents moving forward) decide (the ask), and execute (accountability for results).
Book 3: Competing and Winning – Eat Their Lunch
Without this book, it would be difficult to execute what shows up in book number three, Eat Their Lunch: Winning Customers Away from Your Competition. Eat Their Lunch is a book about competitive displacements, or said more plainly, taking clients away from your competitors.
A lot of people mistakenly believe competition is about what their competitors. They believe that it is about their irrational pricing or their empty promises or dirty tactics. The truth of the matter is that none of these things have anything to do with competition because there is nothing you can do about how your competitors decide to play the game.
Competition is about how you differentiate yourself and your company by creating greater value—and in this case, enough to cause your prospective client to remove your competition and hire you. Creating a new opportunity that causes your dream client to remove their current partner is not easy. You are going to need to bring your best effort if you want to succeed. Eat Their Lunch provides the strategy for creating greater value, capturing mind share, prospecting in a professional way that creates an opportunity for a displacement, and building consensus within your dream client’s company.
You can’t get Eat Their Lunch until October 16th, but you can preorder it now. If you do, save your receipt for the bonuses will announce here later.
