Lately I’ve had the chance to read galleys of a lot of sales and marketing books, many of them have had one or two ideas that make them worthwhile. Which when you think about where you invest your time, is a pretty good bargain.
But when I got the galley of Anthony Iannarino’s new book, The Lost Art of Closing, I was prepared to be blown away by a book that really changed the way that I laid out my sales pipeline and the way that I think about the modern sales process.
The core of the book is the ten commitments that drive sales.
Its such a genius idea that I am jealous I didn’t come up with it myself.
But besides that, there is just so much to really gain from reading this book, here are my big 3 takeaways.
Selling is about adding value:
In too many sales guides, cheap tricks and tactics are the course of instruction.
This book focuses at every turn about adding value as the way that you gain control of the sales process and the commitments you need to move the sale along.
While I have known that this was the core of selling for a long time, I’m glad that there is a book on the market that lays out the ways and some ideas for how all of us can do that even more effectively.
In making the kind of business defining sales that all of us want to make, speed kills:
In running there is a term: Long, slow distance. Which means that if you are training for a marathon or longer, you need to spend a lot of time training at a slow easy pace.
The same applies to selling because often in our rush to close, we skip steps, take on bad partners, or just whiff at genuine opportunities.
In Anthony’s book, he talks about slowing down the process and not skipping the commitments you need to make sure that you keep your sales working towards closing.
In other words, slow down to go fast.
Controlling the process is king:
A lot of what we hear about the sales process today doesn’t really make sense:
- Buyers are 67.39856% of the way to making a decision before you ever talk to them.
- You have to sell the way that the company buys.
- You should take any meeting that you can get and work your way up.
The list can go on and on and on.
What a lot of these ideas all have in common is that you need to wait around for opportunity to present itself.
In reading this book, you will see that none of these ideas really hold their weight.
You can’t wait.
You have to take action.
You have to shoot for opportunities.
You have to control the process.
If you are doing it right, you are going to be creating a preference for yourself before the buyer has even started researching the things you are doing and you can help lead them to the decision.
If you are doing it right, you are going to sell in a way that the company buys the way you want them to, even if it goes against policy.
And, you will know exactly who you need to talk to and who you need to reach to take control of the sales process.
These are only 3 ideas, and they are mine, but I think you should run out and get this book ASAP.