Changing the Sales Conversation: Connect, Collaborate, and Close

In this era of iPads, iPhones, and apps, salescommunications may be growing, but sales conversations are dying--and so are too many sales. Globalization, the explosion in competition, the slow economy, and fast-emerging technologies all have changed buying habits.Salespeople can no longer rely on the traditional sales methodologies. They must change the conversation.

A visionary of the consultative sales movement, Linda Richardson has again moved selling forward by reengineering the sales conversation. Purchasing has become a core competency for clients. They evaluate theiroptions against checklists they carefully develop.Richardson helps you understand what is on their checklists and align your solutions with their business and personal priorities to help you win.

Clients today are focused on business outcomes.They are interested in reducing risk. They turn to peers and social networks to self-educate before turning to salespeople. To engage them you must demonstrate that youknow their world and that you are prepared with insights and ideas to add to what they already know. Richardson gives you five clear strategies and tools to help you do just that. You will create and shape opportunities, prepareand probe in an entirely new way, gain client consensus, and use sales process and tools to guide and accelerate closing. You will learn:

• Futuring to prepare for and anticipate customer needs
• Heat-mapping to use insights to focus and engage customers
• Value-tracking to connect your solutions to business outcomes and ROI
• Phasing to use sales process to forecast accurately and close
• Linking to reassert heart and trust into your sales conversations

Linda Richardson was named Sales Thought Leader for 2013 and this book shows why as she helps you sometimes tweak but more often change how you sell. She builds on your foundation to take your selling to a new elevationand bring your sales results along with it.

PRAISE FOR CHANGING THE SALES CONVERSATION

"Linda Richardson is in the Sales Hall of Fame. Her new book, Changing the Sales Conversation, is not an option. It's an imperative. When Linda Richardson says it's time to change the sales conversation, you can bet your job, and your wallet, that it's time to change." -- Jeffrey Gitomer, author of The Little Red Book of Selling

"The sales game has changed radically in recent years, and there's no going back. Richardson not only gets the big picture about the new world of sales, but she also provides the kind of insidebaseball details new and experienced salespeople can really use. This book stands out in a field bloated with old thinking and tired cliches." -- Daniel H. Pink, author of Drive and To Sell Is Human

"This book is beyond a 'must-read' or 'must-have' book. This is a MUST-DO guide. It is a landmark book in which Linda Richardson gives us an updated road map that clearly explains today's AND tomorrow's buying patterns and how to leverage technology, connections, andexceptional expertise to win on the new sales landscape." -- Marc Ramos, Global Lead, Google Enterprise Learning, Google

"Linda has created a sales foundation for the profession of selling across all industries. WithChanging the Sales Conversation she has seized on the new emerging trend: the conversation economy. This is the most substantive and authoritative book on conversation management on the market. A must-read for every sales leader and every top performing salesperson." -- Gerhard Gschwandtner, CEO, Selling Power

"Linda's new book accomplishes the almost-impossible: providing an easy-to-understand road map for selling in an increasingly complex business world." -- Geoffrey James, author of Business