A Seat at the Table

How Top Salespeople Connect and Drive Decisions at the Executive Level

by Marc Miller

Number of pages: 186

Publisher: Greenleaf Enterprises

BBB Library: Sales and Marketing

ISBN: 978-1608320844



About the Author

founder and CEO of Sogistics Corporation. Sogistics is a sales productivity improvement company, specializing in providing strategies and solutions that better sustain profitable growth.

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Editorial Review

Marc Miller, author of the best-selling sales book Selling Is Dead, delivers another critical tool for connecting with decision-makers to make more and bigger sales. A Seat at the Table offers a new sales approach: stop selling and start helping customers win, win bigger, and win more often. Customers only care about one thing: value. And the only proven way to increase sales productivity is to deliver new and different forms of value. Salespeople must become experts in their customers' businesses and help them generate better results. Readers will learn that evolving from salespeople to businesspeople who sell will earn them a seat at the table--the place reserved for those select people who guide the strategic direction of an enterprise. A Seat at the Table gives practical advice on how to better connect with decision-makers. When they can do this, salespeople will be in a position to create demand for their products and services, protect their core business, and close more sales.

Book Reviews

“this book set out to examine the current professional selling environment and to provide direction toward the table at which most B2B salespeople would like to be seated. Miller achieves that goal, and this book is a valuable addition to any B2B sales manager’s or salesperson’s bookshelf.” – Sales Performance

“This book is almost like taking a graduate course of psychology, sales and strategic thinking all at the same time. The end result is to sit on the same side of the table with your potential client so that you and he or she are working together toward his or her critical vision. By reading and applying the concepts in this book, you will indeed be the Red jacket in the sea of gray suits.”- Ezine Articles

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Wisdom to Share

LET'S BE FRANK — SELLING HAS an ugly connotation, even consultative selling.

The only thing your customer cares about is value.

You can't even begin to think about advising someone else on winning if you don't understand the real rules of the game.

Strategy is pretty simple stuff—as long as you have the proper schema to act as a road map.

Good strategy is always based on sound objectives

Product value is about "cheaper-better-faster."

When you successfully add value to the strategies of executives, you are able both to protect your core and to sell the new, without having to sacrifice one opportunity for the other.

When you show executives that you not only understand their strategy but also can add significant value to it, you're halfway to constructing a rock-solid foundation for change.

When you have earned a seat at the table, you will be able to connect with more senior executives—the ones who can make big-bet, discretionary, risk/reward decisions that affect your offerings.

Customers today are looking for value in the form of help—specifically, strategic help.