It's Your Territory - Manage It Like It's Your Own Company

A successful IBM sales executive shares his thoughts and recommendations on how to effectively sell your solutions to customer executives based on his 30 year career in sales and sales management. He poses the following question to you: "If just one single idea in this book (course) results in a successful sale, then wouldn't your $9.99 and estimated 2 hour read time investment deliver a very attractive return on investment to you?"

The book (course) is broken down into 3 key sections:

Territory & Opportunity Management:

This section encourages you to view your territory as though it was your own company. It asks you (as the company owner) to perform an objective personal assessment as to how you (as a company sales representative) have been managing your territory and opportunities. It stimulates thought on your part as to where there may be opportunities for improvement. Subjects include:

Your knowledge of your customers' decision-making hierarchy
Your knowledge of the customer budget cycle
The importance of accurate and reliable forecasting
Planning for and reviewing the effectiveness of your sales calls
How you are viewed by your management

Cost Justification/Financial Selling Skills:

This section provides a basic education on how senior executives and their financial staffs assess the attractiveness of your proposed solution in terms of its potential "return on investment" to their organization. As well, it increases your comfort level and ability to converse intelligently with financial executives by providing a basic understanding of the financial analysis methodologies they utilize. It includes discussion on the following subjects:

Types of customer budgets (cash, operating, capital)

How federal tax regulations can be used to significantly whittle down the cost difference between your proposed solutions and those of less expensive competitors

The most frequently used terms and methodologies utilized by customer financial analysts to assess the return on investment your solution delivers are defined including:

The time value of money
Break-even point analysis
Net present value analysis
Internal rate of return analysis
Expensing versus capitalization analysis

Designing High Impact Executive Level Presentations:

The final section provides recommendations on the design and delivery of effective presentations to senior level, decision-making customer executives. Generally, you have only one opportunity with these individuals and it is always a "high stakes" situation. It stresses the differences in presentations which succeed with senior executives and those delivered to technical staffs. It discusses the key principles which gain the immediate attention of senior level executives, encourage interactive conversation during the presentation and which keep the executive in his/her seat rather than looking for a reason to "get to their next meeting".