If there is any sales book you should read this year, it’s Changing the Sales Conversation by Linda Richardson. It’s truly a MUST READ. Although many books are being written about the huge shift taking place in the world of sales, no one has captured its essence better than Linda. Moreover she provides practical, concise and specific guidelines for addressing these changes in your own business. She has packed an unbelievable amount of information into 150 pages, with a lot of hard data to back up her recommendations. My copy is already filled with notes and comments in the margins and I know I shall refer to her book in my own training courses.
The premise of the book is best summed up in Neil Rackham’s forward to the book: “how you sell has become vastly more important than what you sell”. In other words, sales people are the differentiator; not quality, delivery or other service related features. This implies the need for a different kind of engagement with clients. Hence the title.
Linda does a great job of describing the drivers behind the change in buyer behaviour in her introduction and then swiftly shifts to helping you figure out what to do about it. Her second chapter, called Futuring: Meta-Preparation does a fantastic job of helping you understand why product/service focused sales is dead and why clients today want something more from sales people. If, as she says, “Sales has become more of a conversation between two business equals, not a seller pitching a buyer”, then we need to make a monumental shift in the way we sell.
Her subsequent chapters provide the roadmap for making the shift. Her second chapter entitled “Futuring: Meta-Preparation” helps you see all the ways in which you can prepare for better client conversations. She then turns to what she calls “Heat Mapping”, which is learning how to anticipate customer needs. She moves on the highlight the importance of demonstrating value, using a sales process and making the best use of available sales tools to bring us into this new sales paradigm.
In addition to all the fantastic information she provides, the practical structure of the book is designed for reuse. She includes step-by-step guidelines, checklists and worksheets to help you develop sales conversations, processes and tools to, quite literally, change your sales conversations.
Her style is direct, insightful and engaging. It won’t take you long to read it, but I guarantee you will find yourself referring back to it time and again. There are so many quotable quotes in this book. I’ve selected a few that really stuck in my mind, because they apply so directly to the translation industry. Here are four of my many favourites:
“Many salespeople lose deals…because they build an ocean liner for a client that needs a row boat.”
“The interrogative call is over, the consultative, collaborative call is not.”
“Unless you move the conversation to value, you will find yourself selling on price.”
“Learn faster than your clients and competitors. Winning requires an urgency to learn new things, create value and earn trust.”
Order a copy. You’ll be glad you did.
