Leadership and Social Media Expert Tim Sanders was the chief solutions officer and leadership coach at Yahoo, and is the author of four books. Sanders’ talks motivate and empower audiences to achieve more by honing effective leadership skills, building strong business relationships, and putting the value back in their people.The bestselling author of Love Is the Killer App has a new book Dealstorming – The Secret Weapon That Can Solve Your Toughest Sales Challenges coming out in February:
“Dealstorming” is Tim Sanders’s term for a scalable, repeatable process that any B2B sales team can use to find a breakthrough on a high-potential sales opportunity that has gotten bogged down at some point. By including every person in the organization who has a stake in the sale in the process, questioning existing assumptions, and channeling the collective experience of the group, sales teams will uncover creative solutions to move along the deal that would be impossible otherwise. In Sanders’s experience as a sales executive and consultant, utilizing this process has led to a stunning 70 percent close ratio.
Take, for example, the way Alyssa Wichman of CareerBuilder used dealstorming to break a deadlock with staffing firm Allegis. When she found out that Allegis was sponsoring a golf tournament to raise money for their favorite nonprofit, she and her team sat down to come up with ways to meet the Allegis executives there, going so far as to take over manning a beer cart on the course to speak with the execs on the ninth hole. They were impressed she’d gone to such lengths to have a few minutes with them, so they agreed to a meeting the following week.
She brought cupcakes to the meeting, purposely not bringing enough for all the attendees. As the lucky ones nibbled away, she explained that the cupcakes represented human-resource allocation at one of their clients, and in this case, there was a shortfall. This situation is what CareerBuilder could help them avoid in the future. The tactic had a visceral impact on everyone–especially those who didn’t get a cupcake. Within just a few months, the biggest deal in Career Builder’s history was struck.
Though she’s certainly smart and inspired, Alyssa didn’t plan and execute her Allegis approach by herself. In reality, the CareerBuilder sales and operations teams had come together using collaboration and innovation to move the deal along.
Sanders explains how dealstorming works to break a deal deadlock, how to organize a successful dealstorming session, and how to use your results to move a client to the next stage of the sales cycle. Sanders combines narratives and examples from real dealstorming events with prescriptive advice for sales managers and account executives.