‘Same-Side Selling’: Sales is not a game, it’s a puzzle.
We’ve got another Brilliant Book Bit for you this week.
Ian Altman is one of the best when it comes to teaching the discipline of sales and business development in a fresh and engaging way. He listens, he asks questions, he thinks, and then he speaks and acts. He tries to help first.
Figuring out how to be helpful is at the core of his new book “Same Side Selling.” As Altman points out, being helpful can be a pretty serious competitive advantage.
Altman and his co-author, Jack Quarles, have written “Same Side Selling” to highlight and teach the methods of getting buyers and sellers on the same side of the table.
Altman and Quarles highlight the pitfalls of old selling paradigms and the necessity of new approaches. One of my favorite sections discusses sales as a game vs. sales as a puzzle:
We would like to bury the metaphor of competing in a game and replace it with the metaphor of solving a puzzle. Let’s compare the two:
Selling is not a game.
– In a game, you are playing.
– In a game, there is a winner and a loser. You build a win-loss record.
– In a game, you sit across from your opponent, trying to win.
Selling is a puzzle.
+ With a puzzle, you are solving.
+ With a puzzle, you create something. Over time, you build a history of value.
+ With a puzzle, you sit on the same side, determining if pieces are a good fit.
Altman and Quarles keenly observe that a great sales process is all about finding the fit. So they’ve created a handy acronym to go along with the new same side model – FIT. It stands for Finding Impact Together and it’s their mantra throughout the book:
Finding means discovering. It often involves teaching, sharing, investigating, or diagnosing. It also means that the outcome is unknown: what you are seeking might be there or it might not.
Impact is not about your product or service. What you are selling matters, but what’s far more important is how your offering solves someone else’s problem.
Together is collaborative and cooperative. These are nice, friendly words, and they align with an integrity-based approach to sales. As we will discover, putting the client’s perspective first yields better results with less effort.
Brilliant Book Bit: Ditch the pitch. Have a conversation and a real discovery session with buyers, and compare notes. Then you’ll know if it’s a FIT.
Have a great week.
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