Here’s the book if you’re interested.

I’m going to write down the key points here - first for my benefit.

Summary of the Book

Negatives:

• The author’s nauseating self-promotion.
• Poor writing. Unecessary verbiage. I prefer reading crisp, clear books.

Positives:

• Summary provided at the end of each section.

Understanding Big Organisations

They are typically huge, with many vested interests. e.g. how to sell to GE, or IBM, or AWS? Focus on a specific problem, and on a specific niche

Some extremely important points:

• There must be an immediate and urgent need for help.

• Take the crumbs: Take on whatever the market dictates. Do a good job there, and expand that need.

    e.g. Material Take Offs - nobody wants to do them. Why? It's hard work, at low margin. But look at all the solutions that are solved by them: (i) an invoicing mechanism, (ii) a delivery mechanism for the results, (iii) 
  

• Find out the problems: Both for your business (especially) and a competitor’s business. Fill those short-falls.

Why do existing businesses come to you?

• Did you start by tackling a specific type of problem or opportunity? If so, what was it?
• Did you have some unique product, capability, or service that interested decision makers? If so, why was it of interest? What value did it provide?

• Did they choose your services because they didn’t think that their existing supplier could address some aspect of their business? If so, what were the gaps you filled?

  ### Case Studies

  What do our competitors do?

  • They are overseas.
  • Many use pirate licenses.
  • They have low customer acquisition costs.
  • …. and they do a reasonable job.

  e.g. we offered a productised service - a material take off service. Why did we win this?

  1. We could do volume. e.g. handle 10 take off per week.
  2. We could offer additional documentation services that others could not easily offer.
  3. We had the ability to improve our offering (via software services that other could not easily offer).
  4. We could do cost that others could not easily offer.

Understanding Corporate Decision Makers

Avoid the following rookie mistakes:

a. Don’t waste your prospect’s time.

If you go and see them, firstly: there has to be a purpose and a benefit.

b. Don’t try to be their friend. Get to your point, quickly. c. Do your research first. On their business.

Don’t expect them to lay it all out for you. Especially if there is material already available.

d. Don’t use self-serving verbiage.

A rookie mistake.

e. Quantify the benefits for them.

i.e. giving them an app and saying this is useful - while good - does not ipso facto intuit the benefits to them. Try to quantify it with a number: either of gain, or loss.

A new Sales Model

Basically Konrath is saying: if you want to “sell” then you must have an approach where:

(a) you have a unique angle / product / service, or (b) information that will help your client.

In other words:

Top sellers help their customers improve their businesses.

If you are “selling” an existing product, with little advantage over the incumbent products - then you will face resistance:

(i) risk to the buyer (of change) (ii) time and cost issues, (iii) internal resistance to change.

Is your value proposition strong enough?

Speak clearly to your corporate decision makers. What they care about:

• their profitability:
• i.e. their costs
• or revenue
• or their time

…. and be specific - because specificity sells!

e.g. I can save you +5 hours a day….is that worth it for you?