If you struggle with finding a balance between creating and selling your creations, this is the book for you.
This book will help you rethink how you approach your marketing and sales. It will reframe the stories you were telling yourself about how sales can be manipulative. Also, it will help you embrace the process by also disproving the typical belief that if “you build it they will come”.
Promotion is an important component in every business and this book will help you do it in the right way.
Flow: 5/5, you can read it in a day or two.
Actionability: 4/5, although it’s now a how-to book, it shares A LOT of actionable advice.
Mindset: 5/5, it will change the way you think about “sales”.
Some of My Highlights:
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“If we are not seen as more expert than our competition then we will be viewed as one in a sea of many…”
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“We are hired for our expertise and not our service.”
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“Among other things, those responsibilities include the need to generate a profit above and beyond the salaries we pay ourselves. It is from this profit that we build strength and create many forms of possibilities for ourselves and everyone involved in our enterprise.”
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“We will not develop, nor share with the client, creative of any kind before the challenge has been diagnosed and the strategy prescribed and agreed to.”
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“One of the benefits we bring to our clients is the advantage of an outside perspective, one that is not saddled with perceptions or bias or a hidden agenda.”
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“Presenting is a tool of swaying, while conversing is a tool of weighing.”
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“Our mission is to position ourselves as the expert practitioner in the mind of the prospective client.”
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“It is not our job to convince the client to hire us via presentation or any other means.”
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“…each and every interaction in the buying cycle is simply to see if there is a fit between the client’s need and our expertise suitable enough to take a next step.”
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“Our mission is to position; our objective is to determine a fit.”
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“…and we will never put our clients or ourselves in the position where we are prescribing solutions without first fully diagnosing the client’s challenge.”
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“Just because it is in the client’s nature to lear, does not mean he should be allowed to do so at all times.”
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“A good client will begin to relinquish control once he has the confidence that the expert practitioner knows more than he does, or has the tools to learn more.”
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“Making things and selling things are the two basic functions in business. For our business to succeed we must succeed at both.”
2nd Time, New Highlights:
“Not everyone has the heart or stomach for revolution.”
“Positioning is strategy articulated and then proven.”
“Winning while charging more is the ultimate benefit and key indicator of effective positioning.”
“Presentation, like pitch, is a word that we will leave behind as we seek conversation and collaboration in their place.”
“…convincing has no place in selling.”
“…how we sell shapes what we sell.”
“The lesson is that the most successful clients, whether owners or executives, have achieved their success in part because of their ability to take control – their ability to rise above and orchestrate others. This is their strength; and even though it is not always in their best interest, it is in their nature.”
“No matter how good we are there will be times when we are required to sell.”
“The interested future client looks for inspiration to move forward.”