Timothy Riesterer's Blog, page 27

February 26, 2015

Corporate Visions Selected as a Top 20 Sales Training Company by TrainingIndustry.com for Second Consecutive Year

Annual List Honors the Best Providers of Training Services and Technologies


LARKSPUR, Calif. – February 26, 2015 – Corporate Visions, Inc., the leading marketing and sales messaging, tools and training company, today announced it has been named to TrainingIndustry.com’s Top 20 Sales Training Companies List for the second consecutive year. This prestigious annual list recognizes the best providers of services and technologies in the training marketplace.


The 2015 honorees represent the top sales training companies that provide outstanding service, and boast a proven track record for delivering superior sales training and improving the impact of the sales organization. Nominees for this year’s list were evaluated based on the following criteria: industry recognition and impact on the sales training industry; innovation in the sales training market; company size and growth potential; breadth of service offering; strength of clients served; and geographic reach.


“This year’s list demonstrates the continued strength and quality of offerings of the sales training segment,” said Doug Harward, chief executive officer, Training Industry, Inc. “These organizations are leading the way in providing their clients with innovative products and services in their desired modalities.”


Throughout 2014, Corporate Visions made a number of strategic moves to strengthen its sales training portfolio, including:



Acquiring Launch International, Inc. – In June 2014, Corporate Visions acquired Launch International, Inc., to further enhance its customer conversation system and expand its market leadership position as the largest provider of consulting, content and training products and services for helping companies improve their selling conversations.
Launching Power Playbook – To help salespeople prepare for critical, early-stage conversations in the buying cycle, Corporate Visions introduced Power Playbook, an interactive sales enablement asset that gives salespeople the conversation content and skills needed to create more opportunities.
Introducing Power Launch™ – To ensure effective field sales adoption of new messaging and tools, the company unveiled Power Launch, a new digital postcard that pushes mobile-ready content to sales reps’ inboxes, and drives higher engagement and adoption with personalized and compelling videos that have been proven to be more engaging than traditional email and portal-based launch communications.
Enhancing its Executive Conversations Training Program – The company’s Executive Conversations skills development program, which is designed to help salespeople justify business impact with executive buyers, was updated to include new visual learning concepts, extended learning plans and third-party ROI reporting.
Augmenting its Executive Profitable Growth™ Skills Course – An update to Corporate Visions’ two-day, advanced negotiation skills course, Executive Profitable Growth enables salespeople to drive larger, more profitable opportunities by training them to address negotiations throughout the buying cycle.
Unveiling Conversation University – Corporate Visions launched Conversation University, an on-demand, virtual campus for sales and marketing professionals, to equip members with proven approaches to creating and winning more business.

“Corporate Visions is dedicated to providing salespeople and marketers with the messaging, tools and training required to have more effective conversations to move customers off their status quo, and ultimately close more profitable deals,” said Tim Riesterer, chief strategy and marketing officer for Corporate Visions. “We are constantly looking for new ways to bolster our sales and marketing training portfolio through new offerings, solutions updates and strategic acquisitions, and to be recognized as a top sales training company by TrainingIndustry.com for the second consecutive year is validation of our efforts to date.”


About Training Industry, Inc.

TrainingIndustry.com spotlights the latest news, articles, case studies and best practices within the training industry. Our focus is to help dedicated businesses and training professionals get the information, insight and tools needed to more effectively manage the business of learning.


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Published on February 26, 2015 07:36

Speak to a Buyer’s Situation—Not Their Title

What if we told you that persona-based approach to messaging is potentially hurting your cause rather than helping it?


A recent Harvard Business Review article* cites a set of surveys which found that, on average, 5.4 people now have to formally sign off on each B2B purchasing decision. If you’re following a persona-based messaging approach, that means you have a good amount of message tailoring to do, right?


The problem with this hyper-segmented approach is that the decision makers end up receiving starkly different pieces of information. As a result, you risk highlighting the divisions that exist between them instead of the challenges they share. That can effectively pit stakeholders against each other and create the kind of stand-still that leads to a “no decision.”


The authors of the article write:


…personalization has a dark side. When individuals in a buying group receive different messages, each one stressing that an offering meets his or her narrow needs, it can highlight the diverging goals and priorities in the group, driving a wedge between members and hindering consensus.


The implication for suppliers is clear: The best way to build customer consensus isn’t to do a better job of connecting individual customer stakeholders to the supplier but to more effectively connect customer stakeholders to one another.


To truly persuade someone to make a change, your messaging should aim to identify and address the higher order business challenges found in the situation they share, not in each individuals’ narrow priorities and needs. These issues transcend the needs of individuals, helping you rally decision makers to consider the strategic outcomes at risk and the solution requirements to resolve them.


That’s how you can help drive consensus instead of division in a consensus-driven sale.


The Fundamental Attribution Error


Imagine that you’re driving on the freeway when another driver abruptly cuts you off. What’s your first reaction to this erratic driver? In all likelihood, you’re going to immediately think he or she is a jerk.


The reason? We tend to attribute most behaviors, good or bad, to someone’s personality or disposition, even though they’re much more likely to be dictated by situational factors. The erratic driver could be late for an important meeting at work. He or she might be rushing to the hospital due to a medical emergency. The list of possible situations goes on. The point is, these situations are more likely to be the cause of the white-knuckle driving than some deep-seated character flaw.


This calculation is known as the Fundamental Attribution Error, a behavioral science term which posits that humans tend to overestimate the effect of a person’s disposition on their behaviors and underestimate the influence of their specific situation.


With persona-based messaging, you’re essentially committing the Fundamental Attribution Error by assuming that the disposition of your individual influencers is a more important factor than the current situation they all share and are trying to improve. That approach won’t help you tell a compelling story that shows how your prospect’s status quo is unsafe. To do that, you have to address the higher order problems that clearly demonstrate how your prospect’s status quo situation—not a narrow set of responsibilities and related needs—is preventing them from achieving their desired business outcomes.


* http://cvi.to/1vGRnIi


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Published on February 26, 2015 05:30

February 13, 2015

When Cutting Corners…Won’t Cut it

Closing Larger, More Profitable Deals


“Taking the easy way out.” “Cutting corners.” “Avoiding “the dirty work.” Carrying out a “half-baked plan.” Everyday English is full of idioms that have to do with performing duties in a less than thorough way. Unsurprisingly, nearly all of them have a negative connotation—and for good reason.


As most of us know, doing a slapdash job in any enterprise ultimately won’t do us (or anyone else in our orbit) any favors. That principle translates to just about any context in life, whether you’re talking about a home improvement project, a friendship or relationship, or—in our professional sphere—if you’re simply looking to maximize the size and profitability of your deals.


In the latter context, it’s no secret that many salespeople struggle with the often challenging, tension-filled negotiations they need to work through to close deals that capture and protect value throughout the sales cycle. Like so many tasks in life, taking the easy way out during these difficult negotiations will likely come back to haunt you. In the best of scenarios, you’ll end up closing the types of margin-eroded deals that won’t help you reach or exceed your quota.


Here are some tips to avoid cutting corners—and losing your value—in your most difficult sales negotiations.



Don’t flee the tension—embrace it! Our intuition tells us that it’s emotionally agreeable to try and minimize the inevitable friction that arises between two people who want different outcomes. In the sales world, that natural instinct manifests itself through discounting or giving things away for free for the sake of moving the deal forward. When tension and pricing pressure mount, the counterintuitive response of embracing the tension is the more productive one. Research has shown that maintaining a positive attitude toward conversational tension leads to larger deal sizes and more constructive negotiations.
Negotiate throughout the buying cycle, not just at the end. Many salespeople don’t realize that long before the deal reaches the purchasing stage, they are in fact negotiating. That means that every time a salesperson gives something away—a demo, a trial run, a meeting, early price concessions—they’re essentially bypassing an opportunity to secure more value. This can yield bad results. By not embracing opportunities to negotiate value throughout the buying cycle, you risk falling into the trap of negotiating only about price at the end of it —and having to resort to last ditch, Hail Mary efforts to retrieve or protect your pricing.
Execute pivotal agreements. Rather than giving away value or resorting to discounting, focus on identifying and executing “pivotal agreements”—basically, milestones you reach throughout the buying that you can then use as leverage for exchanging value instead of giving it away. You can also use these agreements to steer your conversations toward a series of provocative questions, designed to uncover your prospect’s “unconsidered needs.” That helps you break parity with competitors on more than just price, differentiate in a more resonant way, and enlarge the size of your deals.

Your sales negotiations don’t have to be shoddy. By making a concerted effort to capture and maintain value throughout the entire sales cycle—not just at the end—you’ll help close more profitable deals by avoiding the “value leaks” that otherwise erode your margins.


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Published on February 13, 2015 06:18

January 28, 2015

2015: The Year of the Book?

Aren’t you sick of all the internet lists.” Everywhere online you see a promotion for …the top five this, the ten best that, the three big those…and so on. It’s like everyone read somewhere that a numbered list is the best way to get click-throughs… and maybe it is?


It doesn’t matter. Once an Internet novelty—fresh and breezy, easy to digest, the web’s answer to the beach read—this skim-friendly format appeals to the worst in our nature – microwaveable insights and intelligence.


This can’t be doing any good for our critical thinking skills. So, it was exciting to see a potential countermovement spring up, led by none other than Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s multibillionaire founder and CEO. He made it his New Year’s Resolution to start reading more offline. Zuckerberg is starting his own book club, and according to reports, it has a pretty demanding book every-two-weeks pace. http://cvi.to/1s1wdId


So it may seem a tad ironic that someone associated with Facebook, long a symbol of Digital Age distraction, is behind the vision to make 2015 the year of the book. But suffice it to say, we at Corporate Visions are fully on board with Zuckerberg’s plan. In fact, it has us feeling a bit bookish ourselves.


That’s why we’re hoping a forthcoming publication, The Three Value Conversations, (McGraw-Hill), now available for pre-order, will make its way onto your reading list in 2015. [   http://cvi.to/1C7SG8Z   ]


Penned by four Corporate Visions thought leaders, the book highlights the three essential value conversations that sales professionals must know to control every step of the buying cycle:



The Differentiation Conversation (Creating value)
The Justification Conversation (Elevating value to the right decision maker)
The Maximization Conversation (Capturing value and maximizing the size of your opportunities)

The Three Value Conversations comes on the heels of the success of Conversations That Win the Complex Sale, also a product of Corporate Visions thought leaders teaming up with publishing giant McGraw-Hill.


Reserve your copy of The Three Value Conversations today: http://cvi.to/1G9lK3X


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Published on January 28, 2015 15:44

January 27, 2015

Tim Riesterer of Corporate Visions to Bring Sales and Marketing Expertise to Prominent Global Conferences in Early 2015

‘Overcoming the Conversion Gap’ and ‘Breaking Through the Status Quo’ Will Be Key Topics of Discussion


LARKSPUR, Calif., Jan. 27, 2015 – Corporate Visions, Inc., the leading marketing and sales messaging, tools and training company, today announced that Chief Strategy and Marketing Officer Tim Riesterer will bring his proven industry expertise to three prominent sales and marketing events around the globe in early 2015. These events include the B2B Content2Conversion Conference, Forrester’s Forum for Sales Enablement Professionals, and the SAMA Pan-European Conference, and will also feature new research from Riesterer’s latest book, scheduled to be released in June 2015.


During each of these conferences, Riesterer will discuss the importance of aligning demand generation and sales enablement teams to overcome the conversion gap and will provide three counter-intuitive approaches that equip salespeople with the right messages, tools and training to have more effective customer conversations. He will also offer tips on how marketers and salespeople can leverage decision-making science to break through the status quo and close more deals.


Details on Riesterer’s speaking engagements are as follows:


B2B Content2Conversion Conference


Location: Hyatt Regency Scottsdale Resort & Spa at Gainey Ranch, Scottsdale, Arizona

Date/Time: Wednesday, Feb. 18, 2015, at 9:15 a.m. MT

Session Title: “Overcoming The Conversion Gap: Aligning Demand Generation And Sales Enablement Teams To Close More Deals”

Registration Link: http://cvi.to/1xLHLAB

Forrester’s Forum For Sales Enablement Professionals


Location: Fairmont Scottsdale, Scottsdale, Arizona

Date/Time: Monday, March 2, 2015, at 11:50 a.m. MT

Session Title: “Guest Executive Forum: Crossing The Conversion Gap”

Registration Link: http://cvi.to/1tRj6eb

SAMA Pan-European Conference


Location: Marriott Berlin, Berlin, Germany

Date/Time: Tuesday, March 17, 2015, at 2:30 p.m. CET and Wednesday, March 18, 2015, at 2:30 p.m. CET

Session Title: “Breaking Through the Status Quo” (co-presentation with Ashiq Hassanali of Wipro Technologies)

Registration Link: http://cvi.to/1zXqW2i

“Companies that can develop and tell the most compelling stories on both the marketing and sales side will be the most successful at creating opportunities, closing them and meeting their revenue goals,” said Riesterer. “These sessions will show attendees how to create a buying vision for customers and prospects that identifies the unconsidered needs that are putting their business goals at risk. It will also explain how to motivate those customers and prospects to move out of their status quo by providing a product or solution that will the help them fix those challenges.”


Riesterer’s prolific marketing and sales insights will also be profiled in his third book, “The Three Value Conversations,” slated for publication by McGraw-Hill in June 2015. Following the success of his most recent bestselling work, “Conversations That Win The Complex Sale,” Riesterer’s soon-to-be-published book will take readers on yet another entertaining journey with the help of three other industry-leading authors. Together, they will outline the three essential conversations that sales professionals must master in order to control every step of the buying cycle and win the sale. Click here for more information about “The Three Value Conversations”.


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Published on January 27, 2015 11:02

January 22, 2015

Corporate Visions Recognized Among the Nation’s Best and Brightest Companies to Work For

Marketing and Sales Messaging, Tools and Training Company Honored by the National Association for Business for its Superior HR Practices and Employee Enrichment Programs


LARKSPUR, Calif. – January 9, 2015 – Corporate Visions, Inc., the leading marketing and sales messaging, tools and training company, today announced that it has been named one of the nation’s Best and Brightest Companies to Work For® by the National Association for Business Resources (NABR). With this honor, the company joins 211 other distinguished organizations across the country being recognized for their commitment to excellence in both human resource efforts and employee enrichment initiatives.


As one of the nation’s premier awards programs, the Best and Brightest Companies to Work For competition requires all nominees to undergo a comprehensive two-step process that ranks each organization in categories ranging from communication, recognition and diversity to work-life balance, employee education and retention. Employers must first complete a detailed questionnaire describing internal office operations, followed by a separate employee engagement survey that polls all staff on company policies, culture and practices.


“Profitability and stability are essential for businesses in today’s economic climate. Companies that recognize that their employees are the key to their success achieve staying power,” said Jennifer Kluge, NABR president. “Our 2014 winners create their human resource standards to ensure employee satisfaction and they set standards for every business to aspire toward. We are proud to honor them.”


This news comes on the heels of Corporate Visions’ recognition in November 2014 as one of the Best and Brightest companies in the San Francisco Bay Area. The organization, along with the other national winners, will be featured in a future issue of Corp! Magazine and will be honored at various regional events across the country.


“Since our inception, we’ve prided ourselves on the superior Net Promoter Scores we’ve received from both our employees and customers, as it validates our company’s ongoing focus on both our people and our community. Receiving this national award from an organization as prestigious as the NABR is further proof that we are on the right track, which is extremely gratifying,” said Corporate Visions CEO Joe Terry. “The award’s rigorous, independent process for selection puts us among the most elite organizations in the country, and the additional insight we’ve gained from participating in the program will help us continue to better serve our employees, customers and communities worldwide.”


About the Best and Brightest Programs

The Best and Brightest Companies to Work For® is a program of the National Association for Business Resources that provides the business community with the opportunity to gain recognition, showcase their best practices and demonstrate why they are an ideal place for employees to work. This national program celebrates those companies that are making better business, creating richer lives and building a stronger community as a whole. There are numerous regional celebrations throughout the country.


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Published on January 22, 2015 13:20

New Corporate Visions Survey Reveals Nearly Three-quarters of Companies Lack a Formalized Marketing Messaging Process for All Employees to Follow

The Startling Findings Result in a Lack of Consistency and Customer Focus

Across Marketing Campaigns and Sales Content


LARKSPUR, Calif. – January 21, 2015 – Corporate Visions, Inc., the leading marketing and sales messaging, tools and training company, today announced the results of a survey that polled more than 500 business-to-business (B2B) marketing and sales professionals worldwide regarding the alignment of their marketing campaigns and sales content development processes. Surprisingly, the data revealed that nearly three-quarters of companies do not have a formalized marketing messaging process for all employees to follow. This results in a lack of consistency and an abundance of product- or company-focused content, which ultimately impedes an organization’s ability to connect with customers.


In the survey, respondents were asked how they would describe their company’s marketing campaigns and sales content development process. The results highlighted that more than 70 percent of respondents do not follow a clearly defined message development process within their organization, while a shocking 10 percent reported they aren’t sure what their company does at all:



Everyone follows a well-established message development process – 28.7 percent
We have an established message development process, but it is not applied consistently – 35.1 percent
We have a message development process, but it is rarely followed because people are unaware or feel unaccountable – 13.2 percent
We don’t have a formal process for message development; we hire people and expect them to do the right thing, but it’s hit-or-miss in terms of execution – 12.2 percent
Honestly, I don’t really know what we do – 10.8 percent

This lack of consistency and customer focus across marketing campaigns and sales content has also resulted in one-third of companies still focusing their campaigns on their own story, rather than that of their customers:



Customer-centric messaging; we focus on our prospects’ story – 27.2 percent
Company-centric messaging; we focus on our own company’s story – 32.1 percent
Our campaigns contain an even mix of both – 40.7 percent

“The failure to follow a well-established message development process is causing many organizations to miss the mark when it comes to designing content and campaigns that resonate strongest with their customers and prospects. Company-centric messaging often leads salespeople into a competitive discussion focused on distinguishing their organization from other vendors. As a result, prospects and customers tend to stick with their current status quo rather than making a decision to change,” said Tim Riesterer, chief strategy and marketing officer for Corporate Visions. “Customer-centric messaging, on the other hand, focuses on identifying customers’ and prospects’ unconsidered needs along with gaps in their current approach. This method is most effective, as it creates urgency for change that results in more closed deals.”


When asked how companies ensure consistency across their marketing campaigns and sales content, the results indicated only 34 percent provide ongoing coaching to help employees stay on track. Perhaps even more alarming is the fact that 20 percent of respondents feel there is no process for ensuring consistency at all:



58.3 percent depend on templates and tools to reinforce training and guarantee consistent messaging company-wide
50.8 percent have provided training to their content creators and expect them to apply the messaging approach consistently
44.3 percent depend on a brand guide to set parameters for consistency
34.3 percent rely on coaches to provide oversight, quality control and feedback for content creators to ensure messaging stays on track
18.7 percent believe it’s a free-for-all and everyone just does whatever they think is best

“These unsettling survey results demonstrate the urgent need for companies to develop a marketing methodology rooted in customer-centric messaging and underscored by a unified approach to message and content development,” continued Riesterer. “Implementing a consistent, structured methodology that focuses on identifying customers’ unconsidered needs and creating a buying vision that defeats their status quo bias will help marketers prepare their salespeople for the conversations that matter most. It will also give them the tools and confidence they need to convert qualified leads into real opportunities, which, at the end of the day, is the most important metric for demand generation performance.”


For more information and analysis of the survey findings, please view this infographic: http://win.corporatevisions.com/Infographic-Leaving-Story-Chance.html


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Published on January 22, 2015 10:01

January 21, 2015

The Missing 33 Percent

In a recent TED talk, Susan Colantuono, CEO of Leading Women, proposed a striking theory that, according to her, partially explains the “gender gap” in high-level management positions in the corporate world.


Colantuono attributes the gender disparity at the top to the existence of two qualitatively different mentorship tracks, one for men, another for women. Colantuono cites a quote from an executive of a global company that clearly captures this idea:


“I had two protégés—a man and a woman. I helped the woman build confidence and the man learn the business…I didn’t realize I was treating them any differently!”


While Colantuono says qualities like assertiveness and confidence are pivotal in helping people climb into the ranks of middle management, these are not the traits most likely to help them break through into upper management.


For employees to reach the top of ladder, Colantuono says, they need advisors and mentors to help them develop business and financial acumen—an area she believes many women do not receive enough tutelage in, due in part to some of the gender biases about mentorship reflected in the quote above. Colantuono believes this “missing 33 percent of advice” for women is helping to perpetuate the gender gap at the top.


[ Colantuono’s TED Talk: http://cvi.to/1x1cTLV ]


What does this have to do with your customer conversations?


You could extrapolate from Colantuono’s experience and presentation that if business and financial acumen is the prerequisite for executives, this will be the language your salespeople need to know to speak with them. And, sell to them more effectively.


When it comes to engaging with executive buyers, and articulating the value of your solutions, you have to be able to connect with the emerging industry issues, their strategic initiatives and the business impact your solution will provide in dealing with these considerations.


Research confirms this. According to analyst firm, SiriusDecisions, executive decision makers desire and value sales conversations about business trends, issues and insights up to four times more than they value relationships and product expertise. But unfortunately, only a small fraction of salespeople are proficient in their ability to have these conversations, according to surveyed executives.


To gain this proficiency, salespeople need to master five key competencies for selling a solution’s business value



Buyer’s Perspective – understand the emerging trends and industry issues and how they are impacting your prospect and customers’ business
Customer Insight – know where and how to find the data and documentation concerning your prospect and customers’ key initiatives
Financial Acumen – be able to accurately and convincingly connect your solution to the way money flows throughout their businesses
Return on Investment – know how to tell a great story around business change and what returns – hard, soft, and strategic — you can generate
Executive engagement – develop the confidence to connect with, engage and deliver a memorable and remarkable executive conversation

An effective executive conversations training program will emphasize applying these competencies to actual accounts during the program, as opposed to using more hypothetical, case study-based training models.


Ideally, your salespeople will get a chance to practice having conversations with actual executives who have experience making similar purchase decisions in a safe, risk-free environment.


Additionally, that program should measure adoption, behavior change and overall business impact to ensure the training program is achieving the outcomes your company needs.


As Colantuono says, the key executive skills required for promotion include helping your organization “achieve and sustain extraordinary outcomes” and driving decisions that help your companies reach their “strategic financial goals.”


Your salespeople need to be able to come alongside and show executives how you can help them do just that.








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Published on January 21, 2015 06:34

Marketing Doesn’t Close Deals

Making sure your leads cross the conversion gap


In 1897, a London newspaperman accidentally confused Mark Twain for the author’s seriously ill cousin, giving rise to false speculation that Twain had one foot in the grave.


In fact, he would live another 13 years.


“The rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated,” Twain famously said, after getting wind of the misinformation.


In B2B demand generation you can apply Twain’s witticism to the poor salesperson—whose demise has also been “greatly exaggerated.”


Although buyers purport to make much of their decision before seeing a sales rep, it doesn’t mean they’re necessarily ready to make a change when they actually engage.


It’s a good reminder for demand generation programs leaders that salespeople still matter. The onus is still on your field representation to create a qualified opportunity and convert that interest into real business.


Faulty assumptions lead to wrong content


If you’ve assumed buyers are mostly done with their journey by the time they meet with a rep, you might be giving your salespeople the wrong content for the wrong conversation.


In this webcast, learn how you can create a better hand-off between your self-service demand gen conversations and your follow-up sales-guided opportunity creation conversations.


If you don’t do this, you risk losing leads to the conversion gap, the abyss between demand generation and sales enablement and training where conversion rates suffer and good leads go to die.


The webcast also features a case study with ADP, a provider of cloud-based human resources solutions, describing how they overcame the conversion gap.


Tim Riesterer, our chief strategy and marketing officer, Patrick Flanigan, VP sales enablement, ADP, discuss how to tell a consistent and visually compelling story that turns high-quality leads into real business opportunities.


If you want to learn more about how ADP developed a culture of great coordination across their marketing, sales enablement and sales training departments, check out this video from the 2014 Marketing & Sales Alignment Conference in Chicago.








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Published on January 21, 2015 06:33

Create, Elevate, Capture…Win.

3D-book


Pre-order the book now


Following the success of Conversations That Win The Complex Sale, thought leaders from Corporate Visions are again teaming up with publishing giant McGraw-Hill for another status-quo busting book. This time, a team of four authors with years of sales and consulting experience zero in on three sales conversations that help salespeople Create, Elevate and Capture Value.


In The Three Value Conversations, slated for publication in April 2015, the authors outline three essential conversations that sales professionals must know to control every step of the buying cycle.


That’s because salespeople—and what they say with their lips moving in front of prospects—still matter. When leading analyst firm SiriusDecisions asked hundreds of B2B sales managers what the #1 reason was for their reps failing to hit quota, the most common answer was the inability to articulate value.


So how exactly do you get your salespeople to excel at this crucial skill that matters at every stage of the sales conversation? What tools and methods do they need to create the buying vision, speak to the issues that matter to key decision makers, and win profitable deals? How do you develop a sales team that’s great at getting prospects to say ‘yes’ to leaving their status quo and ‘yes’ to choosing you?


Based on extensive research, the program is founded on three essential customer conversations that salespeople must excel in to win the sale:



The Differentiation Conversation (Creating value)
The Justification Conversation (Elevating value to the right decision maker)
The Maximization Conversation (Capturing value and maximizing the size of your opportunities)

The Three Value Conversations will help make you build a sales team that’s adept across the board at the conversations that create the buying vision and win the sale.


Pre-order the book now!


About the authors:


Tim Riesterer is Chief Strategy and Marketing Officer at Corporate Visions, responsible for leading the strategic direction of the company in thought leadership, positioning and product development.


Erik Peterson is Executive Vice President of Consulting at Corporate Visions. He is responsible for leading the company’s consulting team globally, including staff and certified contractors.


Conrad Smith, Vice President of Consulting of Services at Corporate Visions, is an operations executive with over 30 years of buying experience. He has delivered the Corporate Visions’ Justification Skills to more than 12,000 sales professionals.


Cheryl Geoffrion, Vice President of Consulting Services, Corporate Visions, is an expert negotiator, facilitator and coach in leadership development, conflict resolution and interpersonal communication skills. She has devoted more than 24 years to elevating the business results of her client organizations and the individuals within them.


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Published on January 21, 2015 06:32

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