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Selling to Zebras: How to Close 90% of the Business You Pursue Faster, More Easily, and More Profitably
Even the most competitive companies only close about 15 percent of the deals in their sales pipelines. That means that salespeople spend time with prospects who, 85 percent of the time, aren?t going to buy. Wouldn?t those salespeople rather spend more time pursuing prospects they knew they could close? Or spend time with their prospects where it matters most?at an executive level? Readers who are ready for exceptional results for themselves and their companies need Selling to Zebras.
The Zebra way can help salespeople identify the perfect prospects for their companies?their Zebras?and develop a sales process that will help them close deals 90 percent of the time. The Zebra method of selling
?Increase close rates
?Shorten sales cycles
?Increase average deal size
?Reduce discounting and increase margins
?Make better use of scarce resources
?Make customers happy, creating a stable of great references
Jeff and Chad Koser don?t just offer theories and concepts. They give readers specific tools, models, and spreadsheets they can customize to make the Zebra way the best way for their companies to do business.
The Zebra way can help salespeople identify the perfect prospects for their companies?their Zebras?and develop a sales process that will help them close deals 90 percent of the time. The Zebra method of selling
?Increase close rates
?Shorten sales cycles
?Increase average deal size
?Reduce discounting and increase margins
?Make better use of scarce resources
?Make customers happy, creating a stable of great references
Jeff and Chad Koser don?t just offer theories and concepts. They give readers specific tools, models, and spreadsheets they can customize to make the Zebra way the best way for their companies to do business.
253 pages, Kindle Edition
First published October 1, 2008
29 people are currently reading
48 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
June 1, 2009
With their book Selling to Zebras: How to Close 90% of the Business You Pursue Faster, More Easily, and More Profitably Jeff and Chad Koser have found themselves a very interesting niche in sales consulting and training. Most of the sales technique books that I have seen in my lifetime on how to sell often have focused on relationship sales, closing or other “me” type sales. In all honesty, much of this might get you into the door but it won’t get you a contract when it comes to complex sales that involve corporate or bureaucratic structures. Selling to Zebras on the other hand wipes the slate cleans and starts from square one.
Actually, I found lots to agree with in this book. Especially the authors’ starting point: Properly identifying the target. The Kosers use the analogy of a hunt on the African savannah as their key to your success. Lions need to look for zebras to survive and the authors tell us pretty much that salesmen nowadays (the lions) tend not to have the faintest ideas of how to (pardon the pun) “spot” the zebra. They take the reader by the hand and show the way to become a zebra spotting expert. First, know thyself! Once you know exactly who your company is and what you can offer then you can know who your target zebras are. Then you put them in your pipeline and drop any prospects who are obviously not zebras – companies that are ill fitting to your products and services for a variety of reasons. In my own business I find that this is actually very important to the success of sales. It really narrows the amount of cold calling and chasing up dead ends, which kills everyone’s quotas.
Once you have identified your zebra there is a process of finding “Power” (the main decision maker), finding Power’s pressure points, doing studies of the prospects firms and partnering with them so that the sale is not only assured but will have better chances for the long-term surviving and flourishing of the client-customer relationship. Jeff and Chad Koser have made their book very interactive with their working website and have supplied the readers with easy to use and easy to understand tools that they can download. It was a great extra effort by the authors to give us these tools – they were worth the price of the book alone!
This has to be one of the best books I have read on how to sell to complex accounts. If you are a salesman who needs to have some tweaking of your methods and would like a fresh new look at your sales process or if you are a sales manager or other executive who thinks your sales staff could, and should, have better results, then I recommend that you grab a copy of Selling to Zebras. The only ones who might disagree would be your competition.
Actually, I found lots to agree with in this book. Especially the authors’ starting point: Properly identifying the target. The Kosers use the analogy of a hunt on the African savannah as their key to your success. Lions need to look for zebras to survive and the authors tell us pretty much that salesmen nowadays (the lions) tend not to have the faintest ideas of how to (pardon the pun) “spot” the zebra. They take the reader by the hand and show the way to become a zebra spotting expert. First, know thyself! Once you know exactly who your company is and what you can offer then you can know who your target zebras are. Then you put them in your pipeline and drop any prospects who are obviously not zebras – companies that are ill fitting to your products and services for a variety of reasons. In my own business I find that this is actually very important to the success of sales. It really narrows the amount of cold calling and chasing up dead ends, which kills everyone’s quotas.
Once you have identified your zebra there is a process of finding “Power” (the main decision maker), finding Power’s pressure points, doing studies of the prospects firms and partnering with them so that the sale is not only assured but will have better chances for the long-term surviving and flourishing of the client-customer relationship. Jeff and Chad Koser have made their book very interactive with their working website and have supplied the readers with easy to use and easy to understand tools that they can download. It was a great extra effort by the authors to give us these tools – they were worth the price of the book alone!
This has to be one of the best books I have read on how to sell to complex accounts. If you are a salesman who needs to have some tweaking of your methods and would like a fresh new look at your sales process or if you are a sales manager or other executive who thinks your sales staff could, and should, have better results, then I recommend that you grab a copy of Selling to Zebras. The only ones who might disagree would be your competition.
March 28, 2009
I wrote this book. BEST book EVER! Tee Hee
January 23, 2016
8/19/11 How to use less effort to sell more of everything.8/26 Profile your target customers and aim for them. Sounds simple, but this book provides methods to make it easier. Good sales people will dig this very much.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews