Table of Contents
Advance praise for Lets Get Real or Lets Not Play
Lets Get Real or Lets Not Play is a must read for every person involved in a client service business. It is a go-to play book for every consultant in all industries.
Rick Wellner, CEBS Senior Vice President,
Aon Global, Aon Consulting
Lets Get Real or Lets Not Play correctly positions the art of selling as the art of relationship building. Its a simple, powerful, and practical way to grow a business. John Jantsch, author ofDuct Tape Marketing
If you want to positively differentiate yourself from your competition, read Lets Get Real or Lets Not Play. Most of all, this book will help you help your clients succeed, and your success will grow.
Jeff Renzi, Executive Vice President,
Global Sales & Marketing, Perot Systems
Lets Get Real or Lets Not Play should be required study for any sales professional, at any level, who is committed to increasing sales proficiency and tangible order production. Mahan and Randy have done a great job explaining the fundamentals of the sales process, based on recognizing client needs and building client trust and acceptance.
Armen A. Manoogian, CEO, United Business Technologies
Selling is a complex, competitive and challenging career. Mahan and Randy walk their readers through a way of thinking about their customers, which results in better solutions, customer loyalty, larger deals, and less wasted time for sales professionals and their customers.
Jeffrey P. Kane, President, NEC Unified Solutions, Inc.
Lets Get Real or Lets Not Play isnt for the casual, opportunistic skill-skimmer who PLAYS at sales. Its for those who need to get REAL about selling. Mahan Khalsa and Randy Illig provide the philosophy, the what-to-do and how-to-do-it, to clearly guide us through some of our toughest challenges and find breakthrough success in sales.
Dave Stein, CEO and Founder, ES Research Group, Inc.
Send Lets Get Real or Lets Not Play to every prospect you haveif they read it and understand the transforming message on selling and buying you have a great prospect. If they dontsave yourself a lot of time and move on!
Taylor Macdonald, Vice President,
Worldwide Channels and Sales Alliance, Deltek
Lets Get Real or Lets Not Play is vital for everyone involved in B-to-B sales. The concepts and tools shared in the book will raise your awareness to new levels of understanding, thinking, trust, and influence to create the best possible foundation for working together with clients to create extraordinary success for both parties. Greg Boyd, President, MIS Group
Lets Get Real or Lets Not Play provides a powerful process and set of tools for moving away from non-productive sales activities and toward getting real, to truly understand clients and create value. If you want to consistently win and retain clients, read this book.
Ralph Oliva, Executive Director, Institute for the Study of
Business Markets, SMEAL College of Business, Penn State
Lets Get Real or Lets Not Play is the how-to-do-it book that will generate sales.
Phil Clark, Senior Vice President,
Global Sales and Marketing, Invensys Process Systems
Lets Get Real or Lets Not Play gets to the heart of how to become world-class trusted advisors who genuinely help clients succeed. The approach and tools found in the book can make a big difference in any company that wants to be known for providing value to their clients and not just billing services.
Ann Lathrop, Executive-in-Charge of Marketing Development
and Sales, Crowe Chizek and Company LLC
Foreword
by STEPHEN R. COVEY
When it comes to sales and growing revenues, companies find themselves under enormous pressure to sell better and fasterand to reach greater levels of performance. On top of that, global competition is fierce and buyers are increasingly savvy, putting pressure on sellers to sell more for less. Faced with this environment, many companies, even the most successful ones, are finding that they cant keep selling as usualthat something has to change for them to preserve their margins, cut down their sales cycles and costs, and grow long-term business partnerships.
I believe the time is well overdue for companies and everyone involved in the sales processwhether its the CEO, sales manager, or salespersonto break through dysfunctional selling and buying habits and adopt an entirely new paradigm and framework that will take sales to a higher level.
In Lets Get Real or Lets Not Play, you will find a new paradigm for sales greatness along with the habits that will lead you to highly effective selling in a competitive global environment. I believe this books framework, principles, and how-to instructions provide the necessary process, methodology, tools, and skills for creating and sustaining superior sales performance. There is no other sales book like it, and I have great confidence in its enduring principles for long-term sales success.
I have profound admiration for Mahan Khalsa and how he has, with humility and courage over the years, challenged the old conventions of buying and selling. In their place, he has created a principle-centered, breakthrough way of helping sellers and buyers bridge their fears and mistrust of one another and break down the many dysfunctional practices that have arisen from this lack of trust. In developing the Helping Clients Succeed mind-set, tool set, and skill set central to Lets Get Real or Lets Not Play, Mahan has given the business world a powerful, commonsense (yet not common practice) way for sellers and buyers to communicate, think, and act with authenticity, trust, and integrity to reach win-win results.
Mahans approach says the role of salespeople is to passionately focus on clients to help them succeed. Simply put, the more that salespeople concentrate on their clients numbers, the more their own numbers go up. Furthermore, if this process takes place in an authentic and competent way, then salespeople are transformed into trusted business advisors in the clients eyes. This, in turn, builds a synergistic partnership for future business, taking sales to a higher levelin both high-integrity, trustworthy, win-win relationships, and increased business opportunities and revenue.
Now, in this book, Mahan and his colleague Randy Illig provide a complete sales process and framework to dramatically raise sales performance and productivity along the entire sales cycle. From filling the pipeline with the right new opportunities, to qualifying and advancing opportunities, and to closing business, sales organizations will find success by following the process in this book. And best of all, they can increase sales today in a way that creates even more sales in the future.
I believe that in Lets Get Real or Lets Not Play, sales leaders, teams, or individual salespersons will find the answers to the daily challenges they face. It will help a leader by giving him or herand thus the organizationthe necessary paradigm, processes, and skills to focus not on quick fixes but on principles of enduring sales success. It is critical for the leadership ranks to rethink the way they approach sales and how they manage their teams. Mahan and Randy give sales leaders what they need to build and sustain a sales culture of greatnessone that unleashes the potential of salespeople toward proactively helping clients succeed and, thereby, toward finding their own success and fulfillment, not just in the short term but consistently, year after year.
