Innovative Team Selling: How to Leverage Your Resources and Make Team Selling Work

Praise for InnovatIve Team Selling "I have worked with Eric Baron for more than 25 years—as a colleague, as a client of his, and as a co-consultant. The insights in this book are extremely valuable—in particular in the current world where team selling of complex customer propositions becomes both more central and more challenging at the same time. Bringing together an understanding of consultative selling, team dynamics, and leadership is a powerful combination that will help many teams to dramatically enhance their effectiveness. This book is a powerful tool for anyone who seeks to enhance the effectiveness of selling in today's environment." —David A. Nadler, PhD, Vice Chairman, Marsh & McLennan Companies; author of Champions of Change and Building Better Boards "Fully leveraging sales resources is critical for businesses to succeed in today's dynamic, global economy. Eric Baron explains, in Innovative Team Selling , how sales teams can collaborate to derive innovative solutions to help their clients solve their business problems." —R. Glenn Hubbard, Dean and Russell L. Carson Professor of Finance and Economics, Columbia Business School "Individuals can obviously do great work, but high-performing teams consistently produce better results. Innovative Team Selling explores how sales teams can collaborate to develop innovative solutions for their clients. We've successfully worked with Eric Baron and his team to deliver these concepts to our client-facing professionals. I'd encourage any organization that believes in team selling to consider what Eric has to say." —Karen Peetz, President, BNY Mellon "Eric Baron and his team have helped me dramatically change cultures at Bankers Trust, Bank One, Citigroup, and AmSouth. Training sales teams to collaborate, leverage each other's expertise, and tap into their creativity will impact any sales organization and help them perform beyond their expectations. It is in your interest to learn how to apply the concepts outlined in Innovative Team Selling. " —Geoffrey von Kuhn, Managing Director of a large New England Family Office and former head of U.S. Private Bank, Citicorp

Introduction xi 1 The Celebration, or Why We Need Sales Teams 1 2 Meetings, Bloody Meetings 13 3 Easy to Say; Hard to Do . . . Very Hard 25 4 So Who Does What and When? 39 5 Now, Let’s Get Creative 53 6 Adding Structure to the Process 65 7 Getting Our Acts Together 79 8 It’s All About Connecting 89 9 You Mean We Have to Sell, Too? 103 10 Positioning . . . A Key Ingredient in Understanding Needs 119 11 Just One More Question (or Ten), If You Will, Please 131 12 Are They Sales Teams or Needs Development Teams? 145 13 Is Anybody Listening? 159 14 The Big Day 173 15 Okay, So How Do We Do All That? 185 16 What Do You Mean You Don’t Like It? 201 17 Bringing Home the Bacon 217 18 One Last Time: It’s All About Differentiation 229 About the Author 241 About The Baron Group 243 Acknowledgments 245 Index 247

ERIC BARON is a highly acclaimed public speaker and founder of The Baron Group. He has been training business professionals in creative problem solving, innovation, consultative selling, team selling, and sales management for more than thirty-five years. His clients include Fortune 500 companies, the largest financial institutions, and many major insurance companies, consulting firms, and universities. He is an adjunct professor at Columbia University Business School where his popular Entrepreneurial Selling course was twice voted by marketing students as the most applicable course offered.