SELL THE WAY YOU BUY

While a Vice President at Salesforce, David Priemer had an epiphany. The very sales tactics the organization was using with customers did not work on him. Yes, sales numbers showed results, but they had been obtained through brute force, rather than elegance and efficiency. Priemer also discovered that his sales colleagues were spending far more time on leads that did not convert to sales than on those that did. His company—and his entire profession—was acting with more than enough gusto, but without enough awareness and empathy. They were not selling the way they buy.

SELL THE WAY YOU BUY is about much more than putting yourself in the customer's shoes. It's about asking the right questions and listening to the answers. The truth is, customers don't always know what they want or need, or they are focused on solutions to the wrong problem. What's more, they suffer from unconscious status quo bias, recency bias, and confirmation bias. Meanwhile, most products and solution providers are drowning in the endless consumer choices of the “Sea of Sameness.”

Through scientifically supported methods, SELL THE WAY YOU BUY will show you how to ask questions, how to listen, how to tell a compelling brand story, and how to talk to customers (meaning, how to talk to people). You'll learn to understand the customer, identify their needs, and move them toward the right solution—all the while avoiding all the reasons why the average person doesn't like salespeople. In short, to sell the way you buy.

David Priemer is widely recognized as a thought leader in the area of sales and sales leadership and has been published in the Harvard Business Review, MIT Sloan Management Review as well as Forbes, Entrepreneur, and Inc. magazines. He has led top-performing sales teams at high-growth startups and is a former VP of Salesforce, where he created the Sales Leadership Academy program. Often referred to as the “Sales Professor,” David helps organizations drive revenue growth, people development, and winning cultures by infusing the core principles of science, empathy, and execution into their sales operations. He is also an Adjunct Professor at the Smith School of Business at Queen's University. He blogs at cerebralselling.com.