One ofLibrary Journal's Best Business Books of 2008
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 will:
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.
I am a career sales professional who has been through a number of selling techniques, methodologies and training systems and can say without hesitation that Jeff's Selling to Zebras and associated Waterfall is absolutely top notch.
Effectively, Selling To Zebras, simplifies the process of identifying and quantifying your company's value to a prospect into an easily articulated and measurable value proposition. This not only elevates your dialogue to business terms (versus features/benefits of the solution), it also forces you to be brutally honest with yourself on whether or not you are chasing business you can really win. The tools are second-to-none.
This book is a must if you have a complex sales cycle...!
Review Date: June 1, 2009
Reviewer: Gary Dale Cearley, Bangkok, Thailand
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.
This is powerful "stuff "in todays challenging economy
Review Date: July 9, 2009
Reviewer: Gary F. Billington, Milwaukee,Wisconsin
I have been involved in sales for over 25 years and I have to say this book is one of the best books I've read in years. The simple notion of profiling your best target customers and then getting them to agree to the value you bring to them makes all the sense in the world.It creates focus and a better return on sales and marketing resource investments.
We are just initiating internal sessions to identify our Zebra.
These sessions are just the beginning of an awesome tool that has the potential to vault us past our competition in terms of pursuit win rate and overall company profitability!"
Gets you to the close faster!
Review Date: September 17, 2008
Reviewer: Jay Reilly, Glen Rock, NJ USA
The Zebra model helps get you through the clutter of the sales process and keeps the deal focused on the business model and WHY it is important for a client to purchase---and not get caught in the weeds of features/benefits. Discussions are held at a higher level within a prospect and STAY at a higher level throughout the process. I have gained access to accounts that have been silent for years--and a much higher level!
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