Why Change Selling Blog

Whiteboard Selling is now a part of Corporate Visions.

Effective Friday 31st August 2102, Corporate Visions now owns Whiteboard Selling. Whiteboard Selling co-founders, Corey Sommers and David Jenkins and their affiliate partners have developed over 500 whiteboards over the past 5 years for more than 50 companies. The whiteboard stories are used to help salespeople own their value creation message and to engage buyers in conversation, without using PowerPoint slides. 

YOUR VISUAL STORYTELLING JUST GOT BETTER

The strength in the Whiteboard Selling approach is in capturing a companies value proposition in a visual story. Whiteboard Selling creates a visual story and synchronized script that salespeople can quickly learn to tell in a 1/2 day workshop, so that they are more confident in front of customers and their conversations are more consistent across the company.  A well constructed Whiteboard story will enable salespeople to engage buyers around their issues to answer that question and that makes the conversation compelling for the buyer. 

Visual StoryTelling hits a Tipping Point in Sales

This acquisition signals a tipping point in the adoption of visual storytelling in sales and a recognition that the old ways of selling, led by questioning technique that looked for pain, coupled with PowerPoint presentations that laid out the solution to the buyers problem are over.

The integration of Corporate Visions messaging process and the Whiteboard Selling visual tools is an ideal fit in a new acquisition for Corporate Visions.

Take a look at  Selling Power's Top 10 list of sales training companies in 2011 and drill down on their approaches. About half are rooted in traditional question-based consultative selling which I contend is obsolete, of the other half, some are getting started in storytelling, but very few have the clarity of Corporate Visions, with their focus on messaging and conversations to equip salespeople to disrupt the status-quo, who now have the visual tools to effectively engage buyers.

The Majority of Salespeople are Spectators in the Buying Process

Anyone in selling today will admit that the selling process has given over to the facilitation of a buying process. This means that most B2B salespeople are unwilling spectators in a buying process which has disintermediated all but the salespeople who are able to connect with buyers, engage in conversation around their issues and develop trust and influence as consultants first and salespeople second.

But what specifically are the 13% of successful producers in the Sales Benchmark Index report doing that is different from the core group? Research shows that these salespeople have highly evolved interpersonal communication skills and emotional intelligence and are using stories to engage buyers… either because they are story-telling naturals or because they have learned and mastered the techniques.

This is the essence of the Corporate Visions approach and combining visual storytelling tools from Whiteboard Selling gives customers of both companies a complete methodology to help improve the performance of the core group. Naturally nothing happens without disciplined practice, coaching and feedback from sales management teams, and that is also part of the methodology.    

Resources  

FAQ's

View a Visual Presentation of the Announcement 

If you haven't read these three books yet, the good news is there is still time to read them and make an impact on sales and marketing performance in 2012. Welcome back to work and have a great 2012.

The Challenger Sale

This is an important book for B2B sales and marketing and will be of interest to sales and marketing leadership as well as sales professionals. The research in this book has uncovered new insights into what works in our current B2B buying climate and debunks a lot of commonly held views and practices. 

You are going to hear a lot about the Challenger style of selling in 2012 and beyond as it is the most effective mode of selling complex B2B products and services.

The good news is that Challenger Selling is a behaviour and skill-set that can be learned and with the appropriate messaging and whiteboarding skills, anyone who wants to, can achieve Challenger Sale results.
Here you can read a more in-depth review of The Challenger Sale.

Predictable Revenue

This is a powerful little book that caught me by surprise and I have to thank co-author Marylou Tyler for sending it to me, as I am confident that it will have an impact on my own sales results in 2012.

This book is for sales VPs' or operations executives responsible for growing sales revenue.
If you are in B2B sales and your team generates inbound leads, there is a system in this book that will help you generate new business by systematically mining your cold leads far more effectively than through cold calling new prospects.

What's really exciting is that you can begin to explore this method with just one person and build it as you prove to yourself and your management team that it works.

The approach was pioneered at Salesforce.com by Aaron Ross and has been implemented very successfully at fast growing companies like HubSpot and many others. When I saw HubSpot's VP Sales, Mark Roberge endorse  Predictable Revenue on YouTube, I took notice and so should you.

Conversations that Win the Complex Sale

This book was written by a competitor of mine Tim Riesterer and co-writer Erik Peterson and I recommend it for both marketing and sales professionals wanting to differentiate their sales conversations and make more impact in sales calls.

This is Tim's second book and like his first is themed around creating messaging that drives effective sales conversations in B2B selling. I like this book for the technique and integration of well researched ideas like visual storytelling,  the hero's journey, leading with a distinct point of view, creating tension and contrast.

Sales Kick-Off Planning

Are you involved in the planning of a sales kick-off event to occur in January through March 2012?

I was in Las Vegas last month with a team of eight sales enablement professionals from WhiteboardSelling to facilitate a Whiteboard Selling Symposium as part of a global sales kick-off event for over three thousand front line sales and presales support people. Our client, a major player in the virtualization business (I'm writing this as an affiliate partner of WhiteboardSelling) will remain nameless as we are under NDA.

For the past 7 years I've been helping companies selling high value software or services to uncover their compelling value proposition and to create a positioning and brand messaging architecture in the process of aligning sales and marketing messaging.