Author Jeffrey A. Koser Releases Five Tips for Keeping Sales People Productive During Economic Downturn.

Co-founder of Selling to Zebras, LLC, and the co-author of the award winning book "Selling to Zebras", releases valuable tips for organizations to keep sales people engaged, productive and feeling successful.

Hartland, WI (PRWEB) November 2, 2008 -- According to Jack and Suzie Welch in their "The Welch Way" article Murder on the Financial Express published recently in Business Week, "This crisis is mind-numbing in its complexity and global scope, but previous meltdowns have proved that broken systems can be fixed by smart people."

What does the financial crisis have to do with sales and selling more? Everything. Revenue generation is the key to working your company's way out of this crisis.

Author Jeff Koser says, "Your sales and sales management are competing for business in a market driven by fear and noise from the current financial crisis. Competition will come from like companies, and from every other alternative use of your prospects available discretionary capital. One possible way for your sales team to get past the fear and the difficult economic environment is to create a business case driven by the Economic Value Add (EVA) your solution(s) create. EVA is probably the most prolific value claim any company can present."

Koser offers these tips to companies to help ensure sales organizations target, stay focused selling value, and productive despite the current economic climate:

1. Focus where you create verifiable value: Executives don't want to know what you can do, they want to know what you have done--over and over again. Executives buy based on value and comfort. Expertise helps create comfort. Stay where your expertise is so strong that you have answers to questions that they don't even know to ask!

2. Quantify your value: Utilizing industry statistics based value claims about your solution is not enough. Specific knowledge of the business issues your solution solves, and the subsequent value generated when you solve them, are paramount in this environment. Buyers want to know that your advertized results are repeatable for them.

3. Partner to verify your value: The number one reasons executives do not purchase cost justified solutions is because they don't believe their own people "can do it". Partner with the process and solution owners your executive decision maker trusts, to gain an understanding of the organizations readiness and ability to implement your solution. Leverage this understanding and build a proposal that has everything you know will be needed to be successful.

4. Build a "force success" proposal: What amount of education will your prospect need to be successful? Include it. Are independent partners providing part of the solution? Then you will need partner management. Include it! Include a change management component in your solution. A Force Success proposal includes all of product, education, consulting, executive management, change management, partner management, and overall customer service and support needed to all but guarantee your prospect will achieve the expected value.

5. Present the EVA of your solution: In these tough economic times your greatest competition will be apathy (non-decision). Your project will compete with ever other use of the available capital dollars. To overcome apathy and fear, learn to present the economic value add (EVA) of your solution. EVA is the most prolific form of value claim because demonstrates the value your solution provides over-and-above the best project return your prospect is considering.

"Selling to Zebras" is being talked about as "...book may be most valuable to CEO's and General Managers whose companies' performance relies so heavily the ability of their sales organizations' ability to close deals," said Kenneth C. McMillan, CEO, TEC Chair, and Vistage member (www.vistage.com).

"Jeff and Chad Koser wrote a book that I consider one of the best sales books I have read in the last decade. What made this book interesting was their methodology and process for identifying a company's best prospects. They developed a very scientific analytical model that can be used by any company," said Marc Kramer, Wharton School of Management.

About Jeff Koser and Selling to Zebras, LLC:
Jeff is the founder of Selling to Zebras, LLC (www.SellingtoZebras.com), a sales tools and consulting firm established in 1999 that works with CEOs, top executives, and sales forces of both large and small organizations including: American Express, Kronos, Smart Choice MRI, StarCite, Inc, VAI International and Worksoft. Jeff and his family live in Hartland, Wisconsin. Koser is the former Chief Operating Officers of Baan USA, Inc's Supply Chain Software Division. Koser is also a member of TEC 60.
Contact information: Jeff can be reached at mobile phone (414) 659-1494, http://www.sellingtozebras.com, http://www.sellingtozebras.blogspot.com.
   
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