Let me share with you my 3 favorite books that inspired and thought me about Modern Enterprise Sales. If you need fresh inspiration read them in that order: Aaron Ross “Predictable Revenue”, Matthew Dixon “The Challenger Sale” and Mark Roberge “The Sales Acceleration Formula”.
I was a classic enterprise sales guy born in the early 1970’s. I was told to generate my own sales leads, nurture them and convert them into successful business transaction. A phone, a filofax and a spreadsheet was my day-to-day companion. Later I replaced my filofax with a CRM and my phone got a proper headset.
PRODUCT SPLINTERING GUIDE
How Software And Services Companies Double The Number Of Mid-Market Customers In 180 Days.
Even when I co-founded BizXpand in 2010 we did a lot of Cold Calling for our clients. A time when splitting the sales hunter role into Sales Development and Account Execution wasn’t common practice in Silicon Valley…this has changed!
Modern Enterprise Sales – A Paradigm Shift
I guess it was around 2010 when Modern Enterprise Sales was born in USA. Modern Enterprise Sales – the answer to the disruptive change in the buyer behaviour. Get familiar with it by reading these books.
Aaron Ross “Predictable Revenue”
Aaron Ross released his book in 2011. He learned us why splitting the sales hunter role into SDR and AE is the foundation for generating a scalable and predictable revenue.
There are several good reviews on the book, I’ll spare you mine.
But you should have a look at the interview with Aaron Ross: “Why Sales People Shouldn’t Prospect”
Matthew Dixon “The Challenger Sale”
In the same year (2011) Matthew Dixon released “The Challenger Sale” where he illuminated the 5 different sales executive profiles and the massive difference in their performance. Meanwhile Challenger Sale became a sales tactics in front of the customer.
A good summary about the CEB Challenger Sale theory you can find in the Harvard Business Review Sep. 2011.
Mark Roberge “The Sales Acceleration Formula”
4 years later Mark Roberge, HubSpot’s VP Sales, released his book. 4 years evolution of Modern Enterprise Sales, 4 years of perfecting its processes and 4 years of massive technology support for sales. Remember, before 2011 the only technology we had was the phone and CRM. My takeaways from this book are hands-on tactics for sales execution as well as marketing-sales-aligned processes for inbound lead generation and lead management.
Jill Konrath interviewed Mark in 2015: What’s Your Sales Acceleration Formula?
