Gap Selling: Getting the Customer to Yes: How Problem-Centric Selling Increases Sales by Changing Everything You Know About Relationships, Overcoming Objections, Closing and Price

The best book on selling that I’ve read in ten years. And I read all of them. Get ready for the ride of your life, this book debunks all of the so call “axioms” about selling that you have heard over the course of your career. In this book the author “Keenan” (don’t ask I didn’t) Handles all of that sticky stuff that slows down, nay, just about kills your sales effort.Here are some of the more cogent examples from the book:• The customer does not care about you. The customer does not care about your company, or how long it has been in business, or how it started. The customer only cares about one thing, and that is, what can you do for her?• The sales person is dead: You are a consultant, an advisor, an expert, someone who is a peer, someone, the customer comes to rely on for valuable solutions.• Customers don’t buy from friends: Or drinking buddies, or golf partners. Customers, buy from someone who can bring them value…yes, even if they don’t actually like that person.• Customers do like change. Heck, they will embrace change, if you can prove to them that it will make their product, and their company better.• Show them the future: Customers will change, when the future you show them is better than the present, they told you they liked.• Customers will return your phone calls and answer your emails: If they are provocative enough. If the messages surprise them and if they are intrigued. You don’t like to answer boring sales calls, why should your customer?And there is so much more. The author shows you how to move the customer off the dime when he is stalling. Or, how to get her to talk and into telling you what they need, by asking her a series of questions that will drive her to let you solve the problems for them.I started sending this book out to some of my sales training clients, even before I finished it tonight. Please, if you are the kind of person who never reads a book on sales, start today with this one. Or, if you are the kind of person who is reading sales books all the time, grab this one next. Heck, stop reading the one in your hand right now and pick this one up. I guarantee it is better than the one you’re reading now..

A word of warning to those of you purchasing the audio version... Don't listen to this before bed! Keenan is very energetic, and he'll get you jacked and ready to sell something. Then again, maybe that's a good thing...As sales continues to evolve and become more focused on technology, salespeople forget the fundamental pillars of effective selling. Gap Selling provides a framework for gaining your prospect's attention, getting them to trust you enough to tell you about their problems and provide you with a vision for their ideal future state.Here are my biggest takeaways:1. At the heart of every sale, there’s a gap. It’s a gap between what buyers have now and what they believe they want in the future, between who they are now and who they want to be tomorrow, or even where they are now and where they want to go. This gap represents the value of the sale to the buyer and the salesperson. Without it, there is no sale.2. Problems get you to the impact and the impact is where urgency, value, and need live and where the sale takes root. You have to know the problem your buyers and prospects are struggling with and the impact it’s having on them. Without it, there is no sale.3. The worst thing in the world you can do at the beginning of a sale is to take your buyer’s word for granted or sell to a need. I know it’s what we’ve been taught to do but a need assumes the customers know what they want, and that’s a bad assumption. Sure, they think they know what their problem is, but what if they’re wrong?4. Customers Don’t Like Change. However, Every sale is about change. Change is emotional. Therefore, every sale is emotional. And emotions are complicated. That, in a nutshell, explains why selling is so hard and why so many people are bad at it.5. Knowing your customer’s intrinsic motivation allows you to solve for the problems your customers didn’t know they had. Getting to the bottom of your customers’ intrinsic motivation for change takes time and patience. And sometimes it’s frustrating, because in the process you may discover that your product can’t provide the exact solution they need. So you will have to learn to dig deep and not give up your line of questioning until you thoroughly understand the driving force behind your customer’s motivation to change.6. There is a direct correlation between how much a salesperson knows about their buyer’s current state and the probability they will win the deal. The majority of the information and elements you need to influence the sale come from understanding exactly where your buyer is today, what they are dealing with, how they’re operating, who’s involved, why it’s happening, the outcomes they’re currently experiencing and more—all part of the current state.7. Your number one job when selling is to get the customer, buyer, or prospect to let you help them. No matter what you’re selling, until you can get buyers to trust you enough to be vulnerable, open up, share information, offer you insight into their current state, and expressly ask you for your help, you will not make progress. Customers have to be ready to initiate and embrace this sales journey, or ain’t nothing gonna happen.8. Selling is a giving profession. Every time you engage with a customer, or send an email, or create something, you have to ask yourself, “What am I giving?” The answer should be “industry information,” or “insight into the market,” or “tips that will make their jobs easier,” or “the solution to a problem they haven’t been able to solve.” It should never be, “More information about myself.”9. Problems are only problems when the impact is negative and uncomfortable. So, knowing the problem and the impact it’s having matters. Keep this firmly in mind: You’re never selling a product. You’re selling the impact your product will have on your buyer’s current environment. You’re selling change.10. The gap is rarely clear to buyers initially. The win then becomes your ability to expose and shape the gap. Salespeople can manipulate the size of the gap by helping the buyer see things they didn’t see before. There is no way customers can understand the value of your life-saving pill if they don’t realize they are dying. That’s why you have to spend so much time exploring their current state and helping them envision their future state. Unlike a traditional salesperson, you’re not going to accept their problems at face value and then offer a solution. Instead, you’re going to help your customers make sure they understand the full extent of their problems and let them figure out for themselves what will happen if they don’t do something about it.

I wanted to read Gap Selling when it first came out but just couldn't get to it. Week after week I'd watch it impressively maintain its bestseller ranking (way after the launch period) and read newly posted glowing review after glowing review. So with high expectations, I cracked open the Kindle version (do you "crack" open a Kindle?) last week and Could. Not. Stop. Reading.I having nothing but high praise for Keenan and this powerful, provocative and supremely helpful book! From his motivation as a professional seller (to successfully solve customers' problems) to his bold statement that your sale is won or lost during the discovery phase of the process, to his EPIC rant in Chapter 11 about why most demos suck (he actually uses the word "butcher" to describe what most salespeople do during their awful demos), I found myself shouting "Amen!" in vehement agreement with just about everything suggested in Gap Selling.Get this book and read it. It will challenge you. It will make you think. It will help you truly see your role in closing the "gap" and taking your customer from their current state to the desired future state -- and provide you with all kinds or practical advice (and some unique insight) about how to accomplish that feat. It's easy to see why this book is garnering the following it now has and the well-earned reviews here on Amazon. Great work, Keenan! The sales community will benefit greatly from Gap Selling.

Wow. Just Wow. How many sales books have I read in my 30 years of selling? More than I can count. How many would I recommend to the delegates of my training courses at SerialTrainer7.com? Not many. Most are recycled BS written by people who either cannot sell or have never sold. This book however is something else. It is not just different it is relevant and I cannot recommend it enough.The book focusses on the gap between where a client currently sits and where they want to be. Keenan calls these two places the current and future states, a sales persons value to that client sits in the gap between these two states, hence gap selling. The book is divided up into four key sections with sub sections laid out. There are some exceptional analogies used to help bring points to life and makes the content even more relevant. Each section will challenge you, and in some cases may even cause you to question what you have been taught and what you have found to work. It turns common sales thinking on its head and givers it a damn good shake. An brilliant example is in chapter 5. Relationships Don't Matter (Kinda). This section really resonated with me and just made perfect sense. The book also contains some brilliant tools that sales people can use to clarify client problems, the Problem Identification Chart is one example. Simple and easy, and yet can deliver great results by keeping a salespersons mind focussed on what is important.If you work in sales, this book is going to change the way you sell and make you so much better, even those sales people who believe they have nothing new to learn can really benefit. So click on the add to basket button and look forward to one of the best sales books to be written in a long time.

I do like the book. In particular the nine truth bombs of selling are a very good starting point. They summarise the reality. I do like the fact that relationships really don't matter and that change is a difficult concept to accept. If you like this book you should look at Solution Selling the STRONGMAN process which adds another dimension. Unlike SPIN or The Challenger sale Gap Selling and STRONGMAN provide genuine guidance and direction. Importantly, there is a focus on the truth and not perception or "hopium" the drug of perception and want to believe which so many sales people and leaders thrive on and then measure with appointments, demonstrations and dare I say it pipeline.

When it comes to a person’s second book I’m always interested which way will somebody go? Will they take a “bucket to the well” from where they got their first book and do a first book part 2? As many people pressurised me to do and something Keenan could have done. No, he has decided to come up with his own sales methodology. Now sales methodologies have been around for years, looking at Google there are at least 10 in circulation today. So why did Keenan go down a path already well trodden with the danger he will create, yet another “me to” process?In “Gap Selling” Keenan brings the sales methodology up to the modern day, using modern tool and techniques. Putting it another way, it’s a 21st century methodology and not a 20th century methodology. The book is fast paced and if you follow any of his videos or blogs on social media, it’s written in his “take no prisoners” approach.It’s a modern day approach, for a modern day buyer.One world of warning, if you are a lazy salesperson, this book isn’t for you. Keenan is proud of us sales people and he expects us to perform at the highest levels of professionalism, in the office, in front of customers and how we forecast. If you are a Sales Manager buy this book for your team, if you are a sales executive, buy the book for yourself!

#GapSelling by Keenan . Is one of my favourite reads. I took last week off work on annual leave and I couldn't stop reading this book. It's a quick and easy read but is packed with so much to take away that can instantly be implemented in your day to day working to make you an exceptional server to your clients. This book has supported the way I already thought about my clients and allowed me to build on my skills to serve them properly. With their problems and solutions for solving them at the heart of everything I do. This book will most definitely be a staple that I I return to time and time again throughout my career. I loved it that much there is now a copy on the way from Amazon for in the sales book library at work. A must read for any sales professional.

As a sales professional, I follow Keenan on LinkedIn and his advice/tips are always on the mark. The best bit which I always argue with my manager is that prospects don’t give a s#%^ about you.This book is a great explanation on this but also how you can nail your deals by focusing on the discovery and the buyers current and future states.Highly recommend and good luck to all using this in their sales processes!