Selling Above and Below the Line

Selling Above and Below the Line

by William Skip Miller
Released February 2015
Publisher(s): AMACOM
ISBN: 9780814434840

Read it now on the O’Reilly learning platform with a 10-day free trial.

O’Reilly members get unlimited access to books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.

Start your free trial

Book description

Cost, service, functionality—good salespeople know the value propositions that speak to frontline managers. But there’s another crucial player in the buying decision, with an entirely different set of criteria.

Top-level executives evaluate proposals from an “above the line” perspective: ROI, time saved, risk lowered, productivity improved. Sales professionals that appeal to both achieve spectacular results.

In Selling Above and Below the Line, master sales trainer Skip Miller shows how to simultaneously sell the technical and financial fit of any product or service—a strategy used by Google, Apple, Cisco WebEx, and other powerhouses. Readers learn to:

Create energy by including executives early in the sales process • Ask the right questions and pinpoint big-picture financial needs • Keep “below the line” managers from feeling bypassed • Uncover value propositions that target each set of decision-makers

Too often, sales that seemed locked in will stall or go dark. Learn to sell above and below the line, and keep the process moving swiftly toward successful, lucrative deals.

Table of contents

  1. Cover
  2. Title
  3. Copyright
  4. Contents
  5. Foreword
  6. Author’s Preface
  7. Acknowledgments
  8. 1 You Are Selling More Than Just Features and Benefits
    1. The Neuroscience of Selling: It’s All About Us
    2. The Deceptive Lure of Features and Benefits
    3. Buyers Buy Outcomes
  9. 2 The Line That Splits the Two Parts of a Sale
    1. Business Acumen: Knowing What Makes a Company Tick
    2. Understand a Company’s Network of Concerns
    3. Target Two Outcomes for a Sales Process That Works
    4. The Split: Selling Above and Below the Line
    5. Uncover the Buyer’s Multiple Personalities
    6. Focus on Two Value Propositions
  10. 3 Selling Below the Line
    1. The Rationale for Features and Benefits
    2. Two Sales Processes, Two Results
    3. WIIFM: The Five Ps
    4. The BTL Buyer’s Mantra: I Need It and I Like It
    5. The Three Levels of a Purchase
    6. Company Win and Personal Win
  11. 4 Know Your ATL Buyer
    1. Change: We All Face It, and We All Fear It
    2. The Fear Factor
    3. Promote the Positive Motivators
    4. Time Zones: Great Salespeople Are Time-Travelers
  12. 5 Understanding ATL Energy
    1. Capturing the Energy of a Sale
    2. Harness the Energy in ATL Events
    3. Other ATL Oddities
    4. Change Is King
  13. 6 Controlling the Inbound Sale
    1. Inbound Qualifying Made Easy
    2. Lead Scoring
    3. Find the Need with the Three Levels of Why
    4. Qualify and Disqualify
    5. Getting Control, Starting with the Welcome
  14. 7 Controlling the Outbound Sale
    1. Make Outbound Qualifying Work for You
    2. Your Homework
    3. Getting Past the Screen
    4. Get to the Point—The One That’s All About Them
    5. The Prospect’s Homework
    6. Gives/Gets
  15. 8 Stage 1: Being ProActive
    1. Prospecting to the ATL Level: Strategy and Tactics
    2. Mastering the Art of the Short Email
    3. How to Leave a Phone Message
    4. Trumpeting
  16. 9 Basics Never Go Out of Style
    1. Start the ATL Phone Call with a 30-Second Speech
    2. The Art of Asking Questions
    3. Paraphrasing and Summarizing Skills
    4. Time-Traveling
    5. Next Step
  17. 10 Sharpen Your Executive Business A cumen
    1. Top Down and Bottom Up
    2. Think Across the Entire Organization
    3. ATL and BTL Solution Boxes
    4. Talking About Trains
    5. Become the Champion of Solution Box B
    6. I-Date for Box B
  18. 11 Stage 2: Don’t Forget The Split
    1. It’s Not a Race
    2. The Quantified Problem
    3. The Quantified Cause
    4. The Quantified Solution
    5. Printer Story: The Value of the Three Qs
  19. 12 Discussions with an A TL Executive
    1. The ValueStar: Learning ATL Vocabulary
    2. ROI: Selling Money
    3. Making the Most of Time
    4. Risk: The Million-Dollar Question
    5. Leverage: Building Value Across Trains
    6. Brand/Image: The Emotional Value
  20. 13 Creating and Controlling ATL Energy
    1. The Golden Rule
    2. The Salesperson’s Energy
  21. 14 The “How” of Controlling the A TL Sale
    1. ATL Energy: Finding Additional Trains
    2. BTL Energy
  22. 15 Stage 3: Value vs. Value
    1. Two Value Conditions
    2. A Day in the Life …
    3. BTL and ATL “I Get It” to “I Get It”
    4. Validation vs. Education
  23. 16 Balancing Between the Lines to Accelerate the Deal
    1. Energy Sources
    2. Moving the Chains ATL
    3. Learn to Quantify Energy
    4. Getting to Quantification with Impact Analysis
    5. Solution Boxes and I-Dates
  24. 17 Stages 4 and 5: Getting a Decision
    1. The Goal Is a Decision
    2. The Power of Options
    3. Getting a Decision—Now
  25. 18 How to Implement ATL/BTL Selling in Your Current Process
    1. Map Your Stages
    2. Visual Collaboration with the Customer
    3. Next-Step Selling
  26. 19 Overall Strategizing for an Above the Line Sale
    1. Managing Risk by Relying on Numbers
    2. Know Your Options
    3. Wine Ages Well. Problems Don’t.
    4. Look at All the Options
    5. Final Thoughts
  27. Index
  28. About the Author
  29. Free Sample Chapter from Questions That Sell by Paul Cherry

Product information

  • Title: Selling Above and Below the Line
  • Author(s): William Skip Miller
  • Release date: February 2015
  • Publisher(s): AMACOM
  • ISBN: 9780814434840