The Revenue Acceleration Playbook: Creating an Authentic Buyer Journey Across Sales, Marketing, and Customer Success

Buyers close deals, not sellers!
A must-read for anyone in sales and marketing.Salespeople have gotten a bad rap over the years because the sales process has been centered on them instead of the buyer/customer.It’s refreshing to see this approach to sales – truly listening to and catering to our customers’ needs and goals – and guiding their experience based on understanding that. They often know what they need but might not (and often don’t) know how to get there. And as Keltner writes: “The role of the seller is to guide the buyer to a close with the right discovery questions—questions that surface a prospect’s pain and turn it into potential value.”As championed in this book, marketing and sales – the customer journey – should be a tailored customer experience that educates, informs, and amplifies customer successes. Enabling potential buyers to see themselves achieving goals through your current customers’ experiences = success. “The heart of an authentic buyer journey lies in guided buyer discovery. The process of being guided with questions leads the buyer to be open to hearing and internalizing the insight—and feeling that it is their insight.”As someone who has worked in various roles around sales and marketing for many years, I’ve always been baffled by the disconnect between sales and marketing functions. We need to be moving the boat in the same direction for the benefit of our customers. This is our job. Marketing and sales teams should be acting together as buyer guides to help customers get them to their goals.Keltner’s Revenue Acceleration Playbook is both insightful and actionable – full of relatable customer success stories. His authentic approach is one that truly focuses on the buyer journey and experience to both produce happy customers and generate higher revenue – a win-win for everyone involved. Shifting from product-driven selling to authentic conversations leads to faster business growth.So whether you’re selling shower curtain rings or enterprise software, you will benefit from the insights in this book!

Three Part Meeting is a Winning Formual
I’ve read so many sales books, but this book really helps with practical and easily adaptable skills. A key learning from the book is that committing to three-part sales meetings can have a dramatic impact on deal quality and velocity. Some very tangible ideas on running sales conversations I found valuable include: 1) Start each conversation on the discovery or rediscovery of your buyer’s goals Why are they there? What are they trying to accomplish? Don’t get trapped in shallow discovery. 2) Continue with a product demo and discussion mapped to your buyer’s goals. 3) Start the product demo by recapping “I heard you say.” Don’t do a generic product pitch. 3) End your meeting by getting specific commitments from your buyer, including a next meeting. What do you do next? What do they do next after the call if you find areas of alignment of fit, agree on specific next steps. The Revenue Acceleration Playbook gives powerful specific examples using company stories on how to bring this into practice. A great addition to any sales library!