Are you tired of playing games with your customers? The most widely used metaphors in sales are those related to sports, battle, or games. The challenge with this mindset is it requires that one person wins, and the other loses. Instead of falling victim to a win-lose approach, what if you shared a common goal with your potential client? How might things change if the client felt that you were more committed to their success than making the sale? Does it sometimes seem like you and your client are working against each other? Same Side Selling gives practical steps to break through sales barriers and turn confrontation into cooperation. Sellers that implement the Same Side Selling approach will be seen as a valuable resource, not a predatory peddler. A Different Type of Book on Selling What makes Same Side Selling different from any other book on this topic is that it is co-authored by people on both sides : a salesman (Ian) and a procurement veteran who understands how companies buy (Jack). The buyer s perspective is baked into every sentence of the book, along with the seller s point of view. Our aim is to replace the adversarial trap with a cooperative, collaborative mindset. We also want to replace the old metaphor of selling as a game. The New Metaphor: Selling Is a Puzzle Same Side Selling is the idea of solving a puzzle instead of playing a game. Discover how to sell with integrity from the same side of the table for better results all around.

The third publication in Erick Simpson’s best-selling Managed Services Series, The Best I.T. Service Delivery BOOK EVER! covers all aspects of delivering I.T. and technical services to end-customers through 4 types of service delivery models Hardware Warranty, Break-Fix, Professional and Managed Services. This comprehensive resource details best practices for service delivery, including a description of each service model and strategies for maintaining or maximizing each model, as well as migrating from one service model to another. Covering service pricing and positioning, service delivery, hiring and compensating and training staff and maximizing customer trust, satisfaction and loyalty, this resource is certain to become a key reference manual in your organization. This book will reveal how to successfully deliver I.T. Solutions and Managed Services to become a Trusted Advisor to your clients. These methodologies have helped thousands of Solution Providers tremendously increase their revenues. The Best I.T. Service Delivery BOOK EVER! applies the most highly effective I.T. and Managed Services delivery techniques ever developed to increase your efficiencies, client relationships and revenue, and provide a roadmap to migrate from one service delivery model to another! We’ve included everything you’ll need in The Best I.T. Service Delivery BOOK EVER!, allowing you to: Identify or establish your current service delivery model Understand key characteristics and important considerations for each service delivery model Determine whether you are in Build, Maintain or Maximize mode, and if you are ready to Migrate Recognize the key staff necessary for each model and mode Create an effective hiring, compensation, and training process for all staff Improve customer satisfaction, become a Trusted Advisor and sell more solutions and services to your clients This resource has been highly anticipated by solution providers and channel organizations worldwide, and fills the void for a service-specific work for the I.T. industry, covering hiring, compensating, and training staff; along with project management, quoting and service delivery for 4 service provider groups. Includes nearly 30 downloadable webinars, forms, tools and collateral!

The fourth publication in Erick Simpson’s best-selling Managed Services Series, The Best NOC and Service Desk Operations BOOK EVER! reveals how to build, staff and maintain a NOC and Service Desk effectively and profitably, along with best practices and techniques to increase efficiencies and net profits for these critical business service delivery business units. This comprehensive resource documents and discusses best practices for NOC and Service Desk infrastructure design, tools and technology, deliverables, pre-requisites for service, agreements and addendums, SLAs, processes, clients, management and outsourcing considerations all geared to help your organization or business unit increase efficiencies and net profitability while reducing risk and mitigating pain for you and your clients and end users. Whether you are looking to build out your NOC and Service Desk from scratch, are interested in learning how to effectively outsource and manage specific components of these units, or simply wish to evaluate the processes you currently employ in your own NOC and Service Desk, this reference will teach you how to improve processes, maximize efficiencies and increase client satisfaction – all while improving your bottom line! We’ve included everything you’ll need in The Best NOC and Service Desk Operations BOOK EVER!, allowing you to: Design the most effective infrastructure for you NOC and Service Desk – Identify and integrate the right tools and technology to support your NOC and Service Desk – Establish service requirements for your end users and clients to qualify them for effective, efficient service delivery – Determine what your NOC and Service Desk deliverables and SLAs should be -Understand and implement effective incident management processes – Learn the 10 critical Service Management processes required for success – Develop a rock-solid client provisioning and on-boarding process to smooth service turn-up and go-live – Gain knowledge of efficient day-to-day NOC and Service Desk staff duties that increase efficiencies and improve customer satisfaction – Create an effective hiring, compensation, training and management process for NOC and Service Desk staff – Discover critical KPIs and learn how to run your NOC and Service Desk by the numbers – Learn how to outsource NOC and Service Desk components effectively. This resource has been highly requested by solution providers, internal IT departments and channel organizations worldwide, and fills the void for a NOC and Service Desk-specific work for the IT industry covering design, tools, deliverables and hiring, compensating, training and managing staff; along with processes, client on-boarding and management processes, outsourcing to 3rd party fulfillment partners and service delivery. Includes nearly 30 downloadable forms, tools and educational webcasts.

Following up on the success of The Guide to a Successful Managed Services Practice – What Every SMB IT Service Provider Should Know…; the definitive book on transitioning a reactive IT business model to proactively-delivered Managed Services, Erick Simpson’s The Best I.T. Sales & Marketing BOOK EVER! focuses squarely on one of the most challenging aspects of running a successful I.T. practice – growing through effective sales and marketing. At nearly 500 pages, The Best I.T. Sales & Marketing BOOK EVER! reveals how to successfully sell and market I.T. solutions and become a Trusted Advisor to your clients. Drawing upon Erick Simpson’s experience in helping Partners across the country transition to an annuity-based, proactive Managed Service delivery model, each phase of the I.T. Sales and Marketing process is addressed. Broken down into logical sections, this book helps you choose your target market, determine your service offerings and develop your marketing message, as well as the methods by which to successfully deliver it. Follow-on chapters address hiring the right sales staff, as well as training, incentivizng and managing them for success. Additional topics covered include appointment setting and conducting the first, second and third client sales appointments – all the way through closing the deal with the decision-maker. The downloadable content contains over 50 newly designed marketing collateral, case study and white paper templates, as well as a complete 17-page business-winning I.T. Solutions and Managed Services website design. Chock full of additional new tools and collateral, the downloadable material included with this title greatly enhances the value of “The Best I.T. Sales & Marketing BOOK EVER!”, and insures that this unique publication lives up to its title.

Never started a company before? Struggling with little or no cash? Have no experience, no baseline to judge your progress against? Thank God! You’ve got a shot at making this work.” So says Mike Michalowicz, author of The Toilet Paper Entrepreneur, a business book that is so uniquely useful, so raw and entertaining, it reads like the brainchild of Steve Jobs and Chris Rock.The founder of three multimillion-dollar companies, including Obsidian Launch, a company that partners with first-time entrepreneurs to grow their concepts into industry leaders, Mike Michalowicz knows what it really takes to spin your great idea into pure gold.Whether you’re just starting out or have been at this for years, Mike’s “get real” approach to business is a much-needed swift kick in the pants. In this book, you’ll discover:* Why a business plan is a total waste of your time.* Why fulfilling your own needs is the first and last order of business. * Which three sheets of paper you need to successfully launch, manage and grow your business.* How to get started in business with little or no money.* How to find and exploit resources that no one else knows about.* How to stop procrastinating and take action NOW!

Do you worry that your business will collapse without your constant presence? Are you sacrificing your family, friendships, and freedom to keep your business alive? What if instead your business could run itself, freeing you to do what you love when you want, while it continues to grow and turn a profit? It’s possible. And it’s easier than you think. If you’re like most entrepreneurs, you started your business so you could be your own boss, make the money you deserve, and live life on your own terms. In reality, you’re bogged down in the daily grind, constantly putting out fires, answering an endless stream of questions, and continually hunting for cash. Now, Mike Michalowicz, the author of Profit First and other small-business bestsellers, offers a straightforward step-by-step path out of this dilemma. In Clockwork, he draws on more than six years of research and real life examples to explain his simple approach to making your business ultra-efficient. Among other powerful strategies, you will discover how to: •  Make your employees act like owners: Free yourself from micromanaging by using a simple technique to empower your people to make smart decisions without you. •  Pinpoint your business’s most important function: Unleash incredible efficiency by identifying and focusing everyone on the one function that is most crucial to your business. •  Know what to fix next: Most entrepreneurs try to fix every inefficiency at once and end up fixing nothing. Use the “weakest link in the chain” method to find the one fix that will add the most value now. Whether you have a staff of one, one hundred, or somewhere in between, whether you’re a new entrepreneur or have been overworked and overstressed for years, Clockwork is your path to finally making your business work for you.

In his latest page-turning work of business fiction, best-selling author Patrick Lencioni provides readers with another powerful and thought-provoking book, this one centered around a cure for the most painful yet underestimated problem of modern business: bad meetings.  And what he suggests is both simple and revolutionary. Casey McDaniel, the founder and CEO of Yip Software, is in the midst of a problem he created, but one he doesn’t know how to solve.  And he doesn’t know where or who to turn to for advice.  His staff can’t help him; they’re as dumbfounded as he is by their tortuous meetings. Then an unlikely advisor, Will Peterson, enters Casey’s world.  When he proposes an unconventional, even radical, approach to solving the meeting problem, Casey is just desperate enough to listen. As in his other books, Lencioni provides a framework for his groundbreaking model, and makes it applicable to the real world.  Death by Meeting is nothing short of a blueprint for leaders who want to eliminate waste and frustration among their teams, and create environments of engagement and passion.

Getting to the next level is a is a never-ending journey for you and your business, and now you have the definitive guide book. From the design of the business to the execution on strategy and all the tools you need in between, this book covers it. It shows you how to gauge your business maturity and your progress along your roadmap to stratospheric success. Complete with a well-defined case study and example by the author that are built from years of experience in business management and guidance. Learn to design your business from the top down using the Pyramid of Purpose and Value and then build it from the ground up by leveraging Business Agile Strategy Execution (BASE). Your Shared Vision is the heart of your business, even more so than your product and service value proposition. Your shared vision must be embedded in your organization’s culture so it can permeate all the way down to the ground level. The Pyramid of Purpose and Value allows you to design your business from the top down and to share it in a meaningful way. It paints a clear and enticing picture and tells a very compelling story of how you intend to create stratospheric success. It attracts the right people to back your endeavor and the right people to get on board. Your ability to define a clear business roadmap & strategy and then execute on it is one of the biggest determinants of your success. Imagine taking the most advanced methods of Agile development and applying them to your business roadmap & strategy execution. That’s Business Agile Strategy Execution (BASE). BASE is the most innovative advancement for small and medium-sized business roadmap development and strategy execution, and you can harness and leverage its power for yourself. The entire process is clearly defined and broken down in step-by-step fashion using real-life examples.Today more than ever there is a demand for value in everything we create or do. Tap into the author’s insights on creating a value proposition for your customers that endears them to your business because they see you are a value-driven organization. Learn about the elements of success that determine your organization’s overall Business Maturity Index and how to drive them in the direction you want. With this book, you will have the most important component of a true significant competitive advantage for your business-the blueprint for success.

Most people just laugh when they hear that the secret to success is giving…. Then again, most people are nowhere near as successful as they wish they were.” The Go-Giver tells the story of an ambitious young man named Joe who yearns for success. Joe is a true go-getter, though sometimes he feels as if the harder and faster he works, the further away his goals seem to be. Desperate to land a key sale at the end of a bad quarter, he seeks advice from the enigmatic Pindar, a legendary consultant referred to by his many devotees sim­ply as the Chairman. Over the next week, Pindar introduces Joe to a series of “go-givers”: a restaurateur, a CEO, a financial adviser, a real estate broker, and the “Connector” who brought them all together. Pindar’s friends teach Joe the Five Laws of Stratospheric Success and help him open himself up to the power of giving. Joe learns that changing his focus from getting to giving – putting others’ interests first and continually adding value to their lives – ultimately leads to unexpected returns. Imparted with wit and grace, The Go-Giver is a classic best seller that brings to life the old proverb “give and you shall receive.” Nearly a decade since its original publication, the term “go-giver” has become shorthand for a defining set of values embraced by hundreds of thousands of people around the world. Today, this timeless story continues to help its readers and listeners find fulfillment and greater success in business, in their personal lives, and in their communities. This expanded edition includes the text of the original business parable, a new introduction, a discussion guide, and a Q&A with the authors.