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

By: Keenan

Narrated by: Keenan

Length: 5 hrs and 47 mins

Publisher's Summary

People don't buy from people they like. No! Your buyer doesn't care about you or your product or service. It's not your job to overcome objections, it's your buyer's. Closing isn't a skill of good salespeople; it's the skill of weak salespeople. Price isn't the main reason salespeople lose the sale. Gap Selling shreds traditional and closely held sales beliefs that have been hurting salespeople for decades. 

For years, salespeople have embraced a myriad of sales tactics and belief systems that have unknowingly created many of the issues they have been trying to avoid, such as: long sales cycles, price objections, no decision, prospects going dark, last minute feature requests, and more. Success at sales requires more than a set of tactics. Salespeople need to understand the game of sales, how sales works, and what the buyer is going through in order to make the decision to buy (change) or not to buy (not change). 

Gap Selling is a game-changing book designed to raise the sales IQ of selling organizations around the world. In his unapologetic and irreverent style, Keenan breaks down the tired old sales myths causing today's frustrating sales issues, to highlight a deceptively powerful new way to connect with buyers.

Today's sales world is littered with glorified order takers, beholden to a frustrated buyer, unable to influence the sale and create value. Gap Selling flips the script and creates salespeople with immense influence at every stage of the buying process, capable of impacting the sales metrics that matter: 

• Shorter sales cycles
• Increased revenue
• Elevated deal values
• Higher win rates
• Fewer no decisions
• More leads
• And happier buyers

Gap Selling elevates the sales world's selling IQ and turns sales order takers into sales influencers.

©2018 Jim Keenan (P)2018 Jim Keenan

SPIN selling with more EQ mixed in

This is literally SPIN selling with more emotional intelligence mixed in. The problem with problem based selling is that 99% of prospects with your problem typically don't know they have it or do know and refuse to admit it. He does a pretty good job of addressing this huge issue, better than the original SPIN selling book does.

The big thing missing is this: people buy what they WANT AND DESIRE, not just solutions to problems and this is the #1 thing sales books miss. What people always screw up is this: the 'gap' (really just a new term for implications), is what pushes people to act, but it's not how you get people interested in the product.

Marketers - A MUST read to align with your sellers

It is a must to first know your market and customers to then be able to position your solution for customer outcomes and know the value of the outcome based upon the pain being experienced by your prospects. Marketers, read the book, refresh your focus, target customer definitions and messaging to your customers and support your sellers.

Content is so important to sales and marketing and being consistent with the messaging regardless of channel is critical. Keenan describes selling to the Gap between desired outcome and current state. The bigger the gap, the bigger the pain and the bigger the need to fill that gap.

This is a great read for both sales and marketing to drive the revenue engine. Marketing it is our job to fuel that engine, this is a good read to get on the same page with your sellers.

Finally..someone said it out loud!

In my opinion every person could benefit from this book. .. not just sales people. The more people understand or at least seek to understand, the easier it is to communicate and solve problems as a whole. Well worth the read! even more worth implementation! it helped me narrow in on my specific goals and hit them. Even better, helped me articulate exactly what I want to accomplish with my clients! Thank you, Keenan!

very average

although it does go over important aspects of selling it is very basic level knowledge. would be a great book for beginners.

Tired of trying to convince people to buy

This book is great because it reminds you that selling on price, selling on being better than the competition really doesn't matter, or work... 2005 sales strategies don't work so well anymore. I liked this book because it made me realize that I'm not in sales to convince, force or trick people into buying! It's a great book, but it's for experienced sales people who need a reminder or update their strategy. Not a 1st sales book you should ever read... but more of a 4th, 5th, 6th, etc... sales book you should definitely read.

Refreshing to have a sales book that's not all short cuts and how to spend less time in the office or prospecting. Which are built on lies and sold to people looking for a way out of doing the work... myself included!

I enjoyed listening to Keenan

I recommend it specially if you are in a consultative sales role and have some business acumen.

couldn't turn it off

finished the book in 2 days. nonstop value throughout, Keenan is an electric narrator. great job!

best sales book since SPIN selling

absolutely love this book. beat tactical sales book since SPIN selling. its better than SPIN selling because of simplicity and effectiveness. read this book many times.

"Duh-No S!#t, Exchange please?

I couldn't make it through more than about an hour of this.
I'm exchanging it.
First, the advice in this book is specifically for Business-to-business sales, where your 'product' can be custom tailored to solving your prospects' PROBLEMS, or the 'GAP' between where they are (in terms of any aspect of their business) and where they'd like to be.
Obviously, if you're selling cars, your prospects "problem" is that they need a car, or a better one. Hello??? (Duh - no shit),
Obviously, if you're selling tshirts and your prospect is barefoot... you need to send them to a shoe store. Hello??? (Duh - no shit).

Second, he says the key to your personae as a (B2B) salesperson is to be an expert in your prospect's industry.
Well, duh - no shit. Jordan Belfort already said that in his book anyway. Tell me something new ffs.

...and that's where I quit.

Sorry

It’s a rehash of other great sales books.

I think Keenan is an okay sales person. I rather take advice from grant cardone.

If you only ever read one sales book, read this one!

Absolutely career changing. This is how sales should be done. The most practical guide I’ve ever read on executing to the unchanging principles of successful selling.

Keenan has put structure to our sales madness

I've read and listened to every sales book I can get my hands on over the past 20 years and always take small pieces away as advisory elements to my own sales processes. It's been one of the reasons for my success in sales and sales management. Keenan has written a book where absolutely every point is a take away and much of what I always knew was there and didn't have definition or was not documented in my own processes is now crystal clear to me and my growing team. This book has had an impact on every stage in our pipeline including significant additions to our CRM structures. I am super pumped for the impact this will have on our results and the accuracy I now know I can deliver to my board and our investors going forward. Thank you Keenan. PS: the audio performance is EPIC!

Not a structured author

So this guys is no doubt great at what he does. But. The structure and the general naming convention makes it insanely complicated to understand where he is in reference to the steps of the sales structure. At times he also uses different reference to explain one step e.g which just adds more mayhem to the mix.

Still think it is a lot of value in here. But I just end up spending so much time trying to structure the book, that I almost lose a bit of the trust in the concept as a whole.

Once again, probably awesome at what he is doing, but don’t know if he put the effort into understanding how to teach that learning in a book form.

Good motivator and method for sellers

Good content for focusing on gap selling
Great ideas and methodology for those working or soon to be.

It doesn't get more clear than this!

While the author shouts at you throughout the book, his points are so so so accurate. The process of the sale is completely broken down into easy to understand steps

Keenan really debunks everything that traditional sales people believed in and uses your personal experiences as evidence. Now that takes some confidence!

He really drills deep down into each part of the whole sales process and gives examples so his points really come through
I love this book, I wouldn't have started planning sales calls if I hadn't read this!!

Takes SPIN on a stage

Salespeople should listen more than they talk. “The gift of the gab” isn’t Selling. Focus on the client, not your product or service. No one cares what you make or do!

An excellent reminder of the importance of conversational questioning and focussing on the client. An essential read for newbies to Selling and seasoned professionals alike.

Even people who aren’t in sales need this

Keenan gives an incredible insight into sales (or put another way, problem solving!!!)

You neeeeeed this book of you do any sort of selling. Incredibly useful and practical approach to being at your best and learning the art of true problem solving

Thank you Keenan!

Awesome

I absolutely related to Keenan’s philosophy of Gap Selling and this book made it so easy for me to identify the gaps in my own knowledge and performance. I am left totally excited on trying to improve the way I engage with my prospects from now on.

The delivery was also engaging and really helped me buy in to everything that was said.

I thoroughly recommend this book.

Brilliant

This is easily in the top 3 best sales books I've ever read, possibly even ranking #1

This methodology wouldn’t work

In my industry we have to close the deal on the the day very rarely do customers call back or buy after the first visit , not only that the company will sweep the deals after 48 hours so follow ups are a no no , we’re still converting at 35% so doing the extra work in terms of “knowing your customer better than they know themselves” not viable in terms of time or effort, we get one hit and the company is massively successful on this basis , to get more smaller deals with less profit makes no sense to the company or me , I’m not closed to new ideas I just know this is not possible with what we do and I do like my job and just want to be better at it..
I liked a couple of the ideas but find it’s not as applicable in Direct Sales