Duct Tape Selling is 248 pages long. Jantsch arranged the 18 chapters into three major sections:
- Mind-set of the New Sales Guide
- Practices of the New Sales Guide
- The World of the New Sales Coach
Jantsch is of the opinion that we must provide value to customers by listening to them and then educating them. We must be attending to their needs. We must help them excel. We do this by sharing content that will help them improve what they are doing.
Mind-Set of the New Sales Guide
Jantsch began by stressing the importance of listening to those around us. He provided strategies for improving listening skills as well as questions to help glean the most important elements from a conversation. Jantsch also suggested ideas for listening while online.
Part of adopting this new mindset of a sales guide is to understand your customer and the ecosystem that your customer works in. With this information, you are going to develop leads. To do that, you must define your ideal customer. It is for these ideal customers that you are going to create value.
Part of the environment you are creating is based on your reputation. Jantsch suggested that you create a platform where you can nurture your reputation. He shares ideas for building out your profile. He also encouraged developing systems to track what your competitors are doing and how they are doing it.
Perhaps one of the best sections in the book was the Marketing Hourglass. The framework has seven steps:
- Know
- Like
- Trust
- Try
- Buy
- Repeat
- Refer
Here are some articles that go into more detail.
Jantsch also devoted a chapter to discussing the importance of developing content. As he noted, “Teaching sells.” Your content should always be adding value. It is what helps others to get to know, like, and trust you enough to do business with you. Jantsch recommended developing an editorial calendar as a means to develop your content development. This is something I certainly need to improve on. He also provided ideas for developing and distributing content.
Practices of the New Sales Guide
The second part of Duct Tape Selling focuses on building a value platform as well as mapping out your sales hourglass. The sales hourglass differs from the marketing hourglass and Jantsch spells out these differences.
Perhaps one of the most important things you can do to support your business is to have a digital presence. Jantsch pointed out the importance of blogging. It is about creating assets that create value for your customers. He also offered an alternative to blogging that is podcasting. I have just finished my first year of podcasting and I am about to start a second podcast. As Jantsch discussed building a platform, he also talked about landing pages, social networks, and newsletters.
Another reason for blogging and sharing content is to establish yourself as an authority. As Jantsch noted, writing will help you become a better thinker, listener, and speaker as well as a better writer. He also shared ideas for expanding the use of a blog post. One of the best things I have done is shared transcripts of my podcast episodes. This is a plus one strategy for developing content. Another idea is to send your blog posts to a text to speech application to create an MP3 file that you can also share on your site. Jantsch also included other ways to share your authority such as seeking out speaking events.
Another useful chapter was how to mine your different networks. Jantsch shared strategies for monitoring and engaging various social networks like LinkedIn and Twitter.
Jantsch’s discussion about the Sales Hourglass was interesting. As he noted,
“The key difference between the two Hourglass applications is that while the Marketing Hourglass is broadly focused on an ideal-client persona or description, the Sales Hourglass is focused on an individual prospect or need and operates on a more personal level” (Jantsch, 2014, p. 162).
The Sales Hourglass framework also has seven steps:
- Explore
- Collaborate
- Design
- Define
- Deliver
- Measure
- Engage
Jantsch provided a detailed explanation in his book as well as this article:
- How to Deliver Extreme Value Through a Collaborative Sales Process
- The 7 Steps of the Sales Hourglass
The World of the New Sales Coach
The final section focused on applying these principles as part of a sales team. While there are a lot of great tips in this section, I am a solo operation and thus focused on the first two sections of the book.
If you are running a business or support a business in sales or marketing, you will want to read Duct Tape Selling. I will be going through this book again to tweak some of my processes. As I mentioned earlier, I am a fan of the strategy outlined in this book. I have advocated for working out loud.
Additional Reading
- Book Review: Duct Tape Marketing Revised and Updated: The World’s Most Practical Small Business Marketing Guide
- Book Review: The Referral Engine: Teaching Your Business to Market Itself
- Book Review: They Ask You Answer: A Revolutionary Approach to Inbound Sales, Content Marketing, and Today’s Digital Consumer
- Book Review: Master Content Marketing: A Simple Strategy to Cure the Blank Page Blues and Attract a Profitable Audience
- Books Review: Master Content Strategy: How to Maximize Your Reach and Boost Your Bottom Line Every Time You Hit Publish
- #SMMW17: How to Scale Your Consulting Practice Without Increasing Overhead
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