How Would You Describe Heavy Hitter Selling?
“Heavy Hitter Selling is the best book I've seen with a keen understanding of the mental aspects and psychology of selling. Most people know that people buy from the people they like, but Heavy Hitter Selling teaches you how to identify and persuade key decision makers to buy from you.”

What are your thoughts about Heavy Hitter training?
“Other sales training usually focus on processes and mechanics to succeed. Steve Martin puts the practices outlined in Heavy Hitter Selling to work during the training session. Steve's approach to training is very energetic with practical examples created during the training process involving the participants in the room. The training exercise was very thought provoking and enlightening. In this day when the fundamentals of the relationship sales effort are very hard to teach, Heavy Hitter Selling steps in and fills the void nicely.”

How would you describe Heavy Hitter Selling?
“Heavy Hitter Selling is not just another process-based selling methodology that crowds the sales industry today. It teaches how to build rapport and to be more persuasive in revenue generating activities while improving the customer relationship. Also it is not just for sales people. It provides the fundamental communication characteristics required of marketing, support and the executive management team. This book is a must read for every company that needs to build strong customer relationships in order to maximize revenue.”

What are your thoughts about Heavy Hitter Training?
"Steve Martin is a thought leader for the sales profession. His approach replaces the tired, traditional sales methodologies that we have seen in one version or another in our career. He will motivate you with his provocative knowledge of the sales process. His style is personal, entertaining, and will dazzle your sales organization."

How would you describe Heavy Hitter Selling?
“If you want your sales organization to go from good to GREAT, Steve. Martin will move the needle, instantly! His passion for sales success in contagious. Metavante has already added Steve to our Sales Hall of Fame.”

How would you describe heavy Hitter Selling?
"Since we take the words we say to our customers and employees for granted, we tend to forget the complexity of communication. Heavy Hitter Selling is the owner’s manual for your mouth. I was so impressed with its unique message that I purchased a copy for each of my sales managers. Steve’s follow on presentation to our management team was enlightening, interesting, and equally important--fun!"

Why did you purchase Heavy Hitter Selling?
"We purchased 250 copies of Heavy Hitter Selling and are using it to bring a whole new level of selling to our direct sales organization as well as our professional services and partner organizations. The material covered in the book is excellent."

Marie Cabrera, Enterprise Sales Manager, IBM
With sales over $100 billion, IBM is the world's largest information technology company. IBM Corporation (NYSE:IBM) has approximately 319,000 employees and conducts business in some 170 countries.

How Would You Describe Heavy Hitter Selling?
”Thought provoking. It’s about getting the focus back on the customer. As a sales manager, am I really doing the right things to help my salespeople build customer relationships or have I become too distracted with the “process” of selling?”

What are the biggest challenges your salespeople face today?
”In essence, I run my own business. It’s a $90 million dollar company within a multi-billion dollar conglomerate. My customers are my salespeople and two of the biggest challenges are keeping them motivated and protecting their time. My job is to keep morale high and the internal operational-type activities at a minimum (so that calling on customers is at the maximum).”

What are your thoughts about Heavy Hitter training?
”Most sales training is death by PowerPoint, where the trainer tries to impose their philosophy on the salespeople. This was totally different. It was engaging and completely interactive. Steve pulled out “our” experiences with examples, audience demonstrations, and the “Tales from the field” interview session. The feedback from the entire team was overwhelmingly positive.”

Your comments about Heavy Hitter Selling:
“The Heavy Hitting Selling approach is unique from the standpoint that it makes you focus on the customer’s responses to your emails, calls and face-to-face visits. A salesperson’s time is money and spending that time when you are only “column fodder” in a sales situation can be an important determinant in how you treat the account. It is better to move on to the next deal than to waste your time on those deals where you are only treading water. Heavy Hitter Selling aides in making that important determination in whether that account is genuinely interested in your products and services. I think the ability to read people is of paramount importance in the sales situation and this program provides a great backdrop to assist in that assessment. I would recommend it to all sales individuals. I also think it would work great with management teams who are consistently interacting at different levels throughout the day.”

What Are Your Thoughts on Heavy Hitter Training
“Steve Martin conducted a one-day training session for my sales and services teams. He is an extremely animated person that developed a great rapport with all of the participants. The session was short by design but I think everyone was impressed with the value of his comments on relationship-building. Most salespeople have been inundated with solution selling courses that focus on the typical aspects of the sales process. What was unique about the Heavy Hitter Selling approach is that the focus is on building the relationship and on reading the prospect/customer. The bottom line is that all of my sales people are now much more sensitized to analyzing prospects responses and determining whether is genuine or they are getting the courtesy response that is indicative of no interest.”

Your comments about Heavy Hitter Selling
The Heavy Hitter Selling method sets the foundation and structures the behavior I’m looking for in my sales teams. It is not just SELL, SELL, SELL. It is engaging in customer relationships and using the art of persuasion to change buying behavior. People buy from people and our sales teams’ ability to use the correct language to build the relationship is the most important part of the “Sales Process.”

What Are Your Thoughts on Heavy Hitter Training
The Heavy Hitter Training was excellent. It will help you look into the mirror and make an honest assessment of where the imperfections are. If you are looking for someone to bring clarity to your sweet spot and improve the effectiveness of both your management and sales teams, I’d recommend taking this training as soon as possible.

What are your thoughts about Heavy Hitter Selling?
“Relationships are the key to growing sales. By using the information you share in your book on language to perfect our communication skills, our relationships with our customers will grow and prosper. Thanks for a great wrap-up to our 2005 sales meeting. Everyone is still talking about the exercises. Thanks again…it was awesome!”

Laura Klein, Director Corporate Sales, Echelon
Echelon Corporation (NASDAQ: ELON) is the creator of the LonWorks platform, the world's most widely used standard for connecting everyday devices such as appliances, thermostats, air conditioners, electric meters, and lighting systems to each other and to the Internet. More than 50 million LonWorks enabled processors have been shipped for use in homes, buildings, factories, trains, and other systems worldwide.

How Would You Describe Heavy Hitter Selling?
”Heavy Hitter Selling is different from other sales methods. It focuses on the salesperson-customer relationship and psychology of buying along with the importance of good communication skills. The sales process is shown as building a relationship rather than simply following a methodology of steps to close an order.”

What are the biggest challenges salespeople face today?
”The biggest challenges to salespeople today are the customer's lack of time and the increased competition. Salespeople have to find a way to get those extra moments with customers and differentiate themselves from the pack quickly. The Heavy Hitter Selling method of building customer relationships provides a way to get there.”

What are your thoughts about Heavy Hitter training?
”Heavy Hitter training is extremely valuable for both new and seasoned sales organizations. For the new organization, it is a way to teach "best practices" to grow their business. For a seasoned organization, the training brings a fresh perspective to the sales process and offers many ways to improve.”

Jim Schelble, Senior Vice President of Sales, Werner Enterprises
Werner (NASDAQ: WERN) is one the five largest truckload carriers in the United States with 8,350 tractors, 22,800 trailers, and approximately 13,300 employees. The principal types of freight transported include consumer products, retail store merchandise, food and paper products, industrial products, and building materials.

How would you best describe Heavy Hitter Selling?
”It's about communications… understanding your individual strengths and leveraging those strengths in dealing with customers.”

What are the biggest challenges salespeople face today?
“Getting your value proposition message through to the customer at the same time they are receiving an array of messages from other sources (many of those messages are contrary to the one you want to get across). Heavy Hitter Selling helps you focus on the thought processes and motivations that play key roles in ultimately influencing the buyer.”