As a consultant, author, advisor, and speaker, Scott K. Edinger creates positive change for clients and is recognized as an expert in the intersection of leadership, strategy, and sales. He is the author of The Growth Leader: Strategies to Drive the Top and Bottom Lines.

In this episode, Scott delves into the powerful link between good selling and good leadership. He highlights the significance of persuading others to embrace your vision and strategies as a leader, much like enabling people to invest in the desired outcomes that your product can potentially offer them.

 

Why you have to check out today’s podcast:

• Deep dive into how selling and leadership closely interrelate with each other
• Find out why sales experience is the underrated differentiator
• Learn how expanded solutions make way for higher margins

 

“If you really want to think about pricing, then it's not a spreadsheet exercise. It's an exercise in thinking about how do we create value in the sales process. And that will determine how much you can charge.”

- Scott K. Edinger

 

Topics Covered:

01:24 - How Scott found himself in pricing

02:48 - A backstory of how he started in HR and landed in pricing

03:09 - A deep dive into why selling and leadership are closely related

08:06 - How to sell at a higher margin without too much discounting

10:15 - Questions to ask your team to uncover if they're bringing value to people's sales experience

12:11 - Making customers find aha moments in your offer/service

13:49 - How you make people choose you over competing options

15:16 - Building trust and what it takes to build it at this point in time

17:26 - Discussing about a faulty assumption on the idea of 'land and expand'

19:47 - Sales experience in relation to customer experience in the concept of 'land and expand'

22:08 - What drives expansion

23:51 - The 3 Cs of inspiring and communicating

25:31 - Scott's response to Mark's comment: Here's what I love about those three C's. They ought to be in chapter one

26:04 - Scott giving his best pricing advice

 

Key Takeaways:

"The sales experience is the first mile of the customer experience highway. And if it's not good, people get off at exit one and have a customer experience someplace else." - Scott K. Edinger

"If you want to sell at a higher margin, sell at greater margins or sell expanded solutions, then your ability to help customers to think differently, to help them to see problems that they hadn't anticipated or solutions that they hadn't considered, that part of the sales experience has to be a priority. That can become a differentiator." - Scott K. Edinger

"One of the things that I think really drives it [expansion] is if you recognize the sales execution in your business; sales becomes the execution of your strategy." - Scott K. Edinger

 

People/Resources Mentioned:

• The Growth Leader: Strategies to Drive the Top and Bottom Lines by Scott K. Edinger: https://www.amazon.com/Growth-Leader-Strategies-Drive-Bottom/dp/1799746208
• Sell Is Human: The Surprising Truth About Moving Others by Daniel H. Pink: https://www.amazon.com/Sell-Human-Surprising-Moving-Others/dp/1594631905
• Rethinking the Sales Force: Redefining Selling to Create and Capture Customer Value by Neil Rackham: https://www.amazon.com/Rethinking-Sales-Force-Redefining-Customer/dp/0071342532
• McKinsey: https://www.mckinsey.com
• Gartner Research: https://www.gartner.com/en/products

 

Connect with Scott K. Edinger:

• Website: https://www.scottedinger.com/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/scott-edinger/

 

Connect with Mark Stiving:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stiving/
• Email: [email protected]