I read a lot of books in my line of work, but as you may have noticed, I recommend hardly any. However, the best book I have read on selling this year so far is Oren Klaff’s “Pitch Anything.”

When I first heard from my friend Daniel Waldschmidt that I “…had to read this book, it is the best ever…” I was immediately skeptical. I have a lot of respect for Daniel, but he’s a superlative guy and things are measured at “worst” or “best” only with know other evaluation scores considered.

But, he was right.

Klaff takes the reader through his core ideas of gaining the upper hand in tough sales presentations, recognizing dead-ends and idea-stealing meetings. As well as how to keep your composure when the buyer is hoping to break it. Trust me, it’s not all negative and fighting for your life skills training. However, Oren comes from the world of pitching ideas to the jaded venture capitalist and private investor market and these guys are “Shark Tank” on a cocktail of steroids and RedBull™.

If you sell complex deals to very senior executives, you want to download or order this book today. I am working through my 2nd reading of it, (never do that), and I have highlighted something on about every page.

Oren’s site is: http://www.pitchanything.net

You can buy “Pitch Anything” on Amazon:

By Gretel Going

When I asked Tom if he thought his audience would benefit from an article on b-to-b lead generation, his answer was an obvious “yes,” so here I am. I do a ton of web, social media and content work with Tom, and he tells me that people ask him all the time to share some of his savvy trade secrets. Against his better judgment, I’m going to do exactly that in this post. Enjoy…

Most people think of LinkedIn as a great place for networking, researching contacts and searching the job market, but it’s true value as a lead generation tool has yet to be fully realized.

With a highly-engaged community, quality discussions and the ability to generate an incredible amount of traffic and leads, LinkedIn can be an incredible sales tool for b-to-b companies when used strategically. I only wish it hadn’t taken me three years of using it to figure it out.

Before I go into my tips for using LinkedIn, let me clarify: I don’t believe that “So and so sent me a message on LinkedIn and now we’re talkin’ business” qualifies as a case study on using LinkedIn for lead generation. The event must be uniquely limited to the platform at hand, whereas in that example, the same thing could have easily happened over email (or Facebook, or Twitter, or…you get it). Now, if the person got a hold of you on LinkedIn because they happened to see your contribution to a discussion in a group there, or arrived as one of your shared connections, well, that’s another story altogether.

Anyway, I’ll cut to the chase and tell you a few ways we’ve used LinkedIn to generate leads and other business opportunities for ourselves and for clients…

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