Book details

  • Genre:business & economics
  • Sub-genre:Sales & Selling / General
  • Language:English
  • Series Title:Raise The Bar. Step Up.
  • Series Number:1
  • Pages:300
  • eBook ISBN:9798995778417
  • Paperback ISBN:9798995778400

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Raise the Bar. Step Up.

The Habits of Great Sales Athletes

Overview

Your pipeline is full, and you still don't trust your forecast. The modern business-to-business (B2B) sales profession is not failing because sellers lack tools. It is failing because sellers lack habits.

Raise the Bar. Step Up. teaches seven foundational disciplines across eight chapters: the Why4 Framework, Modern BANT, Call Planning, Strategic Pursuit Planning, the Joint Execution Plan, the Why4 Stress Test, and Pipeline Management. Each discipline includes scored assessments, Health Check diagnostics, and immediately usable templates.

These are the disciplines that become habits, built from Ken Powell's career selling, leading, and scaling revenue at Oracle, Apple, SAP, Honeywell, and Halliburton. Whether you are a chief revenue officer (CRO), a VP building a team, or an individual seller raising your own bar, this book gives you the frameworks to close the gap between the tools you have and the habits you need.

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Description

Your pipeline is full, and you still don't trust your forecast.

The modern business-to-business (B2B) sales profession is not failing because sellers lack tools. It is failing because sellers lack habits. For 20 years, sales leaders have bought customer relationship management (CRM) systems, enablement platforms, and most recently AI tools, while they stopped training the basics of elite selling. Their teams end up over-tooled and under-skilled.

This book brings back the disciplines great sellers used before any of this technology existed, and updates them for today's buyers.

Raise the Bar. Step Up. teaches seven foundational disciplines across eight chapters:

The Why4 Framework: the strategic foundation for understanding why customers buy.
Modern BANT: the discovery and qualification engine that drives everything else.
Call Planning: the discipline of preparation that wins complex deals.
Strategic Pursuit Planning: the one-page attack plan for every significant opportunity.
The Joint Execution Plan: the operating system of the deal, built in partnership with your customer.
The Why4 Stress Test: a structured discipline for pressure-testing your deal strategy before the market does it for you.
Pipeline Management: the discipline of running your pipeline so every deal is visible and every seller is accountable.

Each discipline includes scored assessments and Health Check diagnostics that tell you exactly where you stand and what to work on next. You can read a chapter on Monday morning and use it on your Tuesday call.

These are the disciplines that become habits, built from Ken Powell's career selling, leading, and scaling revenue at Oracle, Apple, SAP, Honeywell, Halliburton, and four software-as-a-service (SaaS) companies where he served as CEO and President. He has worked with thousands of sales professionals across every industry and geography.

Whether you are a chief revenue officer (CRO), a VP building a team, or an individual seller raising your own bar, this book gives you the frameworks to close the gap between the tools you have and the habits you need.

Downloadable tools, templates, and assessments available at salesmethod.com/book.

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About The Author

Ken Powell started as a sales rep at Apple in 1986 and has spent his career since building, running, and measuring strategic accounts in complex business-to-business (B2B) sales. He has led global and key account sales at SAP, Oracle, Halliburton, McAfee, and Honeywell, and served as CEO and President of four software-as-a-service (SaaS) companies ranging from $5 million to $100 million in revenue. He has worked with thousands of sales professionals across every industry and geography. He built the methods in his books in those roles.

He is the author of The Habits of Great Sales Athletes and Own the Account, the first two books in the Raise the Bar. Step Up. series. A third, Own the Room, is in progress. Every chapter teaches the same way: why it matters, how to do it, what to execute, with a scored assessment so you know exactly where you stand.

Ken founded Sales Method (salesmethod.com), his sales excellence practice, where he educates, trains, and coaches B2B sales organizations until the disciplines are habits. He holds a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Boston University, played Division 1 college soccer on scholarship, and has been a member of the Young Presidents' Organization (YPO) since 2002. He lives in Texas.

Throughout his career, Ken Powell observed a pattern that became impossible to ignore: the sales profession was investing heavily in technology while the fundamental disciplines of elite selling were eroding. Customer relationship management (CRM) systems, enablement platforms, and AI tools were multiplying, but win rates, forecast accuracy, and deal velocity were not improving. Sellers had more tools than ever and fewer habits than ever.

That gap is why he founded Sales Method. Through his work with clients from the Fortune 100 to private equity portfolio companies, and with global enterprises across manufacturing, technology, energy, and professional services, he has developed and refined the seven disciplines taught in this book. Ken's conviction is simple: habits beat talent, and habits can be taught, trained, coached, and measured.

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