Thought Leader Publications, Vancouver, BC

Thought Leader Publications & Training was founded in May of 2006 by Michael Schell and is a continuation of his first company, Marketshare Communications, founded in 2001. Thought Leader helps clients employ research from the “decision maker’s side of the desk” into their business processes to increase sales performance and business results. How We interview professionals from companies across North America to uncover selling techniques that produce winning results. We compile the best of this advice and deliver it to our clients in the form of sales books, customized sales training, sales coaching programs and resources for business owners. The Birth of Buyer-Approved Selling After reading countless books on sales tips and strategies and attending numerous sales training workshops, Mike Schell always asked, “What would a corporate buyer say about that particular selling technique?” Unable to find a book written from the perspective of multiple B2B buyers, he decided to write one himself. In 2001, he harnessed the resources of his corporate call center, Marketshare Communications, and began a 2 year process where his team interviewed 228 corporate decision makers from a wide variety of companies. During this process of cold calling buyers to solicit their help with the research, his team started asking buyers what annoyed them most about cold calls. Out of this was born the Permission-Based Introductory Call, which offsets each annoying approach with a buyer-approved counterpart. Covering all steps of the sales cycle, Buyer-Approved Selling gives sales professionals a competitive edge by training them to sell to decision makers the way they want to be sold to. As you might imagine, communication skills, building trust, respecting time and being impressively prepared are key foundations of the training. The result? A buyer-approved sales strategy you can use with confidence.