The bestselling author of Love Is the Killer App unveils a methodology that sales managers and account executives can use to solve their team’s toughest problems by combining the wisdom and creativity of everyone who has a stake in the sale.

B2B sales reps often find that their deals get stuck at a crucial point in the decision-making process. This book is Tim Sanders’s guide to breaking through the resistance and getting the deal unstuck using a scalable, repeatable process that he calls Dealstorming . By including a diverse group of individuals in the organization who has a stake in the sale, questioning existing assumptions, and channeling the collective experience of the group, sales teams can uncover creative solutions to closing otherwise impossible deals. In Sanders’s experience as a sales executive and consultant, utilizing this process has led to a stunning 70 percent close ratio.

Take, for example, the way Alyssa Wichman of CareerBuilder used dealstorming to break a deadlock with staffing firm Allegis. When she found out that Allegis was sponsoring a golf tournament to raise money for their favorite nonprofit, she and her team sat down to come up with ways to meet the Allegis executives there, going so far as to take over manning a beer cart on the course to speak with the execs on the ninth hole. They were impressed she’d gone to such lengths to have a few minutes with them, so they agreed to a meeting the following week.

She brought cupcakes to the meeting, purposely not bringing enough for all the attendees. As the lucky ones nibbled away, she explained that the cupcakes represented human-resource allocation at one of their clients’ firms, and in this case, there was a shortfall. This situation is what CareerBuilder could help them avoid in the future. The tactic had a visceral impact on everyone-especially those who didn’t get a cupcake. Within just a few months, the biggest deal in Career Builder’s history was struck.

Though she’s certainly smart and inspired, Alyssa didn’t plan and execute her Allegis approach by herself. In reality, she organized and led a cross-functional CareerBuilder team, from various departments, in a highly structured process to collaborate and solve a signficant challenge and move the deal along. They questioned assumptions about what was holding their deal back, came up with creative solutions to win back a disappointed client, and ultimately succeeded thanks to their perseverance in using the Dealstorming method.

Sanders explains how dealstorming works to break a deal deadlock, how to organize a successful dealstorming session, and how to use your results to move a client to the next stage of the sales cycle. Sanders combines narratives and examples from real dealstorming events with prescriptive advice for sales managers and account executives.