As we finished writing this book, we realized that once again we live in a time when salespeople feel they are facing an existential crisis. The world has changed and evolved beyond their recognition, but the expectations placed on them haven't. From the front lines of intercompany relationships, they are witnessing that businesses are rapidly transforming the way they source. This affects corporate salespeople as much as it affects independent professionals trying to build their businesses.

Procurement professionals are marginalizing salespeople by using online search capabilities and analytical tools to gather extensive information long before the first meeting, which now frequently takes place across a virtual negotiating table. These buyers are preying on the fears of salespeople, who suffer under the shadows of uncertainty, industry disruption, and rapidly advancing technology that threatens to displace them. Buyers turn those intimidating shadows into sharp tactical and psychological weapons that can make salespeople vulnerable and predictable.

The most dangerous part of these perceptions, however, is something that will surprise most salespeople, their leaders, and in many cases, their customers too.

They're exaggerated.

In The Invisible Game we have revealed that all sales negotiations involve two games of skill played by both parties simultaneously. We call them the Visible Game and the Invisible Game. Each has its own rules and its own success factors, but traditional sales trainings devote most of their time and energy to the tasks of the Visible Game. Until The Invisible Game, no one had curated the fascinating behavioural, psychological, and neuroscientific insights of the past few decades, weighed them against extensive practical sales experience, and created a unified set of tactics, techniques, and skills that can help salespeople create new advantages and win deals on their terms. The Invisible Game shows salespeople how to enhance their situational awareness, defend against the strategies and tactics of buyers, and play offence in negotiations.

However, we feel we've done more than that. We have also shown salespeople how to carve out a vital role for themselves in their future, not succumb to a diminished one. We've invited you to adopt a new mindset to instil the habits that will help you amass greater power and wield more options than you previously thought you could.

Making the ideas stick

Throughout the book we have captured some of most striking tips and tricks on stylized sticky notes. Along the way, you may have noted some additional insights or come up with your own personal ways to remember or reinforce some ideas. In feedback from countless workshops, salespeople have made one thing very clear: they internalize ideas and recommendations even more effectively when they write their own notes by hand and craft their own prompt materials. For that reason, we suggest that you make ‘sticky’ notes for your own ideas as reinforcement. If you would like to download the notes from the book, please visit www.wiley.comgo heinvisiblegame.