Selling is getting tougher for one key reason. Many customers have invested in their procurement function in order to be smarter buyers of goods and services. Ever since the great recession, organizations of all sizes and types have learned to use procurement as a strategic profit lever. Unfortunately, many sales teams haven't figured out how to keep up with this new threat. Often the result is lost sales, margin erosion, and frustrated salespeople. It doesn't have to be this way.Based on direct experience working in procurement leadership for a Fortune 50 business, as well as teaching global procurement, working in key account management, and research, the author provides perspectives for how sales professionals can better understand the modern procurement organization.Originally published as a short booklet in e-book format only, it has now been converted to print form based on many requests (about 65 pages in printed form).It is intended to compliment your existing sales and negotiation methodologies. Get beyond the procurement tactics you see to understand what drives procurement's behaviors. Learn how to spot emerging threats from procurement that could cost you the next deal. Find hidden sales opportunities by understanding procurement's goals. Exploit their fears and needs in your next negotiation. Gain confidence in using your value in selling to procurement. This is a field guide to empower sales professionals to better handle procurement to achieve sales success in an increasingly challenging environment.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The first definitive history of the Mossad, Shin Bet, and the IDF’s targeted killing programs, hailed by The New York Times as “an exceptional work, a humane book about an incendiary subject.” WINNER OF THE NATIONAL JEWISH BOOK AWARD IN HISTORY NAMED ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY JENNIFER SZALAI, THE NEW YORK TIMES NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The Economist • The New York Times Book Review • BBC History Magazine • Mother Jones • Kirkus Reviews The Talmud says: “If someone comes to kill you, rise up and kill him first.” This instinct to take every measure, even the most aggressive, to defend the Jewish people is hardwired into Israel’s DNA. From the very beginning of its statehood in 1948, protecting the nation from harm has been the responsibility of its intelligence community and armed services, and there is one weapon in their vast arsenal that they have relied upon to thwart the most serious threats: Targeted assassinations have been used countless times, on enemies large and small, sometimes in response to attacks against the Israeli people and sometimes preemptively. In this page-turning, eye-opening book, journalist and military analyst Ronen Bergman—praised by David Remnick as “arguably [Israel’s] best investigative reporter”—offers a riveting inside account of the targeted killing programs: their successes, their failures, and the moral and political price exacted on the men and women who approved and carried out the missions. Bergman has gained the exceedingly rare cooperation of many current and former members of the Israeli government, including Prime Ministers Shimon Peres, Ehud Barak, Ariel Sharon, and Benjamin Netanyahu, as well as high-level figures in the country’s military and intelligence services: the IDF (Israel Defense Forces), the Mossad (the world’s most feared intelligence agency), Caesarea (a “Mossad within the Mossad” that carries out attacks on the highest-value targets), and the Shin Bet (an internal security service that implemented the largest targeted assassination campaign ever, in order to stop what had once appeared to be unstoppable: suicide terrorism). Including never-before-reported, behind-the-curtain accounts of key operations, and based on hundreds of on-the-record interviews and thousands of files to which Bergman has gotten exclusive access over his decades of reporting, Rise and Kill First brings us deep into the heart of Israel’s most secret activities. Bergman traces, from statehood to the present, the gripping events and thorny ethical questions underlying Israel’s targeted killing campaign, which has shaped the Israeli nation, the Middle East, and the entire world. “A remarkable feat of fearless and responsible reporting . . . important, timely, and informative.”—John le Carré