Sales and Sales Management Blog

July 14, 2008

Book Review: The Profit Maximization Paradox by Glen S Petersen

Filed under: Book Reviews, business, management, marketing, sales, selling — Paul McCord @ 8:00 am
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It can be dangerous having a marketing book reviewed by someone from the Sales side—we tend to view things from the sales perspective which is often at odds with Marketing. And that ‘at odds’ happens to be exactly what The Profit Maximization Paradox: Cracking the Marketing/Sales Alignment Code (BOOKSURGE Publishing) by Glen S Petersen is about—more specifically, how to turn that ‘at odds’ into cooperation and a coordinated plan that benefits marketing, sales, and most importantly, the company and its customers.

The Profit Maximization Paradox is another in a long line of books that address the divide between Sales and Marketing and seeks to establish a format for bringing the two departments together. A short, easy to read book, The Profit Maximization Paradox isn’t a step-by-step guide. Instead Petersen reviews the problem and tries to point out in more general terms where the solution to the problem lies.

In chapter 5, Marketing/Sales Disconnects, Petersen quotes some anonymous commenters on the disconnect between the departments, one of which pinpoints, from a sales perspective, the issue succinctly:

“Marketing believes the sales force is myopic, i.e., too focused on individual customer experiences, insufficiently aware of the larger market and blind to the future.”

There’s the rub—the two functions have a vastly different view of the world. Marketing addresses the market from a macro point of view while Sales must view the market from a micro point of view. The above quote by a marketing person illustrates the disconnect in stark terms—Marketing expects Sales to view the world from Marketing’s perspective, not from the real world of sales.

The reality of sales is that salespeople don’t have the luxury of taking a broad view of the marketplace. Salespeople don’t deal with the ‘market;” they deal with a prospect, an individual human being with specific needs, wants, and issues. Their job isn’t to appeal to an idealized prospect with the general characteristics of X, Y, and Z. No, they must deal with a flesh and blood prospect that may or may not conform to Marketing’s conception of what a prospect should be.

On the other hand, Sales tends to view Marketing as theoretical and out of touch, a pestering gnat to be swatted away, not an ally to help identify and close sales. Marketing, for many in sales, are the uppity know it alls who couldn’t close a sale if the prospect literally took the paperwork from them, filled it out and handed them a check.

Compounding the issues between Sales and Marketing is the way each department is compensated. Marketing is compensated by salary and bonus—a longer-term strategy, while Sales is compensated by commission, a very short-term strategy.

Petersen argues that with very different perspectives and objectives, it is unrealistic to expect Marketing and Sales to come together to solve the divide. According to Petersen, “it is unlikely that the VPs of Marketing and Sales are going to unilaterally decide to abandon current behaviors in favor of new roles and accountability that will undoubtedly change existing budget allocations and headcount.”

So, are the two departments left forever to their own devices, feuding and wasting resources and opportunities at the expense of the greater good of the company?

Petersen not only doesn’t believe that an option, he believes there is a real solution to the issue—one that can only be resolved through the intervention of the CEO. Trying to patch up the differences between the departments will accomplish little, if anything. What is needed isn’t a truce or even a little more cooperation between the departments, but a radical change in the business model that can only be accomplished through the leadership of the CEO.

The change that Petersen sees is a process that “starts with the customer and progressively creates a number of perspectives that help the organization to rally around a specific strategy and tactics. The organizational driver becomes the profitable delivery of customer value.”

The Profit Maximization Paradox isn’t the final word in the struggle to bring about a real working relationship between Sales and Marketing. But it can be a beginning. Petersen is certainly right that past attempts have failed, that the perspectives of the two departments are so divergent that left on their own they will not—cannot—come together. With that in mind, a higher authority must take the reigns. Mandating change won’t work—but very possibly a new vision, a new focus that encompasses and coordinates each department—and the rest of the organization as well–might.

July 9, 2008

Dave Stein’s Review of Creating a Million Dollar a Year Sales Income: Sales Success through Client Referrals

Filed under: Book Reviews, Referral Selling, lead generation, marketing, prospecting, sales, sales training, selling — Paul McCord @ 6:48 am
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Referral Selling: An Old Silver Bullet, Revitalized

By Dave Stein

If you visit the best sales blog sites, you’ll no doubt stumble upon Paul McCord. Paul has a lot to say about an old silver bullet-referral selling.

I call referral selling “old” only because the practice of leveraging existing customer relationships has been around for decades. In fact, not enough sales people build this potentially powerful lead generation strategy into their overall territory management approach. (There are reasons for that. Among them are unhappy, unreferenceable customers, fear and simply not knowing how to referral sell.)

I’ve been pretty tough on sales tips books and articles. With that in mind, referral selling skills (like presentation skills and typing skills) can be independent of any sales methodology.

Paul’s book, Creating a Million Dollar a Year Sales Income - Sales Success Through Client Referrals provides a comprehensive view of the subject. His intent is to guide the reader into deploying a referral-based business model. Although Paul’s background is in financial services, where referral selling is more widely used, his strategies and tactics can be applied across pretty much any industry.

Paul’s PWWR (pronounced “power”) system is the key. Plant the seeds, Water them throughout the sale, Weed out any issues, and Reap the referrals. This is Paul’s recommended process and it makes a lot of sense. Although I have not employed Paul’s PWWR process, I can envision it working very well in diverse situations. He’s done a terrific job.

Here is my recommendation for sales leaders. (A full-fledged plan will contain considerably more detail-this is just a starting point….)

  1. If your sales team hasn’t been effectively leveraging existing customers for referrals, determine why.
  2. Benchmark the level at which referrals business is being converted to sales.
  3. If the reason is that (you and) your salespeople don’t know how, invest in this book.
  4. Take the time to study Paul’s referral process and his recommendations.
  5. Set an objective. For example, referrals will be the source of 10% of our business next year.
  6. Devise a plan for adopting his process across your team.
  7. Build appropriate coursework, tools, coaching mechanisms. (This is a difficult proposition for a busy sales manager. You probably don’t have either the time or the skills. I’m sure Paul would be delighted to engage with you on this…)
  8. Train your team or get them trained.
  9. Deploy the process, measure results against your benchmark and objective and refine.

Dave Stein is an internationally recognized thought leader in the area of sales performance, sales effectiveness and especially sales training. He writes the Smart Sales column for Sales and Marketing Management magazine, is the author of How Winners Sell, and is Founder and CEO of ES Research Group, an independent firm offering independent, authoritative intelligence about sales training and the companies that provide it.

Read reviews of Creating a Million Dollar a Year Sales Income by ChangingMinds.org, AllBooks Reviews, Selling Power Magazine, Dave Lakhani, and Frank Rubauskas here.

May 20, 2008

Book Review: The Sales Operator: Insider’s Guide to Successful Selling, by Brian J. Bieler

Filed under: Book Reviews, career development, sales, selling — Paul McCord @ 8:09 am
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Brain Bieler in The Sales Operator: Insider’s Guide to Successful Selling (Little Falls Press, 2008), states that “salespeople will not read. . . . Forget about salespeople reading what is new and happening, they won’t even read what is already published. . . . (they) are more likely to be scan readers than document digesters.”  True to his belief about salespeople, The Sales Operator is purposely designed to be an easy scan read.

Although the book is 190 pages in length, it reads like a 90 page book because of the number of lists and very large print highlights scattered throughout the book.  Why mention this detail of the book?  Because it is the biggest criticism I have with the book.

Bieler’s message is mostly on target.  He discusses the issues associated with the commoditization of products and services, the need to become more professional in the way salespeople perform their jobs, communication strategy, managing time, setting goals, and a number of other critical areas that salespeople must address.  Yet, because of his belief that you won’t read, meaning he must keep things short and easy to scan, there is little real substance to the chapters.

That isn’t to say there isn’t any substance, just not enough for most salespeople to be able to pick up the book, read it, and then implement any solid strategies in their business.  The guidance he gives is very broad, leaving huge gaps that you’ll have to fill in on your own.  For an experienced salesperson that may not be a serious issue, for new salespeople, those gaps may make the book virtually useless.

If you’re interested in gaining a glimpse of many of the areas you must master to become a top sales producer, The Sales Operator will give you that glimpse with a little bit of direction thrown in.  If you want to take that glimpse and turn it into a strategy that can help you increase your business, you’ll need to look elsewhere.

If you fit Bieler’s view of salespeople–that you won’t read, The Sales Operator is designed specifically with you in mind.  In fact, it is probably the ideal book for you.  On the other hand, if you are interested in going beyond the headline and getting into the meat of the issues discussed, look for a more comprehensive book on how to build a solid sales business.

May 8, 2008

Book Review: PeopleSavvy for Sales Professionals by Gregory Stebbins, Ed.D.

Filed under: Book Reviews, Client Relationships, Personal Marketing, marketing, sales, sales psychology, selling — Paul McCord @ 7:00 am
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Seldom do I read a book that I consider to be dangerous. Certainly, there are books that once read, you think, “Wow! I hope a new salesperson doesn’t get hold of this and think this is what sales is all about.” We’ve all read the books, the ones that advocate heavy doses of manipulation, browbeating the customers, twisting their arm, hog tying them until they give in.

Nevertheless, PeopleSavvy For Sales Professionals (Savvy Books, 2007) by Gregory Stebbins, Ed.D. is a dangerous book of a different kind, a danger that Stebbins immediately acknowledges in his introduction. PeopleSavvy deals with the psychological strategies and techniques of selling and developing trust—strategies and techniques that can be used to help create a bond–or to manipulate and deceive.

In the right hands, the book can open new ways to build relationships quickly. In the wrong hands, it can reveal ways to out fox, out maneuver, and out and out manipulate. The responsibility for the information’s use lies with the reader, Dr. Stebbins has simply shown how understanding your prospect’s behavior and thinking can help you connect—and an unfortunate byproduct is to show others how they can manipulate.

Stebbins’ thesis is that if your prospects don’t trust you, you cannot sell effectively. That thesis springboards Stebbins in a discussion of how you can read your prospect’s movements, her words, how he dresses, what she has on the walls of her office—even the position of the items in his office, and use that information to build a deeper connection more quickly with the prospect, gaining their confidence and trust at the same time.

Although the book is quite detailed on the ‘how’ to read your prospects behavior and the other telltale signs to help build trust, Stebbins breaks trust into two parts and feeds them to us in bite sized morsels.

Trust is comprised of ‘Rapport’, which itself is made up of compassion, connection and credibility, and ‘Deep Trust,’ which is comprised of competence, commitment and consistency. Stebbins takes the reader through each of these individual components of Rapport and Deep Trust and how each must play a role in developing a relationship of trust with your prospect.

He then journeys through how motivation, communication and behavior can reveal the avenues to developing the rapport and trust you must have to develop a lasting relationship with your prospect.

From mirroring behavior to matching speech patterns and words to understanding personality types to how the prospect thinks and operates, PeopleSavvy covers the gamut from not only understanding your prospect’s behavior, to how they think and why they think the way they do.

Filled with stories and examples, PeopeSavvy is an easy to read—harder to apply—book whose insights, strategies and techniques are grounded in the works of those, including Stebinns, who have spent years studying sales, marketing, and industrial psychology.

If you want to understand how to get inside the head of your prospects and clients, PeopleSavvy will help open the door to their minds. Whether what you learn is dangerous or not depends on your intent and use.

April 9, 2008

Book Review: Secrets of Question Based Selling, by Thomas A. Freese

Filed under: Book Reviews, Sales Process — Paul McCord @ 6:19 am
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How do you connect with and engage prospects and clients?  How do you gather the basic information you need in order to create interest and curiosity?  How do you find and highlight their needs or wants?  How do you determine what your prospect is thinking and what concerns they might have?

More than likely you use questions, at least to some extent.

Since you’re already using questions and since you’ve been taught to never ask a closed-end question and you’ve mastered the art of the open-ended question, why should you pick up Thomas A. Freese’s, Secrets of Question Based Selling: How the Most Powerful Toll in Business Can Double Your Sales Results (Sourcebooks, 2003)?  Because much of what you’ve been taught about questions and questioning is just flat wrong according to Freese.

Secrets of Question Based Selling (QBS) is obviously a book about questions and the art of using them to engage your prospect.  But it is far more than a book about questioning; it’s a book about effective selling and how to use questions to prick interest, discover information, engage and feed the needs of multiple participants in the decision making process, get past gatekeepers, get a return call when you leave a voice mail message, and to close the sale.

QBS isn’t just a book about questions.  Naturally, Freese discusses questions and questioning in great detail.  He lays out a number of types of questions and their uses.  He gives examples of both effective and ineffective questions.  He relates stories of question success—and question failure.  He addresses erroneous traditional question training such as to ask open-ended questions only.  He demonstrates the power of a well-crafted question–and how ill conceived questions lead to self-inflected wounds.

However, if you look at Secrets of Question Based Selling as a book about questions, you miss the power and essence of Freese’s message.  At its core, QBS isn’t really about asking questions.  It’s about understanding human nature and formulating a sales process that emanates from understanding who people are, how they think, how they respond, and what captures their attention and addresses their needs.

Secrets of Question Based Selling is one of a long line of books written over the past two and half decades that tries to set out a rational, workable, effective sales process for the complex sale.  The complex business-to-business sale has been the primary focus of sales process trainers for the last decades with little attention given to the less complex business-to-business and business-to-consumer sale.

Although designed for and directed toward the complex sale, many of the strategies and techniques in these sales process books are applicable to other types of sales situations although the authors seldom, if ever, address those situations.  Freese, to his credit, doesn’t ignore the vast majority of salespeople who are not engaged in complex solution selling.  He gives examples from the less lofty world of sales and even an example or two from the world of the one-time close sale.

The sales process Freese sets forth covers the gamut of prospect contract, from initial call to the close of the sale.  The primary tool used is questions but the foundation is an understanding of how people respond during the process of considering a purchase of any type, any size—and that basic human nature is the same for the company contemplating a twenty million dollar purchase as the couple contemplating a twenty thousand dollar purchase.

Whether you sell health insurance in a one-time close sale to mom and pop or the most sophisticated high tech services to Fortune 50 companies, Secrets of Question Based Selling is filled with gems that will help you connect with your prospects.  You may not choose to adopt the entire sales process Freese presents—the process in its entirety isn’t right for everyone or every situation, you cannot read the book and not walk away without having improved your ability to engage your prospect and your clients—and earn more money.

March 21, 2008

Book Review: Managing Sales Leads by James Obermayer

Filed under: Book Reviews, lead generation, marketing, sales — Paul McCord @ 5:45 am
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Let me start by disclosing my personal perspective—I’m a sales guy, not a marketing guy.  I mention that because when reading anything relating to lead generation I’m constantly examining the information, recommendations, and workability of content from a sales perspective, not a marketing perspective.  Reading Managing Sales Leads: Turning Cold Prospects into Hot Customers (South-Western Educational Publishers, 2007), by James Obermayer was not an exception.

As a sales trainer and sales consultant, I’ve had the opportunity to work with salespeople and sales departments of a good number of companies and to see a wide variety of efforts to manage the leads generated by marketing.  Unfortunately, for the majority of these companies, using the term ‘sales lead management’ is almost laughable.  Not that there isn’t some effort—it is simply futile effort.

I often hear complaints about lead generation from all sides.  Sales complains about the quality and freshness of the leads; marketing complains that they send leads to the sales department and then never hear another word about them; executive management complains that they’re spending a great deal of money on lead generation but have no idea for what—marketing shows them a huge stack of leads, sales complains they’re worthless, and finance or accounting complains that the cost is unjustified.

This isn’t to say that there aren’t companies that have somehow managed to work through the problems and solve them.  I’ve been fortunate to work with some of them also.  Not many—but a few.

With that as my starting point, I was somewhat skeptical of Managing Sales Leads.  It would probably turn out to be either a pie-in-the-sky theoretical treatise filled with graphs and charts—and totally useless information in the real world or it would pontificate on how ROI on lead generation COULD be managed if it weren’t for the miscreants in sales screwing everything up through their refusal to cooperate.

I was absolutely wrong.

Managing Sales Leads: Turning Cold Prospects into Hot Customers aims to resolve three critical issues in lead generation:

Lead Quality:  One of the main objections salespeople have to working leads generated by marketing is the quality and freshness of the leads.  The single most common complaint I hear from salespeople regarding the leads they receive is that the leads really aren’t leads; they’re simply unqualified names and phone numbers.  Marketing, in the humble opinion of the salespeople, has no idea of what a real lead is.  For marketing, the salespeople believe, any piece of paper, phone call, or any other inquiry is a lead.  Marketing pops out a name somehow and it’s the sales department’s problem to find out if they are a genuine prospect.

Obermayer not only recognizes the issue, he sets out in detail how marketing can, through the use of inquirer questioning, not only pre-qualify a lead, but rate the lead’s quality prior to submitting it to sales.

In addition, he works through the lead distribution process, showing where leads get held up and, more importantly, how to uncork the bottlenecks that keep leads from reaching the sales force in a timely manner.  As he points out, sales leads are a perishable commodity, making freshness a major issue—and one that is the bane of many, if not most, companies.

Lead Cost vs Return:  The ever-present issue with upper management—why are we spending all these dollars on leads?  Although not a marketing only issue—sales is often put on the spot to justify what they do with leads, marketing is saddled with problem of justifying the money allocated to their lead generation efforts.  Whether through direct mail, cold calling, advertising, their web presence, or any other method they use, they are constantly under the microscope by upper management.

Most often, according to Obermayer, when marketing is asked to justify the investment the answer is, in essence, “trust us, it’s working, we just can’t prove it in terms of dollars and cents.”   When pressed further to specify where the leads are coming from and which channels are producing the best results, the answer is a blank stare.

Those blank stares and “trust us” responses no longer need be tolerated by management, according to Managing Sales Leads.  The book sets out a workable process for identifying and quantifying the return on investment of each and every lead generation channel marketing pursues.

This isn’t to say the process is easy, it’s to say the process is workable and realistic.  Relying on a software program to solve the problem—as promised by many software companies—is unrealistic.  Although Obermayer discusses the benefits of such programs, he points out what should be obvious but is so often overlooked—the data the program spits out is only as useful as the data marketing allows it to produce.  Then the data must be interpreted by someone who knows what to do with it.  Interpreting the data and making decisions based on that data is the real key to tracking lead ROI.

Yet, the final problem remains.  How can marketing track the data and make rational decisions—and justify the investment, if sales isn’t doing their part by giving full and accurate lead tracking information?

Marketing/Sales Cooperation:  Getting the sales department to follow-up on and track the final disposition of leads has always been a major issue for marketing.  Although earlier I mentioned that one of the reasons has been salespeople’s view that the leads generated weren’t worth the effort because the leads themselves weren’t qualified, Obermayer recognizes that simply beginning to supply qualified leads won’t solve the problem.

Even though the quality of leads given to sales is a serious issue, even more fundamental to gaining their cooperation is how marketing and sales interact.  The vast majority of salespeople I’ve spoken with in many, many companies have no interest in helping marketing track the disposition of leads because it’s a marketing issue, not a sales issue.  In other words, salespeople don’t feel any connection to the process—there’s no ownership on their part.  They are simply given leads and then the demand comes from marketing: “you will report on what happens with these leads.”

Demanding cooperation, complete with threats, achieves little to nothing.  Instead of demanding, Obermayer argues, a full and complete explanation of why a full reporting is necessary and why and how it benefits the salesperson—more and better leads in the future, meaning more sales and income—can not only gain cooperation, but gain buy-in by the sales team.  Once they have some ownership in the success of the program, their interest level and desire to see the process work becomes real.  Not that Obermayer eliminates the possibility of threats, because he doesn’t.  However, demanding and threatening by themselves won’t get the results that voluntary cooperation through a recognition of why reporting benefits the salespeople will get.

Certainly if you’re in marketing or sales management, you should read Managing Sales Leads.  Geared to mid to large companies, any company that generates leads—even the smallest company with any type of lead generation program—will benefit from the book.  Even individual salespeople who use direct mail, advertising and other lead generation channels can find enough benefit from the concepts and strategies outlined by Obermayer to justify the purchase of the book.

February 26, 2008

Book Review: “High Probability Selling,” by Jacques Werth and Nicholas E Ruben

Filed under: Book Reviews, Sales Process, sales, selling — Paul McCord @ 5:58 am
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Why in the world would I be reviewing a book that’s been on the market for more than 15 years?  Why not stick with far more recently published items? 

Legitimate questions.  Ones I asked myself when I began to think seriously about writing a review of the book.  I had read the book a number of years ago.  When I received a new copy of High Probability Selling (Abba Publishing, 2000) by Jacques Werth and Nicholas Ruben, I had no intention of writing a review—wanted to keep the reviews to more recently published stuff, after all the book has had a decade and a half to prove itself. 

Yet, when I began to skim the book, I was reminded of some of the influences it has had on my thinking over the years, so I decided to read it again in detail.  As I did, the idea of writing a current review became stronger and stronger until—well, here it is.

When I first picked this book up several years ago, I almost didn’t get past the first couple of pages.  It had, in my opinion, too many things going against it:  it was self-published (at a time when self-publishing was worse than not being published at all); the text was presented as a conversation between a salesperson just learning High Probability selling and others in his company (sorry, this format still drives me nuts); and the print was too large for a ‘serious’ book (not “See Jane Run’ big, but almost twice the size of a standard business book big). 

A trite basis to make a judgment on a book?  Of course.  But I was only judging whether or not to read it, not whether it was good or not.  Hay, I was young and foolish.  Now, I’m much older—and still foolish, but now I have the laugh and frown lines to indicate my foolishness has been well earned. 

Nevertheless, despite what I saw as the book’s immediate drawbacks, I read it.  And I’m certainly glad I did.

The basic thesis of High Probability Selling is—sell prospects who want to buy what you are selling and don’t bother with the others.  Earth shattering, right?  Hardly.  Yet, how many selling processes try to do just what High Probability Selling advocates against?  How many processes are geared toward trying to convince prospects that they really need or want what you’re selling, whether they really do or not?

As common sense as High Probability Selling is, it goes against the grain of so much that is commonly taught in sales.  There’s no overcoming objections, no closing, no wrestling an appointment out of a prospect, no pressure to buy, no confrontation, no rejection. 

So, what is there?  There’s a progression of process that is constantly examining the prospect to determine whether the chance of making a sale is high or low.  If the chances are low, the salesperson politely goes his or her own way, seeking a more high probability prospect. 

The basic idea is a good one, though probably not appropriate for all industries and situations.  High Probability Selling makes a few assumptions: 
•  There are so many prospects available who want to purchase your product or service now that you need not waste time with prospects who aren’t currently ready to buy
•  All prospects will qualify, more correctly disqualify, themselves quickly.  Those who don’t answer your questions appropriately are low probability prospects, so move on. 
•  Persuasion of any kind, in any situation is bad, bad, bad.  Worse than bad.  Hannible Lechner-evil bad.
•  Allowing the prospect to disqualify himself quickly is good for the prospect as it is for the salesperson.

Most everyone can think of situations where the above assumptions are wrong.  However, in most situations we salespeople find ourselves, they are quite reasonable.  The exceptions are rare and most are situation specific exceptions rather than industry specific—with the obvious exception of the first assumption where there are many industries with a very limited and often tightly knit group of prospects. 

The above attributes of High Probability Selling are not what I consider the books greatest contribution.  As I mentioned earlier, the book has had a good deal of influence on my thinking.  That influence comes from a concept the book describes as establishing a customer’s Conditions of Satisfaction. 

For the last decade or two, more and more companies and individual salespeople have been touting their ability to exceed their client’s expectations.  So many companies and salespeople spout the words that you’d think there couldn’t possibly be a dissatisfied customer in America.  Nevertheless, few if any of these companies and salespeople can possibly exceed their client’s expectations because they have no idea what the client expects.  Why?  They never ask.

No so with High Probability Selling.  More than anything else in the book, I appreciate Werth’s and Ruben’s emphasis on establishing in writing exactly what the customer wants and expects.  Exceeding a customer’s expectations?  Finally, yes you can.  You can if you implement the Conditions of Satisfaction section of the book because you will be one of the few salespeople or companies who really know what your customer expects.  You can because you know, where your competitors can claim but always fail because they have no earthly idea what an individual customer expects.

Not only does establishing the client’s Conditions of Satisfaction allow you to finally meet your client’s expectations, more importantly, it flushes out any unrealistic expectations.  No longer will you discover to your dismay in the middle of the process that your customer had expectations that you could not possibly meet.  Those days of sales falling apart or leaving a customer angry can be over.

Whether you fully adopt the process or not, few will be able to walk away from High Probability Selling without having to seriously consider their current sales process in light of what is presented. 

Older book?  Yes.  Still worth the time and effort?  Absolutely.

Paul McCord may be reached at pmccord@mccordandassociates.com

February 11, 2008

Book Review: Sales Essentials by Stephan Schiffmann

Filed under: Book Reviews, sales, selling — Paul McCord @ 7:47 am
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If you’re a Stephen Schiffman fan, you’ll love his new book, Sales Essentials (Adams Media, 2008).  However, if you’re looking for anything other than the most basic of old school sales information you’ll be very disappointed.

Schiffman’s book is concerned with exactly what the title of the book states—the most basic essentials of selling–as practiced old school 70’s and 80’s style. 

The basic premise of the book is stated at the very beginning of the first chapter–cold calling is the heart and soul of successful selling and to be successful in sales you must master the techniques and strategies of effective cold calling. 

As a cold calling training expert, Schiffman spends the first third of the book setting the stage and training on how to cold call.  The remainder of the book is a collection of short chapters on various aspects of what to do after the appointment has been set, how to make a presentation, overcome objections, close a sale, and effectively use email.

Although over 350 pages long, it is written in short, staccato chapters.  It’s an easy read, demands little of the reader, and the short chapters make it ideal for squeezing in some training time during short breaks or at odd moments. 

The biggest disappointment in the book is its lack of fleshing out the principles taught.  Examples are given throughout the book, however each chapter is so short the content is truncated, forcing the reader to do a considerable amount of reading between the lines—something a new salesperson would be hard pressed to do unless they already knew the information being presented.

For the new salesperson or those who are simply trying to figure out how to generate some immediate business, Sales Essentials is a book that can provide the basis to help get some sales in the door.  That being said, it would probably be more helpful to purchase a book—more realistically books—that offer a more detailed analysis of each step of the sales process.

And if your career is past the “what is cold calling” stage, you’ll be better off seeking a more advanced text.

February 3, 2008

Book Review: What Your Customer Wants You to Know by Ram Charan

Filed under: Book Reviews, Sales Process, Sales Resources, sales, selling — Paul McCord @ 8:02 am
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We live in an increasing commoditized world.  Almost any product or service you can think of has been or is in the process of being turned into a simple commodity.  And the heart of commodization is, of course, price.  Who can produce the best at the cheapest price becomes the driving question for consumer decisions—and the supplier’s decisions as well.

Ram Charan’s central question in What The Customer Wants You to Know (Penguin Group, 2007) is how can a company break out of the commodization spiral and set themselves apart as a premium supplier with premium pricing—and thrive.

Charan’s solution is a sales process he calls Value Creation Selling (VCS).  A distinctly business-to-business sales process, VCS in essence takes Solution Selling a new level—and adds layers at the same time.

Selling as currently practiced, says Charan, is broken, outdated, and ultimately a losing proposition for companies using any traditional sales model.  The solution is, naturally, VCS.

Rather than focusing on discovering a customer need and creating a solution to the need, VCS seeks to discover not only the customer’s problem but also how that problem affects the customer’s revenue and profitability and then seeks to create a solution that adds revenue to the client company.  In other words, the supplier becomes a partner with the client to help the client increase sales, increase revenue and increase profitability.  By thus showing the prospect how your solution not only resolves a need but also adds value to the company’s bottom-line by helping to increase revenue, you become not only the preferred vendor, but the preferred vendor with a premium price.

The crux of VCS selling is a team approach with the salesperson as the team leader.  The team will consist of individuals from a number of departments, from marketing to finance to legal, all working together to gather a great deal of detailed information about the prospect, the way the prospect currently does business, the prospect’s financial situation, and even the prospect’s customers.  The goal is to understand the prospect’s business so well that a solution can be tailored for the prospect that impacts the prospect’s bottom-line by not only possibly decreasing costs associated with their current need—but that actually adds revenue in some manner.

This team approach requires the salesperson to take on new roles, learn new skills and develop keen analytical and diagnostic abilities.  It requires developing multi-layered relationships within the prospect company where the salesperson and team members not only identify decision makers but also influencers—and develop relationships based on trust with them all.  It requires a new view of what selling is, what a solution is, what a prospect’s needs are.
Charan’s process is long-term.  According to his experience in helping companies convert to a VCS sales process, the conversion will take about three years from start to a fully functioning VCS company.  In addition he warns, the conversion process not only takes dedication and patience, it’s expensive.

And the sales process itself takes much longer than most company’s current sales cycle.  If you currently have a long cycle—it will get longer.  If you currently have a relatively short cycle, it will become much, much longer.

The value of VCS according to Charan is threefold:
•  Higher pricing and profitability
•  More loyal and committed clients
•  Implementing a process that is difficult, long-term and costly means few competitors will have the patience and dedication to compete on the same level

Again, being upfront, Charan readily admits the process isn’t for every company or every market.  Only after careful evaluation can companies make an informed decision as to whether they want to travel down this road.  But his promise is that if the process has been well thought-out, the commitment unwavering, and the buy-in to the program universal from the CEO down, the process will change not only the focus of the company, it will change the fortunes of the company like no other process can.

Even though the above may make it sound like What The Customer Wants You To Knowis another book for the complex sale, Charan gives examples of the use of the process from a number of industries, from complex sale industries to mass marketed consumer product suppliers. 

In the end, Charan’s process is interesting.  Not only will it only be implemented by a few companies, in reality it can only be implemented by a few.  The commitment, costs and patience needed to implement the process and wait for the payoff will prove to be too costly for many, too unwieldy for others, and too complex for most.  In reality, CVS is a process that is probably suited for smaller companies engaged in highly complex sales.  Trying to rebuild a large corporation would more than likely prove to be a nightmare, and seeking to convert a company in a short cycle, highly commoditized industry would probably prove to be more costly than its worth. 

 The question is, ultimately, is it a process that will work and produce the desired results.  According to Charan, it already has for numerous companies.  And, yes, it does appear to be a viable process–yet again, one with limited application as a fully implemented process.  Few companies no matter the size or industry will rebuild their company from the ground up.

Yet even with these limitations, the book is worth reading.  Although the process may not be adopted, many of Charan’s observations about the current state of sales and prospect interaction are worth the price of the book alone.  And those who choose not to implement the process can still find some strategies worth adopting within their existing selling model. 

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