Rethinking the Sales Force: Redefining Selling to Create and Capture Customer Value
Author: Neil Rackham, John R. Devincentis
List Price: $24.95
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ISBN: 0071342532
Publisher: McGraw-Hill Trade (15 January, 1999)
Sales Rank: 10,428
Average Customer Rating: 4.29 out of 5
Customer Reviews
Rating: 5 out of 5
"Value-Driven" Thinking
When an organization's sales are flat or declining, it is understandable for those responsible to ask "What to do about sales?" Here is a book which addresses a much more important question: "How to think about sales?" In a previous book, Rackham correctly stressed the importance of asking questions according to an acronym, SPIN: Situation, Problem, Implication, and Need-Fulfillment. In this book, he and Devincentis differentiate among three different categories of customer (Intrinsic Value, Extrinsic Value, and Strategic Value), explaining why (and how) the cultivation and solicitation process for each must be "customized" (pun intended) in direct response to their respective needs and interests. The common element (as always) is value. What is it? How can it be verified? How can it be increased? And perhaps one of the most important but least understood questions: So what? What Rackham and Devincentis correctly assert is that when sales are flat, declining or even increasing, it is imperative to "re-think" whatever sales strategies and tactics are now used. (Here's a situation in which the SPIN framework can be especially helpful.), And do so in terms of HOW value is pereceived by each customer. Those perceptions are the most urgent sales realities. It is also important to remember that today's Intrinsic Value Customer may soon be motivated primarily by extrinsic or strategic considerations. The authors offer an intellectual infrastructure within which to ask the most important questions about sales. Although the same questions must continue to be asked, many (most?) answers which are correct today may soon be inadequate, if not flat-out wrong. How well you think and then re-think will determine how well you do.
Rating: 2 out of 5
Disappointing
I really came prepared to read a terrific book. I think a great deal of Rackham's book SPIN Selling; it was based in some surprising research, and offered a detailed "how to" for those interested in mastering complex sales. Based on my strong endorsement as a marketing professor and later as a manager, I have doubtless sold many hundreds of copies of SPIN selling for Rackham. But this one is not very good.This new book is disappointing because it reads like boilerplate McKinsey stuff. It is superficial, weakly case-based (I say weakly because they aren't cases per se but little illustrative vignettes or examples from the authors' consulting experience, or reading, or both), and even in some cases already out of date. Wordy, too.
I can see some use for the book, especially if you are fairly new to the world of sales force management. For example, if you have never really thought about whether your clients are seeking "transactional," "consultative," or "enterprise" selling processes, this will define them for you and point out that what is appropriate for one is not appropriate for another.
If you want some advice on how to organize and deliver one or the other of those strategies, the book offers some guidance, again in a fairly general and superficial way.
Rackham is an author whose knowledge I respect, and from whom I would have expected something new to say. That is why, although I don't like to say it, I cannot recommend this book to anyone with more than a passing knowledge of salesforce management.
Rating: 2 out of 5
Disappointment
While Rackham's other books have been thought provoking and practical, this book falls short. Unless you're a salesperson for a multi-billion dollar corporation, this book is of little value. If this had been Rackham's first book and SPIN second, I probably would not have read Rackham's other books. Similar Products
The S.P.I.N. Selling Fieldbook: Practical Tools, Methods, Exercises and Resources
New Strategic Selling: Unique Sales System Prven Successful By World's
SPIN Selling
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Book Index