Selling is Dead: Moving Beyond Traditional Sales Roles and...

Features

• Cover Type: Hard Cover with 320 pages
• Published by: Wiley June 22, 2005
• Written in: English
• ISBN 10 Number: 0471721115
• ISBN 13 Number: 978-0471721116
• Book Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.2 x 1.2 inches
• Weighs: 1.1 pounds

Product Description
A manifesto for reinventing the sales function
Selling Is Dead argues that selling teams and growth-motivated organizations must change to remain competitive. It presents a new selling framework based on research that indicates that buyer behavior can be modeled and that large sales and small sales are fundamentally different. This new framework provides salespeople with a practical structure for giving buyers significantly more value for their dollar-value well beyond the products and services being sold. Rather than focusing on one selling model, regardless of the type of sale, this book offers four different types of large sales and presents specific strategies for succeeding at each. Many sales organizations are systematically mismanaging their selling opportunities and failing to optimize their markets. Through effective selling models, illustrative case studies and examples, and real-world anecdotes, Selling Is Dead brings strategy and efficiency to sales-and shows every sales-based business how to reap the rewards.

Download Description
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Reader Reviews
"Selling is Dead" is one of ten best books on sales effectiveness published in the United States in the past twenty years. It makes a strong contribution to sales effectiveness for sales reps and sales managers who are involved in complex sales in major accounts. It is especially valuable for companies that sell innovative solutions. Because of its focus on selling innovative solutions, the book cites examples that tend to be skewed toward sales of technical solutions and especially of information technology. But the book also carries useful advice for selling less innovative products and services. Of course selling isn't dead, literally. But it's changing in major ways, the authors say. Sales teams are underperforming because they are ineffective. The cost of sales people has risen much higher than their productivity. If selling isn't exactly dead, it's broken. The authors say the main reason is that sellers are generally unable to cope with the quickening pace of innovation. "Sales teams rarely falter when selling commodities because buyers see commodities as safe, comfortable, existing applications," they say. "However, once a company's core business has matured and the market for those commoditized offerings has become saturated, organizations must turn to innovation for growth and survival. Unfortunately, there is powerful evidence that the transition of sales teams from selling commodities to selling innovative new platforms is difficult and fraught with failure. The real challenge in selling is selling innovation." The authors' answer, in part, is to develop sales people into "business people who sell." The authors rightly give credit to Neil Rackham for his prior contributions in "SPIN Selling," "Major Account Sales Strategy" and other ground-breaking work. They then build beyond Rackham's work to distinguish between appropriate selling behavior for what they call "continuous" and "discontinuous" products. Continuous products are already well known in their marketplace. Some level of demand already exists for them. Many customers are familiar with such products and are likely to know when they need them. They may already have set a budget and established a selection process to acquire them. Discontinuous products, on the other hand, did not previously exist in their target market. They are so new that no budgets are set for them and decision processes are not in place to evaluate them. Most prospects have no idea they need them. Such products represent the greatest selling challenge and also the greatest profit opportunity. They are highly differentiated. Because they are not subject to direct competition, they command premium prices. The challenge for the seller is to help people recognize that they need them enough to outweigh the cost and perceived risks of buying them. For sales of discontinuous solutions, the authors propose that sellers use a structured questioning process the authors call FOCAS. The acronym, like Rackham's SPIN, stands for different kinds of questions: Fact Questions, Objective Questions, Concern Questions, Anchor Questions and Solution Questions. The purpose of these questions is to help the prospect recognize his or her latent needs. Having done so, s/he can overcome innate resistance to change and aversion to risk. Only then is a sale possible. For sales of continuous products, the authors propose a significantly different sales behavior. It is more oriented toward helping buyers choose which of several alternate products they prefer in a category they already know and understand. As good as the book is, it could be better in some areas. The authors refer to empirical research they say they've done, but they provide no details on methodology or results. The book contains a few copy-editing errors and oversights. It seems to take more time than may be necessary to describe the differences between continuous and discontinuous sales. The book also seems to spend excessive energy in explaining the need to sell each type of solution differently. The authors describe FOCAS questions very briefly, and they provide no advice on how to develop or refine them. Nor do they give enough guidance on how to use FOCAS questions in everyday selling situations. Even so, the book is well worth reading multiple times. This field is full of books that are little more than thinly disguised, high-priced sales-promotion vehicles whose primary objective is to build the authors' consulting business. While it's clear the authors would also be happy to provide their consulting and training services, this volume is a quality stand-alone effort from a quality publisher (John Wiley). It does not invite you to visit the authors' web site to learn how much you can pay for the really useful stuff they've maddeningly withheld from the book you bought for $30.00. With dedication and imagination, you can begin right away applying the principles they teach. When you overlay the ideas in "Selling is Dead" onto the step-by-step question-generation process in Rackham's "SPIN Selling Field Guide," you can start improving your sales effectiveness almost immediately. Comment | | (Report this)