February 7th 2011
Achieve Sales Excellence. The 7 customer rules for becoming the new sales professional. Howard Stevens & Theodore Kinni.
Achieve Sales Excellence. The 7 customer rules for becoming the new sales professional. Howard Stevens & Theodore Kinni. 2007. ISBN 9781593376512. (Thanks to David Moulton for passing this book onto me.) Not since Neil Rakham did his in-depth interviews/research that resulted in SPIN Selling, has there been a comparable professional study done of what customers want from salespeople. The HR Chally Group ( Stevens is CEO) interviewed 210 000 salespeople and 80 000 companies as well as interacted with hundreds of companies through their proprietary sales assessment tool. This is based on their observations that:
- Two-thirds of college graduates now take sales jobs upon completion of their formal education and
- 0.8% of colleges and universities prepare them for those jobs.
This is a very valuable book. It is easily the best foundational book on sales success in the market today. It aligns what we find over and over, companies are often blissfully unaware of how little they know about their customers. If you really want to make the change to be a top performing sales professional or customer driven company here is how you start.
Stage One: A customer wants you to know that (this is the lion’s share of your work)
- You must be personally accountable for our desired results
- You must understand our business
- You must be on our side.
Stage two (after you have become on of the better performing sales types) they you want to know that:
- You must bring us applications
- You must be easily accessible
- You must solve our problem
- You must be innovative in responding to our need.
Customers see the salesperson as the most influential component in a sale.
If you want to make the serious sales coin, this is the book for you to start your journey with.
Related articles
- There is No Place for “Buyers Are Liars” in the Sales Profession (customerthink.com)
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Category: Sales, Sales Effectiveness, Strategy
One Response to: “Achieve Sales Excellence. The 7 customer rules for becoming the new sales professional. Howard Stevens & Theodore Kinni.”
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