Rethinking the Sales Force: Redefining Selling to Create and Capture Customer Value

by Neil Rackham and John de Vincentis

Book Overview

In today's markets, success no longer depends on communicating the value of products or services. It rests on the crucial ability to create value for customers. Sales forces need to retool current strategies by recognizing the customer's dominant power in today's economy and what that means for those who sell. Capitalizing on research into the practices of cutting edge companies, the authors show how the successful sales force breaks away from traditional...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0071342532
• ISBN13: 9780071342537
• Release Date: February 1999
• Publisher: McGraw-Hill Companies
• Length: 320 Pages
• Weight: 1.40 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.2" x 6.2" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

Highly Recommended!

In this new classic and hot-seller, Neil Rackham and John DeVincentis write convincingly about the need for sales forces to change with the rapidly changing times, and about how they can successfully adapt. Devoid of cutesy gimmicks, the book takes a solid look at what it takes to sell in today?s market (no matter what your product or service). It gives plenty of strategies and corporate examples, all focused on the new imperative of creating value, as opposed to just communicating it. We [...] recommend this thorough, intelligent, and conversational book to executives, managers and everyone involved in sales and marketing.

"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.

A Framework for Selling in the New Century

Some of the books addressing the Internet's effect on business are so buried in futurist fantasy, that it's appliaction for selling today is limited. Rackham and De Vincentis do an excellent job of building a framework for viewing today's selling in an atmosphere of radical change including, but not limited to the Internet's effect on business. Filled with relevant examples, and clear advice about what works and what doesn't; I found the book very valuable in thinking how to apply new age selling to old work products. The premise of the book is that Sales must be about creating value for the customer and not just communicating it. How this is done is dependent on the nature of the sale: transactional, consultive, or enterprise and the structure of the sales channel. They warn against the ctitcal mistakes of applying the wrong solution for the wrong type of sale: If you are in a transactional situation (cost and price driven) it would be disastrous to apply a consultive or enterprise solution. They also warn that while our egos may want us to think that we want a consultive or enterprise relationship, that these types of sales are much tougher that we think, and that enterprise sales specifically are rarely successful for both parties. This is solid usable information. It should be a part of your thinking on sales strategy.

Concerned with revenue and profits? Read this book!

Neil Rackham, along with various co-contributors, has written six excellent and thought-provoking books on different aspects of sales and sales effectiveness. If your business involves selling and you haven't read these books, your revenues and profits are not where they could be! This latest one, "Rethinking the Sales Force" reinforces that. I learned that first hand.In June of 1996, I was asked by my company to join a cross-functional team whose major responsibility was to re-engineer the company's selling processes. It took ten of us - along with countless consultants, many from Big Six firms - and a LOT of money over two years to complete that process. The ideas in this book could have saved us months and probably hundreds of thousands! Unfortunately it wasn't written then. But that's no longer a valid excuse, so if you haven't read "Rethinking the Sales Force", I'd go to One-Click on this page and order it right away. Early in the book, the authors point out that while many aspects of business have changed, many sales managers and sales people are still following the precepts first referred to in a book written in 1925 by E.K. Strong called "The Psychology of Selling". A nice way of saying that selling hasn't kept up with the times. The ideas in this book can help any company begin this "catching up" process. Like the five previous books, this one is very well written. Rackham has the ability to present new ideas or new perspectives in an entertaining manner reinforced with real world examples. Many books on selling and the sales process have one or two decent ideas explained in one or two pages and surrounded by 240 pages of filler. None of Rackham's books will ever be accused of that.

Rackham In Touch With Today's World

I have always been impressed with how Neil Rackham has a hand on the pulse of what is going on in the current marketplace. In reading his latest book I could have sworn that he has inside information about our company and some of the struggles we are having with keeping customer margins at acceptable levels. His examples about instrinsic and extrinsic customers is right on target and the type of sales organizations you should consider to go after each of these customer segments. Creating customer value is essential in keeping profit margins elevated. Enterprise sales was also an interesting topic, but it did not offer much value to me at this time. Great reading for any sales or marketing person around the world.