Achieve Sales Excellence: The 7 Customer Rules for Becoming the New Sales Professional

by Howard Stevens, Theodore Kinni

Overview

Increase your business’s sales with these seven essential practices salespeople and organizations must embrace to thrive in today’s competitive marketplace.

Companies today are struggling to find the one thing that matters in today’s competitive marketplace. Price? Quality? Innovative product features?

While all of the above factors certainly influence a customer’s buying decision, none of them is the most influential factor. What is? The employee who has the most power to make or break your company’s bottom line and influence its customers—the salesperson.

Achieve Sales Excellence examines the paradigm of business-to- business sales. This book is based on the results of a fourteen-year study, which asked business customers—the key constituent group of professional salespeople—to define the qualities of world-class salespeople and organizations. It offers unmatched insights into sales performance issues and the practices sales professionals and organizations must embrace to become world-class sales forces.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781605508474
Publisher:	Adams Media
Publication date:	11/29/2006
Sold by:	SIMON & SCHUSTER
Format:	eBook
Pages:	192
File size:	584 KB

About the Author

Howard Stevens is the chairman and CEO of the HR Chally Group—a leading talent management and sales development firm. Mr. Stevens is the author of The Quadrant Solution and Selling the Wheel and is a frequent speaker and expert source on radio and television. Chally’s World-Class Sales Benchmarks program has been presented over 500 times across thirty countries for corporations, trade associations, government agencies, and universities. He is a frequent contributor to Selling Power magazine and other sales, business, and trade publications. He has been a guest on CNN, Bloomberg, National Public Radio, and other business-based programs. He also presents the World-Class Sales Benchmarks annually at university graduate schools of business and serves as chairman of the sales advisory board for Ohio University and the foundation board of Wright State University.

Theodore Kinni is a business author and journalist. He has written books for consultants, ESS speakers, and Fortune 500 companies, including Be Our Guest for the Disney Company, as well as more than 100 articles and numerous reviews for Business 2.0, Selling Power, Across the Board, and many others.

Table of Contents

Dedication: The Greater Goal     vii
Foreword: The New Sales Profession     ix
Introduction     xv
What Good Science Reveals about Sales Excellence     1
The Sales Professional Is the Sale     4
What Your Customers Want     22
The Foundational Rules of Professional Competence     43
"You Must Be Personally Accountable for Our Desired Results"     46
"You Must Understand Our Business"     66
"You Must Be on Our Side"     87
The Advanced Rules of Sales Excellence     109
"You Must Bring Us Applications"     112
"You Must Be Easily Accessible"     134
"You Must Solve Our Problems"     155
"You Must Be Innovative in Responding to Our Needs"     174
Eight Questions for Identifying World-Class Sales Organizations     191
What Drives the Company's Culture?     194
How Does the Company Segment Its Markets?     198
How Efficiently Does the Company Adapt to Market Changes?     201
How Are Customers Served by the Company's IT Initiatives?     204
How Evolved Are the Company's Sales, Service, and Technical Support Systems?     207
How Does the Company Solicit Customer Feedback and Measure Customer Satisfaction?     210
How Does the Company Recruit and Select Salespeople?     213
How Does the Company Train and Develop Its Sales Force?     216
Epilogue     220
Endnotes     222
About The HR Chally Group     230
Index     232