{"id":773,"date":"2019-08-26T02:02:33","date_gmt":"2019-08-26T02:02:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sellingsherpa.com\/?p=773"},"modified":"2019-08-26T02:02:43","modified_gmt":"2019-08-26T02:02:43","slug":"rethinking-the-salesforce-book-summary","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sellingsherpa.com\/index.php\/2019\/08\/26\/rethinking-the-salesforce-book-summary\/","title":{"rendered":"Rethinking the Salesforce (Book Summary)"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"nolwrap\">\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Rethinking-Sales-Force-Redefining-Customer-ebook-dp-B000FA5L22\/dp\/B000FA5L22\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" aria-label=\"Rethinking the Salesforce by Neil Rackham &amp; John De Vincentis (opens in a new tab)\">Rethinking the Salesforce by Neil Rackham &amp; John De Vincentis<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Chapter 1: The New Selling \u2013 From Communicating Value to\nCreating Value<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>Value creation must directly benefit the\ncustomer.<\/li><li>The sales process itself plays an increasing role\nin creating customer value<\/li><li>There are two distinct ways for a sales function\nto create value. Either you can create additional benefits, or you can reduce\nthe cost of the benefits you already provide.<\/li><li>Extrinsic value customers frequently reject\npossible suppliers \u2013 even those suppliers who have good offerings that are attractively\npriced \u2013 if the suppliers push their products or solution too quickly with out\nfirst becoming educated in the customer\u2019s business.<\/li><li>Three types of selling:<ul><li>Transactional selling: Skills, strategies, and\nsales processes that most effectively matches the needs of intrinsic value\nbuyers who treat suppliers as a commodity and are mainly or exclusively\ninterested in price or convenience.<\/li><\/ul><ul><li>Consultative Selling: Rests on salespeople who\nhave an intimate grasp of the customer\u2019s business issues. Create value in three\nways (a) to help customers understand their problems, issues, and opportunities\nin a new or different way, (b) To help customers arrive at new or better\nsolutions to their problems then they would have discovered on their own (c) TO\nact as the customer\u2019s advocate inside the supplier organization, ensuring the timely\nallocation of resources<\/li><\/ul><ul><li>Enterprise selling: To leverage any an all\ncorporate assets of the supplier in order to contribute to the customer\u2019s\nstrategic success<\/li><\/ul><\/li><li>No amount of selling skill, no amount of clever\nstrategies, and no well-crafted value propositions can bridge the gap unless\nthere is a basic alignment of the supplier with the value creation requirements\nof the customer.<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Chapter 2: The New Purchasing World \u2013 How Value is Reshaping\nPurchasing Decisions<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>The purchasing function in a larger business is\nfocused on: (a) the lifetime cost of ownership (b) supplier reduction, (c) supplier\nsegmentation<\/li><li><em>The more sophisticated and informed buyers\nbecome, the less likely they are to be impressed with unsupported assertions,\nslick presentations, or unsupported claims of superior quality.<\/em><\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Chapter 3: Responding to the New Buying Reality \u2013 The Three\nEmerging Selling Modes<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>Just communicating the value inherent in their\nproducts and services isn\u2019t enough. All sales forces that hope to prosper, or\neven survive, in the new world must create real value for customers to justify\ntheir existence.<\/li><li>Different customers demand different approaches\nto value creation. The key to success will be figuring out which selling approach\nwill bet fit the customer and then creating the most value.<\/li><li>Successful consultative salespeople focus most\nof their attention on the early stages of the acquisition cycle, in particular,\nthe recognition of needs stage.<\/li><li><em>The more innovative enterprise sellers look\nfor ways to leverage the assets of unrelated third parties.<\/em><\/li><li>Customers are more likely to trust sellers when\n(a) they interact frequently (b) they show consistency<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Chapter 4: The New Transactional Selling \u2013 From Fat and Happy\nto Lean and Mean<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>Sellers have a number of ways to add value in\nthe selling process.&nbsp; They can:<ul><li>Provide information about their products or\nservice that customers don\u2019t know about<\/li><\/ul><ul><li>Provide insight into new applications for their\nproducts that create real benefits for customers<\/li><\/ul><ul><li>Help customize products or services to better\nfit customers\u2019 needs<\/li><\/ul><ul><li>Reduce risk for customers<\/li><\/ul><ul><li>Facilitate the transaction itself<\/li><\/ul><\/li><li>Four different strategies you can take in a\ntransactional selling situation<ul><li>Create new value<\/li><\/ul><ul><li>Adapt by stripping costs<\/li><\/ul><ul><li>\u201cMake the Market\u201d<\/li><\/ul><ul><li>Exit<\/li><\/ul><\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Chapter 5: The New Consultative Selling \u2013 From Rock Stars to\nInstitutional Value<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>Consultative selling allows a sales force to add\nunique customer value in three distinct areas:<ul><li>Help customers understand their problems,\nissues, and opportunities in a new or different way<\/li><\/ul><ul><li>Show customers new or better solutions to their\nproblems<\/li><\/ul><ul><li>Act as advocates for their customers within the\nsupplier organization<\/li><\/ul><\/li><li><em>To create value, you must first invest in\nunderstanding the customer, and that takes time.<\/em><\/li><li>A reason it\u2019s difficult to develop a true consultative\norientation is that most sales performance metrics are derived from\ntransactional concepts of selling.<\/li><li>Dependence on rock-star talent is a serious\nbusiness risk<\/li><li><em>One serious problem with the hunter-farmer\nmodel is that it rests on a transactional rather than a consultative concept of\nselling.<\/em><\/li><li>Existing accounts require just as much active selling\na new\u2019 both hunters and farmers require equal skills in questioning and problem\nsolving.<\/li><li>There are three principal ways to create value\non an institutional level that result in a tangible customer impact:<ul><li>Coaching and Training to develop the effectiveness\nof salespeople in value creation skills<\/li><\/ul><ul><li>Support, Tools, and Information to allow salespeople\nto identify and provide customer value<\/li><\/ul><ul><li>Sales Process to provide salespeople with a\ncustomer-centered roadmap of the steps and tasks required of them<\/li><\/ul><\/li><li><em>Training alone, without substantial\nreinforcement through coaching, has a disappointingly small impact.<\/em><\/li><li>The best consultative sales forces we\u2019ve worked\nwith have a span of control of between 6 and 9 salespeople reporting to a sales\nmanager<\/li><li><em>Studies in Xerox that observed over 500 of\ntheir salespeople during actual sales calls found that there was no difference\nin the relative frequency of open and closed questions between top performers\nand average performers.<\/em><\/li><li><em>It\u2019s a risky strategy in a consultative sale\nto go to a senior-level decision maker before thoroughly understanding the\nissues and problems where you can create value.<\/em><\/li><li>Activity tracking may have a role in transactional\nselling but in consultative selling, it can be downright counterproductive.<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>Chapter 6: The New Enterprise Selling \u2013 From Large Sales\nto Deep Relationships<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>The defining differences between high-level consulting\nsales and enterprise relationships lie not in the size of the sale but in the\nnature of the offering and the roles of the players.<\/li><li>The goal of the enterprise sale is to redesign\nthe boundary between supplier and customer to make it significantly more productive\nfor the benefit of both parties.<\/li><li>\u201cUnderstanding how your customers work across\ntheir whole business chain is the most important success factor\u201d \u2013 Jim Morgan,\nChairman of Applied Materials.<\/li><li><em>Unless you have access to the customer\u2019s\nstrategic agenda \u2013 and unless you are prepared to share yours \u2013 it\u2019s unlikely\nthat you can make an enterprise relationship happen.<\/em><\/li><li>&nbsp;The\nskills of managing an enterprise relationship are the skills of managing a business,\nrather than the skills of selling.<\/li><li>Successful management of the enterprise\nrelationship rests on the ability to develop metrics that both parties can use\nto assess how effectively value is being created and whether each party is\ncapturing their fair share.<\/li><li><em>The unsuccessful enterprise manager is highly\ncompetitive and tends to work through negotiation rather than collaboration.<\/em><\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Chapter 7: Sales Process \u2013 Light in the Long Dark Tunnel<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>The problems, and therefore the productivity\nopportunities, lie between functions, not within them<\/li><li>Given the definition of a transactional sale \u2013\nthat the salesperson can communicate value but cannot create it \u2013 it\u2019s logical\nthat most transactional processes should try to design out the salesperson role\nand replace it with alternative customer-driven forms of communication.<\/li><li>Effective selling demands flexibility. So, steps\nand milestones in an individual sales process that become rigid quickly evolve\ninto counterproductive rules that reduce sales effectiveness.<\/li><li>In designing individual process milestones, use\nresults-based rather than activity-based measures<\/li><li>Salespeople have a genius for doing what\u2019s\ncompensated for rather than what\u2019s effective.<\/li><li>Good sales process models begin with a thorough understanding\nof the customer\u2019s acquisition process<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Chapter 8: Rethinking Channels to Create and Capture Value<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>One of the major mistakes most suppliers make is\nto treat intermediary channels as self-managing and to assume that the channel\ndoesn\u2019t need the management time and attention that it would get if it were a\ndirect, owned sales force.<\/li><li>Every supplier using channels needs to play an\nactive role in improving the value that each channel is creating for customers.<\/li><li>New channels that tap new markets or new users\ncan be extremely attractive because they can be strong growth drivers<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Chapter 9: Changing the Sales Force<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>Realistic organizations work with what they have\nand effect change over time<\/li><li>No compensation system can make people sell smarter.\nAt best, it can encourage greater effort and cause people to sell \u201charder.\u201d<\/li><li><em>Improving sales force performance will take\nlonger than you could decently imagine. We\u2019ve rarely seen a significant\nimprovement in the effectiveness of a consultative sales force that has come\nfrom less than two years of concerted effort.<\/em><\/li><li><em>Improved performance doesn\u2019t happen as a result\nof any single action or change. You align training, your reward systems, your\ncoaching, your recruitment, your sales tools, and every aspect of your sales\nprocess.<\/em><\/li><li><em>Sales supervisors are even more critical for creating\ndurable performance change. In fact, if we were forced to choose whether to\ninvest our change efforts in working just with salespeople or just with their\nsupervisors, then the supervisors would win every time.<\/em><\/li><li>An organization structure that reflects the\nvalue creation vision will be a key ingredient in successfully changing the\nsales force.<\/li><li>The direct sales force in a consultative sale\nwill often be organized around products and\/or industries, rather than the\ncheaper geographic axis of the transactional sale.<\/li><li>Where products are complex and customization\nroutinely expected, the sales force might be separated into individual product\nsales organizations.<\/li><li>The trap to avoid is to just assume that\ncustomers are consultative.<\/li><li>Enterprise sales will always be organized around\nthe account axis; moreover, leadership for this type of sales has to come from\nsenior management rather than a typical salesperson, account executive, or even\naccount team.<\/li><li>Skill coaching is unlikely to bring about change\nif it is less frequent than once every two to three weeks<\/li><li><em>The Xerox study showed that high-performing coaches\ndidn\u2019t try to coach their whole team at once. Instead, they chose two or three people\nand coached them intensively for several months before moving on to new team\nmembers.<\/em><\/li><li>Coaches who were most successful at increasing\ntheir people\u2019s sales applied their coaching effort early in the selling cycle<\/li><li><em>Compensation is usually the first change\nlever that managers reach for \u2013 usually with disappointing results. The one\nreliable outcome from changing the compensation system is a wave of unhappiness\nand protest from the sales force. <\/em><\/li><li>Measures that have a powerful impact on performance\ntend to be simple and few in number.<\/li><li>Design your metrics first, and design them independently\nof the reward system.<\/li><li><em>Metrics are at their most useful when they\nbring attention to important longer-term performance issues that are victims of\nthe urgent.<\/em><\/li><li><em>In a consultative sale, you should try to\nmeasure the value created for customers directly, and, when that isn\u2019t\npossible, you should use proxies that can at least give you a ballpark estimate\nof where you stand.<\/em><\/li><\/ul>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Rethinking the Salesforce by Neil Rackham &amp; John De Vincentis Chapter 1: The New Selling \u2013 From Communicating Value to Creating Value Value creation must directly benefit the customer. The sales process itself plays an increasing role in creating customer value There are two distinct ways for a sales function to create value. Either you [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":774,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_import_markdown_pro_load_document_selector":0,"_import_markdown_pro_submit_text_textarea":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-773","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-uncategorized","8":"entry"},"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/sellingsherpa.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/Rethinking-the-sales-force.jpg?fit=1176%2C346&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9j2qV-ct","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sellingsherpa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/773","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sellingsherpa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sellingsherpa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sellingsherpa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sellingsherpa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=773"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sellingsherpa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/773\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":775,"href":"https:\/\/sellingsherpa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/773\/revisions\/775"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sellingsherpa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/774"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sellingsherpa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=773"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sellingsherpa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=773"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sellingsherpa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=773"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}