Sale (Photo credit: Gerard Stolk (vers le Mardi gras))

High-Profit Selling. Win the sale without compromising on price. Mark Hunter. 2012. ISBN 9780814420096. This a core book for your sales library on selling value and not discounting on price.  But that’s not all this book is, it is chock full of great sales strategies and the tactics to pull them off.  In a slump , and had a really bad sales call?  Bounce back by calling your best customer and rebuild your confidence.  Torn with what to do with RFPs, here are four approaches that you may want to consider before you do not respond. ie how to win even if you chose to lose the bid. What you want to work through the Christmas to New Years break.   How to get a sale from a buyer on a Friday afternoon.  A very valuable, clearly organized and well written book. A must buy for sales and sales managers.  His blog is a great resource.

Related articles

• Value-Added Selling. How to sell more profitably, confidently and professionally by competing on value not price. Tom Reilly (regnordman.com)
• How to Say It:Business to Business Selling. Geoffrey James. (regnordman.com)
• Accelerate the sale. Kick start your personal selling style to close more sales, faster. Mark Roberts. (regnordman.com)
• Bottom-Line Selling. The sale’s professional’s guide to improving customer profits. Jack Malcolm. (regnordman.com)
• Hunter and farmers – it’s time to change sales strategy – A STC Classic (customerthink.com)
• What Great Salespeople Do. The science of selling through emotional connection and the power of story. Michael Bosworth & Ben Zoldan (regnordman.com)
• Sell Now! Adaptive Strategies for Today’s Marketplace.Stacia Skinner. (regnordman.com)
• Pricing and Profitability Management. A practical guide for business leaders. Meehan, Simonetto, Montan & Goodin. (regnordman.com)
• Selling to Sales People With War Stories (frontofficebox.com)

Image via CrunchBase

Inside Apple. How America’s most advanced- and secretive – company really works. Adam Lashinsky. 2012. ISBN 9781455512171. (e-book).  Unlike the recent  Steve Jobs bio, this is a fact filled book on the company and the players (as well as Steve Jobs)  that should be on every Apple shareholder and traders reading list. The author is a long time Fortune reporter ( a magazine that Steve Jobs often favored with information over others). You will learn more about the inner workings, strengths and above all the culture of Apple.  As a journalist, Lashinsky writes clear concise copy making the book a good read.   He succeeds in helping pull back the veil in this company.  Highly recommended.

Related articles

• Former Apple employee questions author Adam Lashinsky (tuaw.com)
• Steve Jobs and Apple, an interview with Adam Lashinsky at LinkedIn’s inDay [Video] (winextra.com)
• ‘Inside Apple’ author Adam Lashinsky discusses Apple secret-keeping and corporate life [video 50 mins] (9to5mac.com)
• ‘Inside Apple’ author Adam Lashinsky says Apple is antithesis of Google, talks post-Jobs culture (9to5mac.com)
• Inside Apple: one of the most secretive organisations in the world (telegraph.co.uk)
• Apple’s secrecy extends to fake projects for new, ‘untrusted’ employees (examiner.com)
• Why Apple Keeps New Hires in the Dark (news.dice.com)
• Pulling Back Apple’s Magic Curtain: Fortune’s Lashinsky Talks About New Book (Video) (allthingsd.com)
• The Apple Hiring Model – Let Them Work On Fake Products Till We Can Trust Them [Video] (thetechnologycafe.com)

Image via Wikipedia

How to Say It: Business to Business Selling. Geoffrey James.2011. ISBN 9780735204584.  This is a desktop book that every salesman and sales manager needs to have. It is extremely clear, concise and well written. Each chapter is a treasure trove of useful nuggets.  He covers the bases:

• How to Craft an Elevator Pitch
• Find Hot Sales Leads
• Negotiate the Best Deal
• Sell to Top Execs
• Build Sales Partnerships
• Get a Customer Referral
• Prospect with Voice Mail
• Give a Compelling Product Demo
• Move a Lead to a Prospect
• Develop B2B Campaigns
• Close a B2B Deal
• and more

He built this book through countless interviews with sales giants like Tom Sant, Wendy Weiss, Linda Richardson, Keith Eades, Jeff Thull, Keith Rosen, Joanne Black, Jeffrey Gitomer and others.  As a regular contributor to Selling Power and other publications, the author really knows what works. Buy, read and review.

Related articles

• Why B2B and B2C Sales are Different (rocketbuilders.blogspot.com)
• 10 questions to ask everyday (interconnecta.wordpress.com)
• Why Sales Hates Marketing: 9 Reasons (rocketbuilders.blogspot.com)
• Jan 16, Business to Business Selling: Use Effective B2B Marketing Strategy (more-for-small-business.com)
• Pricing Optimization in a B2B World: Value-Based Pricing Comes of Age for Sales (rocketbuilders.blogspot.com)
• B2B Marketing: Why Maximising Leads Won’t Maximise Revenues (rocketbuilders.blogspot.com)
• 10 Must-Read Books for every B2B Sales and Marketing Bookshelf (rocketbuilders.blogspot.com)

Image by Nils Geylen via Flickr

What Great Salespeople Do. The science of selling through emotional connection and the power of story. Michael Bosworth & Ben Zoldan. 2012. ISBN  9780071769716.  Michale Bosworth, the writer of Customer Centric Selling and Solution Selling, has written a game changing book for sales training.  His ideas changed when after decades of sales training ( SPSS, Rackham and Solution Selling)  trying to improve the sales skills of the 60% of the salespeople who were not in the top 20%, that now the top was only 17%. The best had become even better but most had not improved.  He went back to basics and started to take apart the top sales guns “mojo”. That is when he identified how much of an emotional connection they made before they ever started on a sales effort.  This book is the result of years of training sales teams on emotional connecting to power the sales effort. He has tied together the common principle that we decide to buy emotionally and then justify with logic. with the power of storytelling. There is lots of good science drawn upon that will resonate with you. I could immediately relate to two sales situations this year that did not go well for myself and the client, despite “doing all the right things”. I realize now that the emotional connection was not present or the sales people.  To make a change you  commit emotionally  Easily the most impactful sales book of the last few years. Check them out on Storyleaders.com



Related articles

• What Great Salespeople Do (rocketbuilders.blogspot.com)
• What Do Great Salespeople Have in Common? (rocketbuilders.blogspot.com)
• How Marketers Can Help Shorten Sales Cycles & Close More Sales (hubspot.com)
• 7 Reasons Sales Training Fails (hubspot.com)
• How Are Successful Salespeople Leveraging Social Media for Selling? – Creating Value (rocketbuilders.blogspot.com)
• Stay in control by using your sales process AND being flexible (rocketbuilders.blogspot.com)
• Salespeople are Different….Manage to their Personalities! (rocketbuilders.blogspot.com)

Image by Cristiano Betta via Flickr

The Now Revolution. 7 Shifts to make your business faster, smarter, and more social. Jay Baer & Amber Naslund.  2011. ISBN 9780470923276.  This book has been sitting waiting for me to get to it and I am glad I finally did.  It is a mix of an analysis of what the world is like now plus some serious do it now tips.  Some key takeaways:

• The transition from 50 to 100 employees has big impacts on holding onto the company culture
• If your company is not already “social” in its culture you will have a reduced chance of success in the social media space.
• There are quickly changing requirements for the talent you need in your company, what worked before will not work now in your hiring process.
• You need an army to use social media – starting with a heavy emphasis on customer service, and empowering many many employees to contribute to your social media initiatives.
• You need to use a new telephone to listen for buyer, customer, competitor  and employee “keywords” .
• How you respond to this challenge and how you measure results requires some serious analysis – its not  something you hand off to an intern.

Very cool use of QR/ tagging codes in the book, making it more interactive.  Check it out at nowrevolutionbook.com. As ever, some of the Microsoft stuff does not play nice with Android, ie when they send you to a document and not a webpage.

Related articles

• We are Wayfarers: Amber Naslund Rocks the Keynote Stage at BWELA 2011 (blogworld.com)
• Radian6 Invests in Customer Success Program, Professional Services and Social Strategy; Appoints Two Key Executives (prweb.com)
• Wayfarers: Leading the Change to Social Business (prwarrior.typepad.com)
• I Don’t Want to Read Another Book About Social Media (blisspr.com)

Cover via Amazon

Sell Now! Adaptive Strategies for Today’s Marketplace.Stacia Skinner.    2011. ISBN 1440533792.   This is a free Kindle book available from Amazon.  I liked it. It covers the basics for sales efficiency as well as giving young and old reps something to work with.  This is a quick but very useful read.  The content gives a good analysis of a sales cycle and why sales conditions change over time. I liked that this book stresses the basics of sales people being proactive and self motivating.

Related articles

• Zero-Time Selling. 10 Essential steps to accelerate every company’s sales. Andy Paul (regnordman.com)
• 6 Powerful Ways to Increase Your Sales in 2012 (rocketbuilders.blogspot.com)
• Bottom-Line Selling. The sale’s professional’s guide to improving customer profits. Jack Malcolm. (regnordman.com)
• 5 Ways New Buyer Behaviors Are Impacting B2B Sales (rocketbuilders.blogspot.com)
• The End of Business as Usual. Brian Solis. (regnordman.com)
• Accelerate the sale. Kick start your personal selling style to close more sales, faster. Mark Roberts. (regnordman.com)
• [Video] What If You Couldn’t Get Any New Customers? (rocketbuilders.blogspot.com)

Image via CrunchBase

The End of Business as Usual. Brian Solis.  2012. ISBN 9781118171561.   This is the epitome of a very current marketing academic book that is eminently practical.  This does not make it an easy read because Brian is concise and direct in his analysis and expects the reader to do some work as well.  The book is full of aha moments, and my Kindle highlights are legion.  This is the book for you if you are a current practicing marketer and or academic.  I especially appreciated that Brian was able to skillfully weave the entire marketing skill set into all aspects of the company.   If you want to learn and earn in this space, you will need to read this book.  Full disclosure- I bought this book and it is on all my Kindles.   Check out his terrific blog http://www.briansolis.com/

Image via Wikipedia

Related articles

• Book Review: The End of Business As Usual by @BrianSolis (deirdrebreakenridge.com)
• Read The End of Business as Usual for Social Media Insights, Research and Trends (smallbiztrends.com)
• Book Review: The End of Business As Usual: Rewire the Way You Work in the Consumer Revolution by Brain Solis (blogcritics.org)
• Scott Meis: The State of the Blogosphere 2011 | Social Media Today (socialmediatoday.com)
• 3 Steps to Understanding Buying Behavior (serve4impact.com)
• Brian Solis: “The End of Business Usual” (coydavidson.wordpress.com)
• McKinsey January 2012 Newsletter – The next industrial revolution (serve4impact.com)

Image via CrunchBase

After 10 years – I said goodbye to Blackberry last week.  I held on as long as I could, but I grew tired of waiting for  RIMM to bring out competitive products for the foreseeable future, I had to make a change, my data plan had run out four months ago.  I chose an Android phone (HTC Amaze), with the Samsung Galaxy my first (but not from Telus ) choice.  After 7 days.  I miss the following on my Blackberry:

• Data compression ( reduces the network charges)
• EZ controls where I expect them
• Being contact/email centric
• Simple battery control, and long life
• Good pocket sized form factor
• Out of the box focus on what I use daily.

I do enjoy now having:

• Very fast download speeds
• Incredible and diverse Android apps available – very easy to get and use, today  I just used one to store all the bar codes for all my loyalty cards. No more keyring.
• A 32GB easily swappable sd memory
• Two cameras – easy to use for Skype video and take very clear photos/movies.
• The five Android screens are smart and easy to customize.
• A big screen to read Kindle books.
• A free phone on my plan – RIMM was going to cost me.

I am surprised I do not miss

• Having a separate keyboard ( the virtual one gets smarter as I use it)
• Encrypted data  – who would want to read my stuff?
• BBMessanger – most of my contacts do not use it anymore .
• BES
• PIN communications (again few use it now)

Technically Blackberry has a better industrial design. If I was on their marketing team I could create some pretty compelling value statements for owning a Blackberry.  But this does not matter anymore. RIMM has missed the boat. The issues are legion:

• There were almost 18 months without significant new products, dissipating their market leadership
• Failure to nurture the app partner channel leaves them far far behind, getting further every day.
• Reduction of US channel pull, means retailers push other vendors, commoditizing Blackberry
• Increasing unit failure/returns means retail has a lower confidence in the hardware
• Incompetent management of system upgrades = huge loss of services, followed by bumbling public response by CEOs
• The CEOs and the Board who caused this have no idea how badly off they really are. A new Chair is deckchair rearrangement.

Its likely RIMM leadership has a similar problem to the US movie industry. Despite declining US revenue, the growth of new offshore markets skews the numbers to help balance the books.  This disappoints the local markets so they abandon products (like how many movie sequels do you really want to watch?)  In my early microcomputer days  companies like Commodore would have aggressive annual N American roll outs of new technologies, while still having tremendous cash cows in the emerging world through selling them last years (and earlier)  products at new product prices. But Commodore used the demands of the NA market to drive relentless innovation. When they missed that, the end was quite swift.

Compounding the foolishness, RIMM by not keeping ahead of competition, lost product (and gave up market) leadership . They let Apple claim it. Apple now through using a selective skim pricing strategy is able to generate very strong profits and revenues, while getting tremendous economic benefits through volume sales.  RIMM has to incur more cost to stand still, let alone create new products, incent retail to sell them and spend heavily to create marketplace pull through.  The answer lies partially now in a full bore marketplace war, someplace where RIMM is hopelessly inept.

As a friend of mine said, he sold his RIMM stock when he found out they were hiring ex Nortel employees. We are likely watching the death spiral of yet another Cdn company. Lets hope whomever buys the pieces lets us keep something in Canada.

Related articles

• RIMM stock under pressure after disappointing sales and forward guidance reports (optionsanimal.com)
• RIM’s Next Generation BlackBerrys Are Having More Problems Than We Thought (RIMM) (businessinsider.com)
• RIMM rises on reports of suitors and an upgrade (marketwatch.com)
• Citi on RIMM: ‘It’s Worse Than You Think’ (blogs.wsj.com)
• Review Of The BlackBerry Bold 9900 (RIMM) (businessinsider.com)
• Are They Nuts? How We Just Got Locked Out Of RIM’s Next Big Announcement (RIMM) (businessinsider.com)
• Purdue University Says Goodbye to BlackBerries (q-ontech.blogspot.com)
• RIM still misses the point with BlackBerry 10 (zdnet.com)
• Why I Finally Decided To Ditch The BlackBerry And Run Off With An iPhone (AAPL, RIMM) (businessinsider.com)
• RIM reportedly agrees to license BlackBerry software to Samsung, HTC (unbrokennews.wordpress.com)
• RIM May Drop Two More BlackBerrys (pcworld.com)

Value-Added Distribution Services That Strengthen Customer Relations

Guest Post by Derek Singleton

Derek approached me after I reposted some of his very good content on adding value. After reading this, head over to his website and see his other good advice.  Reg

Distributors always have a host of pressures to contend with. For instance, the industry is constantly grappling with fierce competition and rising fuel prices. Under these conditions, it’s becoming more important than ever to maintain customer relationships. Like other industries, one of the ways that distributors can strengthen their customer relationships is by offering value-added services.

But what services should distributors offer? Customers have a whole laundry list of services they’d like to see added. These services range from providing consultations to managing customer inventory. Of course, distributors can’t provide all of these services. They have to pick and choose which they’ll provide. I’d like to highlight three value-added services the industry should consider providing their customers.

1. Vendor Managed Inventory

Vendor managed inventory (VMI) is a concept first popularized by Walmart. Under a VMI system, the distributor assumes responsibility for keeping their customer’s inventory levels stocked at optimal levels. While this is a complex undertaking, advancements in web-based software and mobile capabilities are making it easier to manage inventory on a customer’s behalf. As an example, a distributor at their customer’s location can access their their software with their smart phone and initiate a new purchase order to restock inventory levels.

2. Delayed Product Assembly

Distributors that work with manufacturers have an opportunity to increase customer satisfaction by delaying product assembly. Distributors get great discounts by purchasing component parts in bulk and assembling the product as orders come in. However,  managing product assembly can be tricky. To effectively manage delayed assembly, distributors should rely on the bill of materials (BOM) functionality in their wholesale distribution software. A bill of materials allows distributors to track the components parts, item numbers and proper packaging specification to ensure that final assembly is done correctly.

3. Improve e-Commerce Support

In the digital age, more and more retail are operations are asking distributors for help in fulfilling online orders. Supporting online sales distributors shifts the traditional dynamic of distribution operations by shortening delivery times and increasing the number of shipments. To handle the demand of fulfilling online sales, distributors need to focus on integrating their system with their customer’s. This allows distributors to receive orders instantaneously and to pick, pack and ship these orders in the most efficient way possible. Of course, it’s also possible to fulfill online orders through manual methods but these have a large efficiency gap compared to automated systems.

These are just a few of my ideas on how distributors can improve their customer relationships. If you’d like to see an expanded list of value-added services, please visit the Software Advice website to view the original article at: How Distributors Can Improve Relationships with Value-Added Services.

Related articles

• How Distributors Can Improve Relationships with Value-Added Services (rocketbuilders.blogspot.com)
• Calling all resellers, distributors and integrators (go.theregister.com)

Bottom-Line Selling. The sale’s professional’s guide to improving customer profits.  Jack Malcolm.  2011. Second Edition. ISBN 9781935961321. This was first published in 1999, but the story is is even more true today as then. If you want to sell in value, you need to prove it to  the client using their data. To be more than a discount salesperson this is the type of book you must devour on your way to the top 5%.

A long time ago I built and used a presentation,  “What Your  CFO Can Teach Your Sales Team”. In it I laid out the various simple quick ratios a salesman can use to analyze a prospects annual reports to see if they would qualify for terms, their profits and where they came  from , growth rates, and several others.

Malcolm’s book goes much further than that PowerPoint of mine in a a very readable and digestible manner.  Any solution seller will recognize the terms used and also learn many more.  I always ask clients, “Do your salespeople  deserve to take the client meeting?  Have they done their homework.? “  Malcolm’s book has the right kind of homework here for all the value sellers. Excellent revision and a valuable addition to any sales managers/salesman’s library.

Paul McCord does a terrific review of this very valuable book.  See http://salesandmanagementblog.com/2011/12/05/book-review-bottom-line-selling-by-jack-malcolm/

Related articles

• Book Review: Bottom-Line Selling by Jack Malcolm (salesandmanagementblog.com)
• How to Become a Cash Flow Engineer for Your Customers (rocketbuilders.blogspot.com)
• Value-Added Selling. How to sell more profitably, confidently and professionally by competing on value not price. Tom Reilly (regnordman.com)
• Accelerate the sale. Kick start your personal selling style to close more sales, faster. Mark Roberts. (regnordman.com)
• Pricing and Profitability Management. A practical guide for business leaders. Meehan, Simonetto, Montan & Goodin. (regnordman.com)
• Zero-Time Selling. 10 Essential steps to accelerate every company’s sales. Andy Paul (regnordman.com)