Product Description

Every organization wants to go from good to great. Yet, despite knowing where they want to go, many companies can't find their way there. They struggle to find the one thing that matters in today's competitive marketplace. Price? . . . Quality? . . . Innovative product features? While all of these certainly influence a customer's buying decision, none of them is the most influential factor. What is? It's the salesperson.
Achieve Sales Excellence examines the new paradigm of business-to-business sales. Based on the results of an innovative, fourteen-year study, this book offers unmatched insight on sales performance issues and the practices sales professionals and organizations must embrace to be a world-class sales force.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #374788 in Books
• Published on: 2006-11-29
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 192 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9781593376512
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

About the Author
Howard Stevens is the Chairman and CEO of the HR Chally Group-the top sales performance consulting corporation in the country. Mr. Stevens is the author of The Quadrant Solution and is a frequent speaker and expert source on radio and television. His World Class Sales Benchmarks program has been presented over 500 times across 30 countries for corporations, trade associations, government agencies, and universities. 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 the Columbia University Graduate School of Business and serves on the Sales Advisory Board for Ohio University.

Theodore Kinni is a former management consultant and accomplished business journalist. He has written over 100 articles and numerous book reviews that have appeared in a wide variety of periodicals including, Harvard Management Update, Selling Power, Quality Digest, and many others.

Customer Reviews

A guide to what business-to-business customers want from salespeople
Amazon.com lists nearly half a million books about sales. You get the impression that everyone who ever made a cold call or a sales presentation has written a book about his or her experience. Sales books are often anecdotal, with little or no relevance to the difficult challenges that salespeople actually face. Some present a grab bag of supposedly "can't-lose" sales techniques that sound great on paper but always seem to fall flat during sales calls. Others present compilations of moldy maxims, such as "work smarter, not harder," and "never take `no' for an answer," that make experienced salespeople want to jump off the nearest cliff. This thoughtful and intelligent book by Howard Stevens and Theodore Kinni is a welcome exception. Instead of irrelevant anecdotes or inane aphorisms, it features the results of in-depth surveys of 80,000 business-to-business customers concerning their attitudes about salespeople. It offers an insightful analysis of this singularly informative data, along with recommendations on what salespeople can do to improve their status with customers - and thus increase their own sales. When it comes to the business-to-business salesperson, we cannot recommend this book more highly. Read it to learn precisely what business-to-business customers expect from you, and how you can use this invaluable insider knowledge to close more sales. You'll become the consummate sales professional in both your customers' eyes and your own.

It's all about the customer
Howard Stevens has clearly shifted the focus from the trite "I have been successful in selling and so can you" approach to "It's all about the customer". The power of this book comes from the in-depth research H.R.Chally has conducted on the customers of B2B companies. This book contains the best roadmap that sales leaders can use to create a customer focused, world class sales organization.

New Paradigm of Sales from Years of Research
I'm happy if a business book gives me one or two good ideas for the whole book - this one has several. In addition, they are not just opinions but based on years of research. The ideas come from 14 years of research and over 80,000 interviews with business to business customers. The insights in this book will tell you what factors lead to B2B buying decisions. And these insights are scientifically proven. This book is not just the new big thing, but a new paradigm which leads the path to building a World Class Sales Organization. It is also written really well. In short, this book outlines the future of sales, and is valuable reading for sales managers, C level business strategists, sales people, and even academicians.

Corey E. Miller, Ph.D.
Associate Professor, Wright State University