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: #318141 in Books
• Published on: 2006-11-29
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 192 pages

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

Great book on how to improve you sales career!
I really liked this book. Bill Brooks is a very credible author and I like the fact that there are only 7 concepts to learn/read about. It allows us to focus in on specific items you can address with yourself and/or your sales team. If you are interested in improving your sales outcomes, read, study and practice the ideas discussed in this book. They will have very positive impacts on your results!

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.

Mandatory Reading for Sales Professionals
Although I read everything published regarding sales, it is rare that I can heap the kind of praise I am about to heap on Howard Stevens and the HR Chally Group's Achieve Sales Excellence: The 7 Customer Rules for Becoming the New Sales Professional.

Not since Neil Rackham wrote SPIN Selling (in 1987) and Major Account Sales Strategy (in 1988), has anyone used sophisticated research methodology to explain what makes some salespeople much more successful than others (in this case, Chally used 210,000 salespeople and 80,000 customers). Most important, Stevens and the Chally Group actually correlated what a customer said on a survey with their actual buying decisions, therefore, making the information much, much more valid and useful in determining what customer want and expect from salespeople.

The seven rules are:

1. You Must Be Personally Accountable for Our Desired Results
2. You Must Understand Our Business
3. You Must Be on Our Side
4. You Must Bring Us Applications
5. You Must be Easily Accessible
6. You Must Solve Our Problems
7. You Must Be Innovative in Responding to Our Needs

This is a book I wish I had written. It is--bar none--the most important work published in the field of sales in the last 20 years. If you choose not to buy and read this book, I promise you will quickly fall behind those of your competitors who do--it is that important! This book will reshape how you think of yourself as a salesperson, and, if Steven's advice is followed, to greatly improve how we are viewed by our customers.