Selling ⁽¹⁷⁾

Three books I find useful in launching into new markets  (updated since first posted in 2009)

I am not a big reader of sales, marketing and business books.  However, whenever I am working with someone who is interested in further developing their ability to sell and market, I find myself recommending the same three books.

The first is Rob Jolles book, Customer Centered Selling.  It is unlikely that you have heard of this book as Rob is a relatively minor author in the field of spin/consultitive/complex selling, but I find his presentation is by far the best.  He is a veteran salesman and sales trainer from Xerox.  For me, there were two world class Silicon Valley companies in the Eighties: the great engineers came from HP and the great salesmen came from Xerox.  While both have lost their shine in recent years, they were in their time factories for their respective talents.  Rob concisely communicates sales as a science and a process for large complex consultative sales.  Rob also does a great job of explaining why salesmen (real salesmen, not order takers) are a good thing for society.

When selling services to other companies, you need to re-consider your key website messages.

Let's imagine a simple outsourcing relationship to better understand the problem.  Outsourcing is likely to be promoted based on a critical knowledge, price, location, language, or other advantage that the supplier ("SmallCorp") has over their client's ("BigCorp") internal resources.  However, BigCorp is selling to their customer's with a message that they are uniquely qualified to solve a specific problem.  The SmallCorp's message, if ever exposed, is completely incompatible with their cleint (BigCorp's) message.  In an age where nearly anyone is potentially exposed to end customer-facing communications, it is high risk that an outsourced person could expose his name to an end client.  Once exposed, social networks (linkedin, facebook,etc) quickly expose SmallCorp – including  which company this person works for and what “priorities” his company has.  The result—client message collision.

The solution, is to... Continue reading...

With salesmen, you pay for results through commission.  What is there to manage?

We pay salesmen almost exclusively based on results (not effort), yet they do not control markets, don't make the products they sell, and have few control points within the customer.   Continue reading...

The cost of getting software into the hands of customers is typically 2 to 4 times more than the cost of developing the software...

During the current economic downturn, governments have looked to stimulate the economy, and have shown particular emphasis on the small businesses that are seen as the engine for creating jobs.  One common stimulus has been to promote new software and other technology R&D efforts that create Intellectual Property (IP).  From my way of thinking, they have it wrong in their stimulus target.  Many small businesses are able to create software IP through "sweat equity", that is, labor that not directly compensated.  The cost of licenses and hardware need to create the software is usually very small and the typical small business entrepreneurs invest their time while remaining in their home offices close to family and friends.

Unfortunately, after making the sacrifice required to create the product, many of these entrepreneurs then face the very sad fact that this software development effort is usually only a quarter of the total cost of getting the product to the final consumer.  (Don't believe me?  Look at annual reports of software companies and software divisions of publicly traded companies to see where their costs are: R&D is typically 15-35% of total revenue.)  Continue reading...

"Do you want to sell sugar water for the rest of your life, or do you want to change the world?"-- Steve Jobs, CEO Apple