Customer Reviews

Achieve Sales Excellence: The 7 Customer Rules for Becoming the New Sales Professional

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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.

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

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.

Having suffered through dozens of books on selling, I found Achieve Sales Excellence to be a refreshing dose of valuable insight. First, it is based on extensive research into what customers actually want from salespeople. This alone sets it apart from nearly every other sales book ever published. Second, it does not attempt to introduce complex new models with dozens of arcane buzzwords. It is a straightforward book with simple (yet powerful) concepts that shed light on many of my failed encounters with past prospects. If you have ever wondered what customers really think about you, this book should make it into your shopping cart. It will almost certainly change the way you sell.

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.

This is one book I wholeheartedly recommend to sales leaders and sales professionals who truly want to understand and value the customer perspective. Insightful, emboldened by superb research, Howard Stevens continues to contribute to the art and science of sales expertise.
I have already purchased copies for my team and I consider it THE sales book of 2007!

Sandi Edwards
Regional Vice President of Sales
American Management Association
NYC,NY

Howard has it all in an easy to read guide for any sales manager who wants to select, train and coach their sales force to world class levels. What more could you want - its research based, concise, actionable and driven from the customer's point of view. The best maxim I know about top sales pros is that if you want to understand selling get insight into buying. Achieve Sales Excellence is a must read for any sales manager or sales professional that wants to exceed their quota, delight customers and crush competitors.

Having Worked with sales professionals at all levels since the eighties; this work is a delight in terms of a shift in emphasis from the sales side of the table, to the client's side of the table; where the real experience of what makes a successful sales professional originates. Anyone who is interested in understanding the customer's experience and from that improving sales performance wiill want to read this book and apply the principles. This is true whether you are responsible for sales strategy in an organization or you are the sales professional. Its easy to read enjoyable and applicable. The research that forms the foundation of this book gives a depth to the information that will make this a sales standard for years to come. A big thumbs up!

(Thanks to David Moulton for passing this book onto me.) Not since Neil Rakham did his in-depth interviews/research that resulted in SPIN Selling, has there been a comparable professional study done of what customers want from salespeople. The HR Chally Group ( Stevens is CEO) interviewed 210 000 salespeople and 80 000 companies as well as interacted with hundreds of companies through their proprietary sales assessment tool. This is based on their observations that:

* Two-thirds of college graduates now take sales jobs upon completion of their formal education and
* 0.8% of colleges and universities prepare them for those jobs.

This is a very valuable book. It is easily the best foundational book on sales success in the market today. It aligns what we find over and over, companies are often blissfully unaware of how little they know about their customers. If you really want to make the change to be a top performing sales professional or customer driven company here is how you start.

Stage One: A customer wants you to know that (this is the lion's share of your work)

* You must be personally accountable for our desired results
* You must understand our business
* You must be on our side.

Stage two (after you have become on of the better performing sales types) they you want to know that:

* You must bring us applications
* You must be easily accessible
* You must solve our problem
* You must be innovative in responding to our need.

Customers see the salesperson as the most influential component in a sale.

If you want to make the serious sales coin, this is the book for you to start your journey with.

I gave this book to my son, a salesperson, on his birthday and he was pleased to receive it and began to read it right away. It appears to have very pratical suggestions.