Getting into Your Customer's Head: 8 Secret Roles of Selling Your Competitors Don't Know [Hardcover]

Kevin Davis (Author), Kenneth Blanchard (Foreword)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 9, 1996

Today's buyers are tougher, more knowledgeable and more willing to play hardball than ever before. This practical, field-tested guide demonstrates that understanding the customer is the key to making the sale. With an introduction by Dr. Ken Blanchard, co-author of The One Minute Manager, this is a unique book on selling for sales professionals and sales managers. Illustrations.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

This marketing manual has an imaginative format and a step-by-step strategy to help win that sale in a technology-dominated marketplace. Davis, president of a sales training and consulting company, contends that getting inside a customer's head means chucking traditional pitches and adopting eight new roles: student, doctor, architect, coach, therapist, negotiator, teacher and farmer. You study your customer's business until you think you are the customer, prescribe remedies, design bold new systems, direct their use, assuage customer fears, win a fair contract, provide instruction for using the product purchased and tend the soil of customer relations. Davis doesn't pretend this is easy, because each step opens many possibilities, but he comes up with a plan for each of them-with specific suggestions for writing letters, telephoning, e-mail and voice-mail communication and face-to-face encounters. He specifies the order of points to raise and questions to ask, and even suggests the words to use.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

Davis has been in sales for more than 25 years, and he has discovered that to be successful it's more important to know how people buy than it is to know how to sell. He breaks the first-time purchase of a significant product or service--what Davis calls the "buy-learning process" --into eight steps and devises corresponding roles for the seller to assume that focus on the customer's needs at each of these steps. Filled with practical examples, Davis' thoughtful guide is well attuned to today's tougher marketplace. David Rouse

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: Times Business; 1 edition (April 9, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0812926285
• ISBN-13: 978-0812926286
• Product Dimensions: 6.4 x 1.3 x 9.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #369,542 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Business Development Coordinator - SPSI, April 28, 2000

By 

Sean McDonald (Wauwatosa, WI) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Getting into Your Customer's Head: 8 Secret Roles of Selling Your Competitors Don't Know (Hardcover)

Everybody TALKS about "Putting the customer FIRST", but Getting into Your Customers Head is a blueprint to do it best.

Kevin Davis' work is strictly for those who truly strive to attain the level of "Solution Provider" and Business confidant; the highly regarded "Go To" person to whom customers are comfortable in divulging all the intimate details.

"Getting into your Customers Head" eliminates the "Commission Breathe" that all prospects and customers smell a mile away, and turns them off from the moment you open your mouth.

Forget the rest. "Gettting into your customers head" is SPIN Selling, Strategic Selling, Consultive Selling, Visionary Selling and Solution Selling all rolled into one.

It's a methodology to operate at the highest level of sales productivity. Better yet, it's easy to read, easy to learn, and easy to use.

BUY IT, absorb it, "walk it", "talk it" and "OWN IT", and you'll generate more business than your company can handle.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "Heady" Book on Sales a Winner, August 24, 1997

By A Customer

This review is from: Getting into Your Customer's Head: 8 Secret Roles of Selling Your Competitors Don't Know (Hardcover)

I've read a few hundred sales books since 1960 and most are the same book with a different approach.

This book is one of the few original ones. I had the opportunity to question the author for about an hour at a book signing in Martinez in which only a few people came for the presentation.

Mr. Davis has been a star salesperson and he knows what he is talking about. Getting into your Customer's Head is excellent.

I am mostly into marketing as I think it is more important to remove the need to have to sell in the first place -- by attracting people who want what you have -- rather than try to sell people who are not the best prospects for your product. However, when you have to sell, this book will help you develop your skills. I think it is the one sales book that marketing people should read this year

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Classic which grows in value with time, October 15, 2008

By 

William C. Zeeb (Geneva Switzerland) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Getting into Your Customer's Head: 8 Secret Roles of Selling Your Competitors Don't Know (Hardcover)

Davis wrote this classic over a decade ago - - - practical and immediately applicable, years ahead of it's time. Forget selling, this unique approach teaches you to serve as a sherpa for your potential Buyer, guiding them through the logical steps of the buying process. A unique, customer centric approach to selling. Turns the thinking of other "sales" books on its head; this book is about helping people buy!

The chapter on the internet is dated as would be expected from a book written in the mid 1990's. Otherwise the crisis message is more timely than ever.

Most useful are the selling roles (Student, Doctor, Architect, Coach, etc.) which Kevin has developed in order to help the reader and sales teams to "anchor" the detailed techniques outlined for each step of the Buy-Learning process. Packed with many diverse examples, this book is practical and down to earth for anyone who sells B2B products or services which require an explanation.

I have read and studied over a dozen other books on selling the last year, including Rackham's work, Miller-Heiman's work, Sandler, Solution Selling, Power Base Selling, ROI Selling and Stinnet's work. For the time invested, Getting Into Your Customer's Head is the richest read and easiest to apply. Since using Kevin's approach, the sales performance of our team as well our client satisfaction have created new levels of wealth for our clients and salespeople. Get the audio CD and keep it in your car; it minimizes the chances of getting stuck and frustrated in traffic.

Any company with a top line growth initiative would benefit from a thorough review of this book. Our firm sure has!