Customer Reviews

Go To Market Strategy: Advanced Techniques and Tools for Selling More Products to More Customers More Profitably

5 star:		(15)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I agree completely with the other reviewers; this is a best-in-class book that will become a "classic" over time. While it is at the top of its game for its knowledge and insight, it also is an easy, laid back read. For at least five years, I've been hearing about Go To Market Strategies but no one has defined what it means yet, or tried to. When you see the cover of this book, you think "Of course. It is about time someone wrote this book". Once you go inside the covers, you will be pleased. The best endorsement I can give is that I am buying a copy for each of my 41 direct reports. Author Larry Friedman offers a clear and practical framework for going to market, which involves choosing the right markets, channels, products, customers, and value propositions to increase growth and profits. This approach is supported by scores of examples. The examples are of real companies with real problems, not the usual "In Search Of Excellence" best practice stories that are happy-face fairy tales for the most part. The whole book was well informed from cover to cover. The most important chapters were the Ten Commandments Of Going To Market, and Targeting The Right Markets, which is the soundest and best description of market evaluation and selection techniques anyplace. That chapter must be why the book got such a strong endorsement from Kotler, the Marketing Guru. If there is a weakness in this book, it is the chapter on products. While the discussion of product development as part of a market strategy overhaul is OK, the author's strength is in marketing and channels, not product development. On the other hand, he does have a few provocative things to say about product design. The author's reputation preceeding this book is as a channel strategist, and for the large parts of the book that concerns sales and marketing channels, he does not disappoint. It is brutally evident here that he knows more about channels and partner distribution than anyone else today, period. Go To Market Strategy is an Internet Mania Free Zone, with a sane and balanced view point on the role of the Internet in an overall marketing strategy. You will enjoy his description of the Pets.com debacle. I almost fell out of my chair laughing at his irreverent(and dead-accurate) analysis of why Pets.com failed. He also has an irreverent and cynical view point about marketing consultants, a group he acknowledges belonging to. You get the impression that the author has a sense of humor about the whole thing. That is very refreshing and reason in itself to buy this book. Also, make sure you read every footnote. They're like the bonus materials on a DVD movie. A few are standard references, but many have extra information and insight, and they are kind of a running commentary on the main body of the text.

Friedman certainly seems to know what he's talking about. I wouldn't know since I ordered the book to learn about how to enter the market with a new product as a small entrepreneur. Friedman's advice is geared to the large corporation with large resources for research and marketing. He does not address the objectives stated in the title from the perspective and access to resources of the small business. For this type of reader the information may be interesting from a theoretical standpoint but I certainly found no practical advice to help my situation.

Author Friedman provides a very comprehensive picture of how to take products and services to market, in the most efficient and effective ways. This book is practical - it's more for sales management and marketing executives than for students and academicians. Going to market today is complex and risky, and difficult to figure out the right mix of people, channels (Internet, phone, mail, partners, etc). This book helps sort it all out in a well structured way. I highly recommend.

Attended the author's strategy workshop in NYC in December, got a freebie copy of the book...can't argue with that! Best biz book of last 3-4 years, hands down...the "Bible" of go to market. 360 degree view of market / channel / sales / partnering strategy. Shows how all pieces of puzzle fit together. Really, really, really, really like the chapters on partnering, channel integration. A+++

This is a great marketing book. No hype and no b.s., just a lot of sound, practical ideas for connecting better with your customers and doing more business with them. The theoretical ideas are very well supported by practical advice and what must be 25 or 30 useful cases examples from Corporate America (and Europe - some Asian examples would have been nice too). I thought the chapters on choosing markets and aligning with customers were especially well written and useful. I also thought the part on value propositions was eye opening and likely to lead more than a few executives to rethink whether they really have a winning message. For a marketing book, you always have to wonder whether it's serious or if it's just a bunch of stupid McKinsey 2x2 matrices. This book is one of the rare ones that trades in all those tired "cash cow" pedantics for practical, sales-oriented advice. So I give this book a solid 5 stars because I don't know what more you could want from a marketing book. Finally, the two chapters on channels are detailed, complete, well written, and full of important post dot-bomb ideas for building a new channel strategy. These two chapters alone would be well worth the cost of the book.

I just purchased a copy of this book, and read it cover to cover in one sitting (although it is about 300 pages). This appears to be the "follow up" book to author Lawrence Friedman's last book The Channel Advantage (a copy of which is dog-eared and worn to the binding in my personal library). This book has some similarities to The Channel Advantages, but some big differences too. Like The Channel Advantage, it is witty and interesting with a sense of humor lacking in most business books, I really enjoy this author's books. Also, it shows a street wise, very practical understanding of the sales and marketing issues faced by both large and small companies. It has dozens of case studies and interesting (and clever) examples of companies in many different markets. Where Go To Market Strategy differs from the author's last book is the content. Go To Market Strategy is a much more strategic and all-inclusive book -something like, every sales and marketing issue you face in taking your products to customers. At first you think, the author bites off so much content, can he (and you) chew it, but it is all digestible and a few hundred pages later, you "get it". The book's theme or argument is twofold. First, to "go to market" with a product or service successfully, you must execute five very interrelated activities: selection of the right market(s), identification of customers' core needs, the right channels mix, the best product design, and development of a strong (compelling) sales message. Second, everything you do in going to market must be organized around the needs and desires of customers. While not exactly a new idea, the author does a very nice job of providing helpful tools and practical ideas to get aligned with customers and meet them on their own terms. In fact, this book is one of the few to say something useful and new, and non-cliche'd, about focusing on the customer and the role that customers must play in your go to market efforts.

For ...Minimally, it will give you a plethora of tools, concepts and ways to think about increasing sales at a lower cost. But you may get a lot more than that out of the book - a total systematic approach to use when launching new products and sales campaigns.

My boss (the vice president of marketing, for a Fortune 200 media company) handed me this book and said: Read this; it is the bible of channel strategy. I noticed one of the other reviewers here also called it the Bible. Well, there is only one Bible, so let's not overdo it, people! Please! The book is impressive so far, though. I have read five chapters of nine as of this review. Go To Market Strategy's best characteristic is that it is very well written and articulate, and also, that it has a huge amount of information and new ideas for product marketing and management. There are many strategies and practical tools that my team can use immediately to improve the launch of new media services into key market segments. I do have a criticism, and that is that I do not think the author sufficiently considers the role of pricing strategy as part of a go to market strategy. For a marketing book said to be of biblical proportions, I would have expected to see more on pricing; while not completely absent, I would have to say that pricing is not the author's favorite topic. Also, some more treatment of international partnering and the global aspects of product launches would have been helpful, since most new product initiatives involve a heavy dose of int'l partnering issues. Aside from those concerns, Go To Market Strategy does live up to its reputation for being the best book in its field and the one that everybody seems to be reading. Friedman is influential as a marketing and channels theorist and practitioner, and it is clear why when reading this book. If you buy it, read the footnotes, because half of them are like little "time-outs" with amusing observations. Recommended.

I strenuously disagree with the reviewer below who said this book is for big businesses rather than entrepreneurs. I'm an entrepreneur and this book has played an important role in my ability to build my business. A few years ago, a partner and I started a company and grew to 15 employees. We had a superb service to offer, but were not educated about how to sell it, and sales were leveling off. Stymied, we delved into atleast 20 books, seminars, and training events to learn how to "scale" our business. Honestly, nothing helped much. Then we found this book on Amazon. Go To Market Strategy helped us get organized, ask all the right questions, and put some simple ideas into use, to grow to 50 employees last month. After reading this book, we moved away somewhat from our "web fetish" and got much more serious about finding good partners, building our own small but effective sales group, and working with our customers to understand their needs and become more responsive. Many of the things we did came right out of this book. This book is *very* organized and systematic, breaking the sometimes overwhelming task of building a business into simple, proven tools which we were able to put to use. This book is also extremely well written, just lightyears ahead of the writing quality of other marketing books we bought. The author is very insightful and truly knows the ins and outs of "selling more stuff to more customers" as he puts it. I am sure this book is useful to Big Corporate America, but to me it's a wonderful resource for the small, struggling business.

Friedman gives the whole go-to-market strategy picture, explains the key points and relationships between different aspects of customer and market analysis, channel model construction, channel management etc. Can easily be used as a manual for actual go-to-market and channel development.

This very helpful book is by author L. Friedman, whose book The Channel Advantage from 1998 or 1999 is still appreciated for its comprehensive look at channel programmes and management. This new book is broader in theme and less focused on channels as it is on general strategy issues one must confront successfully to take a product or service to the market place. As with The Channel Advantage, few business practitioners or students will be disappointed and many will appreciate the inclusion of important new ideas and concepts for managing channels and developing a comprehensive go to market programme. I found it very worthwhile reading.