Niche Selling: How to Find Your Customer in a Crowded Market [Hardcover]

William T. Brooks (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 1, 1991

Shows how to inrease sales by finding and marketing to your most likely consumer segments. This practical, straightforward approach directs the reader through the entire niche selling process, showing how to: develop workable sales strategies based on alliances; enhance your standing in the minds of prospects and customers using the power of personal positioning; conquer the problem of ``institutionalized insulation'' that mentally and physically removes the most salespeople from their customers.

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About the Author

McGraw-Hill authors represent the leading experts in their fields and are dedicated to improving the lives, careers, and interests of readers worldwide

Product Details

• Hardcover: 276 pages
• Publisher: McGraw-Hill; 1 edition (September 1, 1991)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1556234996
• ISBN-13: 978-1556234996
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.1 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,220,332 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Basic concepts more relevant now than ever before, October 20, 2005

By 

Robert Morris (Dallas, Texas) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Niche Selling: How to Find Your Customer in a Crowded Market (Hardcover)

As Brooks would be the first to point out, opinions about both sales and marketing have changed a great deal since his book was first published in 1991. (I hope that he soon produces a revised and updated version of it in which he discusses those changes.) That said, the fact remains that Brooks's core concepts of selling remain relevant. As he explains in the Introduction, "Ever increasingly, the power of mass communications, macro- and microeconomic realities, consumer issues, value shifts, and even politics and global affairs will dictate day-to-day selling activities. As such, most traditional sales philosophies are outdated in today's crowded marketplace. The future belongs to the sales organizations that are [in italics] flexible [end italics] and [in italics] nontraditional [end italics] in their thinking." Quite true. And keep in mind that this was expressed fifteen years ago.

Brooks carefully organizes his material within three Parts: Knowing Your Organization and Its Markets (i.e. Focus on Focus, Leverage, and Alignment), Knowing Your Customers (i.e. "IMPACT" Selling, Investigate, Meet, Probe, Apply, Convince, and Tie-It-Up), and Knowing Yourself (i.e. Vales and Sales Success, and, Person versus Personality). Granted, for those who read this book in 2005, there are no head-snapping revelations. How could there be? However, Brooks provides a wealth of insights, strategies, and tactics which can help his reader find her or his customer in a crowded market.

I especially appreciate the fact that, at the end of each of the twelve chapters, Brooks provides a "Key Tips" section which serves two important functions: It summarizes key points, and, it facilitates a subsequent later review of whatever specific counsel which may then be needed. For example, in Chapter 7, Brooks explains how effective probing will help both current and prospective customers to "discover what they need and want most" as well as how the salesperson can determine what people will buy, when they will buy, and under what conditions they will buy, "then listening them into buying." This is precisely what Neil Rackham has in mind when discussing "SPIN selling": ask questions which reveal the Situation, identify the given Problems, determine the Implications of buying (or not buying), and specify the nature and extent of Need fulfillment. At the end of Chapter 7, Brooks then offers six "Key Tips" which summarize how to probe effectively. Appropriately, one of them reiterates what he calls "The Fatal Flaw in Selling: Most salespeople talk their way out of more sales than they talk their way into."

For whom will this book be most valuable? Probably for anyone involved in sales but especially for those responsible for the training and supervision of a sales force, and, for those salespersons who are relatively inexperienced.

One caveat: No single source offers everything one needs to know about sales. For that reason, I presume to suggest that other books also be consulted. For example, Rackham's SPIN Selling, Jacques Werth and Nicholas E. Ruben's High Probability Selling, Keith M. Eades's The New Solution Selling, and Tom Hopkins' How to Master the Art of Selling.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Worth noting! Old material, June 7, 2006

By 

D. D'Eugenio (Palm Beach, United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Niche Selling: How to Find Your Customer in a Crowded Market (Hardcover)

A lot has changed since this book was published in 1992. There are more up to date books availalbe. Buyer beware!

0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Book Review - Niche Selling, February 17, 2011

By 

jamarie123 - See all my reviews

This review is from: Niche Selling: How to Find Your Customer in a Crowded Market (Hardcover)

Book Review
Niche Selling - How to Find Your Customer in a Crowded Market
By William T. Brooks
William T. Brooks is the founder, president, and CEO of The Brooks Group, a sales training firm. The inspiration for writing Niche Selling was born out of the author's personal experience. His company was on the verge of landing a major training contract with General Motors, and he struggled with keeping his focus on the customer's needs due to the size of the of the impending contract. His mind continually wandered, drifting to thoughts of what the money would mean to him, his family, and his company. This experience made him recognize that his focus had to remain on the customer's needs, or the deal itself could fall through. He realigned his focus, and the contract with GM was signed.
The author uses a clever illustration to emphasize the importance of focus. He writes, "Think of where to direct your focus in this way. There are four areas on which you can focus - self, company, product or customer. If you focus on the first three, your customer is outnumbered three to one. People who are overwhelmingly outnumbered feel confused and uncomfortable. People who are confused and uncertain rarely make buying decisions."
In Niche Selling, Brooks advises that the best way to find your `niche' is to "determine what the buyer values most - then point out the unique advantage of your product or service which addresses those values." He wants people to stop thinking "demonstration" and start thinking "application." He adds that the most successful sales professional will be a master at needs analysis and application selling. Needs analysis is defined as "understanding and selling to the buyer's needs rather than selling a product or service." Application selling is "showing how a particular product or service can fulfill the buyer's most pressing need."
Brooks offers three key points of value-based selling:
* Connect with and sell what your prospect values the most.
* Uncover your prospects needs, as he or she perceives them, and show him or her how to meet those needs through what you are selling.
* Connect with deepest hopes and aspirations of every prospect you call upon, and know your products and services well enough to identify how they can fulfill those desires.
Of course, he does not expect salespersons to talk to a customer long enough to find out what their deepest desires and needs are. The way to find out what the customer wants is by actively listening. He believes that canned presentations are an insult to today's educated buyers. It is important to know your product, but listen to the customer to hear what their needs are then tailor the benefit information about your product or service to meet that need. He refers to this as Impact Selling and offers some customer impact principles:
Customer Impact Principle #1:
We pay more attention to people we believe have something important to tell us.
Americans are bombarded with thousands of messages daily, and have learned to tune out the majority of them. Therefore, an impact seller must convey the message that what they have to say is important. An insight into doing that is offered in the following principle:
Customer Impact Principle #2:
People buy for their own reasons, not for yours or mine.
Many salespeople make the mistake of focusing on what they want to sell instead of who would want to buy what they are selling. The salesperson must think of themselves as a needs-fulfiller for every prospective customer.
Customer Impact Principle #3:
People do not want to be sold, they want to buy.
The author contends that "people resent being coerced, manipulated or tricked into buying anything. ... Tricky selling maneuvers are an invasion of personal space and property, and people will defend their personal space almost to the death."
Customer Impact Principle #4:
Buying is basically an emotional response.
The two most fundamental reasons any of us buy anything are the desire for gain and the fear of loss. We buy because we hope to gain something from the purchase or because we want to avoid a loss we are currently experiencing or that we expect may occur. It is primarily an emotional response."
Brooks also offers techniques on how to narrow the prospect pool to increase the percentage of sales. He advises to ask "Who, what, when, where, and why. Among the questions he suggests asking for finding your `Niche' prospects are:
* Who has the most obvious need or desire for the company's products or services that we sell? For whom is that need or desire most compelling?
* What will this prospect find most beneficial about my product or service? What will he or she find least beneficial?
* When is the prospect most likely to give me an attentive hearing? When am I at my best? When is it a good alternate time that maximizes the answers to these two questions for both of us?
* Where do our ideal prospects live? Work? Play? Worship? Socialize? Relax?
* Why would this person be like to buy our product? Why would this person resist buying from us now?
One of Brooks' strengths is that, throughout the book, he gives very good insights that apply, not only to selling, but to all aspects of life. For example, he observes that with our time, talent and resources, each of us is free to:
* Invest: For which we get a return
* Spend: For which we get little or nothing
* Waste: For which we get nothing
* Abuse: For which we suffer
Anyone would do well to heed his words, and hold them up to their lives, like a mirror, to see where they stand in their personal lives. One of the drawbacks of the book, however, is that his sales techniques could have been presented in a more organized way. It comes across as redundant because there is so much overlap in the chapters. For instance, in Chapter 5, `Investigate,' he covers `Prospecting Pointers' on page 90. Then, in Chapter 7, which he entitled "Probe," on page 113; he covers `Measure Your Prospects'. It seems to me that these topics could have been condensed and addressed together in one chapter. On the whole, however, I found the book to be very informative and I know it will be an asset to me in my future marketing endeavors.

Works Cited
Brooks, William T. Niche Selling: How to Find Your Customer in a Crowded
Market. 1st Ed. Homewood, Illinois: Business One Irwin, 1992. 256. Print.