Customer Reviews

ProActive Selling: Control the Process -- Win the Sale

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3 star:		(1)
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This book provides a fresh and different insight into the buying and selling process. I was able to use the tools that Skip Miller outlines in his book immediately and was not only successful at closing deals that were "on the fence" but also penetrated existing accounts at a higher executive level.

I gained a new perspective on the value of communicating clearly with my clients by speaking their language and staying focused on working together to provide a solution to their problem. The Summarize, Bridge, and Pull concept helped me to maintain control, communicate my understanding of the client's needs, validate my value proposition, and realize increased sales very quickly. I learned new methods of asking the right questions, acknowledging and eliminating my clients' fears and concerns, and transferring the ownership to them.

I would highly recommend this book to all sales professionals especially those with experience and success. This book is about results and providing the necessary skills to compete in an ever changing and highly competitive world.

I gave a copy to everyone in my sales organization and we have discussed it as a team and individually, using Skip's knowledge as our "language"..."Sellers sell forwards, buyers buy backwards".... In the past two years since implementing this, 80% of my regional sales people have made the 'club' trip each year.

Understanding the sales process is one that is explained in everyway, shape, and form.......however, ProActive Selling gives you another perspective - - the buyer's. This book shows me how buyers buy and allows me to remain 1 step ahead in the sales process, so to "pull" my customer rather than "push". How to start a meeting (30 second speech) and how to end a meeting (summarize, bridge, and pull) have been the cornerstone to my immediate success! Every tool is easy to understand and can be utilized in every sales situation, no matter if your entry level or a veteran salesperson.

I loved this book! As a sales professional now in sales management, I bought a copy for everyone on my team. It's a must read for new and veteran sales reps.

I especially appreciate the "tool" approach to selling. It let's me focus on the areas I know I need to improve my team's game. The author's use of stories and examples makes it very easy to implement the ideas presented.

I'd highly recommend it to anyone serious in furthering their own sales career.

Read this book if you want SALES TACTICS. The target reader is someone in sales who wants to get better. The in-the-trench folks who are out in the field, prospecting and interacting with clients.

Armed with these sales tactics like the Toward/Away[Tool] and the BuyersBuyBackward[Tool], you- as a salesman - know what to do.

The biggest revelation is that sales is a process as well as an art. Know the process. Follow and control the process and you will see systemic improvement in sales.

Having reviewed and studied sales materials to include info products with ten thousand dollar price tags, I am astounded that the quality and conciseness of Miller's advice to salespeople can be had for eighteen bucks. The book does a great job of arming the salesperson with the knowledge he needs to have confidence selling right up to the CEO level.

Having read Miller's Proactive Sales Management (which I thought was excellent) I was keen to read his ideas on selling.

I have to admit that I found this book had a lot less impact and many of the ideas have been put forward before by Bosworth, Rackham, Thull, Sandler and others. There's nothing wrong with the notion that you should see things from the prospect or customer point of view and that communication should be in their terms - or indeed that the process of selling should be controlled in an intelligent and proactive sense.

But I did find some of the concepts (such as 'buyers look back, salespeople look forwards') to be a potentially dangerous assumption in some industries, such as technology.

So, if you have not had much sales training or have not read many sales books don't let me spoil it for you. If you have, you may find yourself thinking you have heard the concepts before, but the words sounded different.