What the Customer Wants You to Know: How Everybody Needs to Think Differently About Sales [Hardcover]

Ram Charan (Author)

Book Description

Release date: December 27, 2007

From the bestselling author of What the CEO Wants You to Know?how to rethink sales from the outside in

?We have to face the truth: the process of selling is broken. Customers have more choices and are under intense pressure. Yet few companies are facing this reality. When they don?t, a lingering malaise sets in.?

More than ever these days, the sales process tends to be a war about price?a frustrating, unpleasant war that takes all the fun out of selling.

But there?s a better way to think about sales, says bestselling author Ram Charan, who is famous for clarifying and simplifying difficult business problems. What the customer wants you to know is how his or her business works, so you can help make it work better. It sounds simple, but there?s a catch: you won?t be able to do that with your traditional sales approach.

Instead of starting with your product or service, start with your customer?s problems. Focus on becoming your customer?s trusted partner, someone he can turn to for creative, cost-effective solutions that are based on your deep knowledge of his values, goals, problems, and customers.

This book defines a new approach to selling?which Charan calls value creation selling?that while radical is nonetheless practical. VCS has been battle-tested in companies in a variety of industries, such as Unifi, Mead-Westvaco, and Thomson Financial. It will enable you to:
? Gain a deeper knowledge of your customer?s problems
? Understand how your customer?s company really makes decisions
? Help your customer improve margins and drive revenue growth
? Connect sales with other key functions such as finance and manufacturing
? Come up with new customized offerings
? Make price much less of an issue

VCS gets you out of the hell of commoditization and low prices. It differentiates you from the competition, paving the way to better pricing, better margins, and higher revenue growth, built on win-win relationships that deepen over time.

Someday, every company will listen more closely to the customer, and every manager will realize that sales is everyone?s business, not just the sales department?s. In the meantime, this eye-opening book will show you how to get started.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Charan (Know-How) skillfully and efficiently offers a tutorial on upgrading the productivity of any size company's sales force. His answer: evolve salespeople from order takers to knowledgeable ambassadors who approach customers armed with cost-saving solutions they will be happy to pay for Charan's method involves Value Creation Selling, which at a broad level means reconfiguring a sales force's orientation toward customers' profitability before its own success. The author recommends fostering in salespeople the skills and mindsets of a general manager and equipping them with a value account plan, or the document that defines the value proposition and the business benefits the customer can expect to get from it. Charan walks readers through the process of fixing the broken sales process with a combination of diagrams and anecdotes from real companies, all while applying the concepts and actions to a booklong case study of a fictitious software company, Sturgis Corporation. The book serves as a practical guide to competing with aggressive price-cutters in today's market. (Jan.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Review

“Ram Charan’s done it again! In his signature, easy-to-follow style, Ram describes a practical, down-to-earth yet radically new approach to sales and new business development. Any professional—from a CEO to a front-line sales person—who is looking to improve sales effectiveness is sure to find this book well worth reading.”
—Francisco D’Souza, president and CEO, Cognizant Technology Solutions Corporation

“What the Customer Wants You to Know is an excellent primer for any business looking to drive better sales results and profitable growth by focusing on what the customer needs to improve his or her business.”
—John A. Luke, CEO, MeadWestvaco

“What the Customer Wants You to Know challenges sales forces to revolutionize their methods—and our experience at The Thomson Corporation testifies to the fact that the payoff in increased sales and customer loyalty can be significant. His recommendations may sound radical, but they are practical and effective.”
—Dick Harrington, president and CEO, The Thomson Corporation

“What the Customer Wants You to Know offers a revolutionary approach to customers and sales. Ram Charan provides readers a detailed road map of the coming organization in which creating value for customers becomes everyone’s primary goal. It is must reading for every manager and salesperson.”
—Murray Martin, CEO, Pitney Bowes, Inc.

“For the winners in today’s complex business environment, the days of simply selling products and services are over. I recommend What the Customer Wants You to Know for anyone trying to understand the shifting sands of today’s competitive environment.”
—Bill Teuber, vice chairman, EMC --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 192 pages
• Publisher: Portfolio Hardcover (December 27, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1591841658
• ISBN-13: 978-1591841654
• Product Dimensions: 5.1 x 0.8 x 8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (22 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #263,243 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #36 in Books > Business & Investing > Skills > Secretarial Aids & Training

More About the Author

Ram Charan is the coauthor of bestsellers Execution and Confronting Reality and the author of What the CEO Wants You to Know and 10 other books. A noted expert on business strategy, execution, building a high-performance organization, 21st century leadership, corporate boards and succession, he has worked with leaders of some of the world's most successful companies, including GE, Bank of America, Verizon, Coca-Cola, 3M, Merck, Aditya Birla Group, and Tata Group.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Your customer wants strategic value not commodities January 19, 2008

By Craig Matteson HALL OF FAMETOP 500 REVIEWER

Format:Hardcover

I really enjoyed this book on sales. It is a topic with forests of books in print. Many cover the same core principles, while others have found ways of putting swamp gas in print. This is one of those that has something good to say and does it concisely.

We have all heard and experienced the vastly increased competition, the compressed product life cycles, the adoption and dismissal of business strategy fads, and much more. Here Ram Charan introduces his idea about the Value Account Plan and not trying to compete on lower prices and thinner margins.

The idea is to get to know your customer intimately. You have to use everyone in your organization and gather everything anyone knows about your customers. What does their org chart and reporting structure look like? How do they make decisions? Who are the strategic decision makers? What are their key concerns? There is obviously much more to know and the point is to gather it all, put it together and the look at it to see your customer clearly. Where there are gaps, work to fill them in.

Once you really understand your customer, you can match and tailor your resources to provide value in ways that your customer does not yet expect or understand. You can match your expertise and products to help your customers accomplish their most strategic goals and make yourself a partner in their success instead of a purveyor of commodities at the lowest prices.

I think it is a terrific book and approach. But it means organizing your sales effort through the WHOLE company rather than just beating up on the account rep and his or her boss. Are you up for it?

Reviewed by Craig Matteson, Ann Arbor, MI

17 of 22 people found the following review helpful

1.0 out of 5 stars Nothing New Here. February 3, 2008

By Chris Reich

Format:Hardcover

This book could have been written 10-15 years ago. In one sentence: protect margin by adding value through service. That's it. The material is so basic and repetitious that I found it very tedious to just finish reading the book in hopes of learning something.

If you want easy to read business books with current thinking, take a look at Seth Godin's collection of offerings.

Regrettably, many books are now being hyped by a "system". Authors have a few friends post rave reviews to pump duds. This is one of them.

Chris Reich

15 of 20 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars How Value Creation Can Transform the Selling Process December 26, 2007

By Robert Morris HALL OF FAMETOP 100 REVIEWERVINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover

In all of his previous books (notably Execution co-authored with Larry Bossidy and then Know-How), Ram Charan focuses his attention on how to achieve and then sustain superior organizational performance. Another earlier work, What the CEO Wants You to Know, is an excellent companion for What the Customer Wants You to Know because it helps those in sales - as well as those who supervise them -- to understand the customer's business more broadly. In fact, the inspiration for the Customer book came from the CEO book. Charan explains in it why traditional sales approaches are unable to satisfy what customers want salespeople to know: How their business works and how they can make it work better. "The heart of the new approach to selling is an intense focus on the prosperity of your customers." Value Creation Selling (VCS) is the foundation of what Charan recommends.

He notes that VCS is "sweepingly different from how most companies sell today in these five ways: "First, you as a seller and your organization devote large amounts of time and energy - much more than you do today - to learning about your customers' businesses in great detail...Second, you use capabilities and tools that you've never used before to understand how your customers do business and how you can help them improve that business...Third, you're going to make it your business to know not only your customers but also your customers' customers...Fourth, you have to recognize that the execution of this new approach will require much longer cycle times to produce an order and generate revenue...Finally, top management in your company will have to reengineer its recognition and reward system to make sure that the organization as a whole is fostering the behaviors that will make the new sales approach effective."

In this volume, Charan examines these and other issues in great detail and with meticulous care. Having briefly identified the "what," he then devotes most of his attention to HOW. For example:

1. How to fix "the broken sales process"
2. How to become a customer's trusted partner
3. How to formulate the "Value Account Plan"
4. How to create a Vale Creation Sales Force
5. How to make the sale
6. How to sustain the VCS process
7. How to take VCS to the next level

Earlier I referred to Charan's somewhat more narrow focus as he explains why traditional sales approaches are unable to satisfy what customers want salespeople to know. That's true but it should be noted that Charan views the VCS process - if properly formulated and then effectively implemented - should directly or at least directly involve everyone within the given enterprise. In fact, because the VCS process is information-driven, he strongly recommends that external sources also be utilized to obtain the information needed about each customer and its business. Those sources include online and electronic business media as well as vendors and research analysts within the given marketplace. Thorough as always, Charan even suggests what kinds of questions should be asked to determine specific information needs and objectives.

Organic growth is at the top of every company's agenda. Many growth strategies do not get the right mileage because the sales function remains in the previous age. This book proposes value creation selling as a way to differentiate any business from its competitors. It enables the sales forces to break out from what Charan considers "commoditization hell." Here's a key point: When a customer sees that the selling company is creating value on a consistent basis better than anyone else's offering, the sales force has a better chance to sustain more profitable pricing.

Near the conclusion of the book he observes: "Transforming a sales force from transactional selling to one that creates value for the customer is a long journey...Every part of the company has to put the customer first...Virtually every company will have among its customers some who are progressive and fully understand the value of collaborating with their suppliers to the mutual benefit of both. Start there, and don't turn back...Above all, value creation selling will spur your company to come up with new ideas and innovations that will continually differentiate it in the highly competitive business environment of the twenty-first century. It is the pathway to a prosperous future."

Charan then offers an appendix that can help each reader to diagnose the state of value creation selling in her or his own company, once the VCS process is underway. He recommends that this self-audit of 15 key components be evaluated using a scale of 1 to 10 (from "definitely not" to "definitely yes") and that it be completed four times a year. This same self-audit can also be used to assess the company in relation to its competition.

After I read this book and then began to organize my thoughts about it before composing this review, it occurred to me that everything Charan recommends is also relevant to business development initiatives because prospects as well as current customers favor those who have obviously made a great effort to know how their business works and how they can make it work better. Granted, current customers are generally more inclined to share information than are prospective customers. Nonetheless, in my opinion, those in sales who do their homework gain a decisive competitive advantage because of their "an intense focus on the [prospect's] prosperity."

If you share my high regard for this book, I urge you to check out the aforementioned What the CEO Wants You to Know, Execution and Know-How as well as If Only We Knew What We Know co-authored by Carla O'Dell and C. Jackson Grayson, Patrick Lencioni's Silos, Politics and Turf Wars, and Creating New Wealth from IP Assets co-authored by Robert Shearer and other members of the National Knowledge & Intellectual Property Management Taskforce.