Escaping the Black Hole: Minimizing the Damage from the Marketing-Sales Disconnect (Hardcover)

~ (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

A fourth of all B2B marketing and sales resources are wasted on misguided initiatives and activities. As much as 80 to 90 percent of the content produced by marketing is considered useless by salespeople. And only 29 percent of a B2B salesperson’s time is actually spent on selling. Companies who sell complex products and services struggle with the growth in the raw volume of content, the constant change, and the number of contributors. This often leads to significant duplication, inconsistent information, and a dilution of the message that complicates the sales process - confusing prospects and sales reps alike. Written by sales and marketing expert Bob Schmonsees, this enlightening book aligns marketing and sales organizations, putting everyone companywide - from the CEO to the assistant - on the same page. The last decade saw an increasing misalignment between marketing and sales, as well as allowed inefficiencies to creep into the marketing and selling model. Schmonsees reveals the secrets to bridging the gap, cutting the clutter, and eliminating the waste.

About the Author

Bob Schmonsees, is a pioneer in CRM and knowledge management and a nationally recognized Marketing and Sales executive with over 30 years of experience building and running successful high tech organizations. He has led Sales and Marketing in successful start-ups as well as large publicly traded software and services firms. Bob has been featured in several national periodicals, including the Wall Street Journal, Selling Power, ComputerWorld, and Knowledge Management.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 208 pages
• Publisher: South-Western Educational Pub; 1 edition (April 5, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0324301251
• ISBN-13: 978-0324301250
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.3 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #92,136 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The most practical, actionable book I have ever read on the subject, April 9, 2006

By	Jason Jordan (Washington, DC USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I met Bob Schmonsees recently when he and I were both speaking at an industry event. Before ever reading this book, it was clear from our conversation that Bob is an extremely experienced and bright marketing mind. This book proved it.

Over the last decade, we have been bombarded with tons of useless charges like, "We need to become customer-focused", "We need to focus on solving our clients' business problems", and other meaninglessly lofty corporate platitudes. Furthermore, we all have bookshelves full of tomes that lay out elegant strategies for acheiving those goals - books that philosophize more than instruct.

This book takes those strategic objectives down to the tactical level where most of us in the business world live. It provides actionable, step-by-step advice on how marketing managers can create tremendous value for their salespeople by giving them the information and guidance that they have desperately needed since the advent of consultative selling. If you follow the processes in this book, your customers will breathe a sigh of relief as your salespeople begin to sound smarter about their business issues and provide more value as trusted problem-solvers.

Other reviewers will give detailed accounts of what is inside this book, but let me offer that I have spent years helping clients struggle with these issues, and this is the most useful and practical book I have seen on the subject.

If your salespeople are missing the mark with your customers, 'Escaping the Black Hole' will provide you with a means to help them ask the right questions, uncover the real problems, propose the right solutions, impress more customers, and close more deals.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Visionary as well as prescriptive, November 18, 2005

By	Jim Burns - See all my reviews

This book is simultaneously visionary and prescriptive. It's must reading in our organization.

The author's assertion that fixing the marketing/sales disconnect will become as important in the next decade as quality and customer focus has been in the last couple of decades is compelling. He lays out strong explanations for the problems as well as their impact on businesses.

This book provides a compelling vision for implementing solution selling, methods for aligning marketing and sales, and prescriptions for specific actions to improve business-to-business selling effectiveness.

We have begun implementing specific recommendations such as "value mapping", and found them extremely useful. We see this as a key instrument to get marketing and sales aligned to the best common messages, all centered on how we provide value to customers.

The idea of "institutionalizing the organization's understanding of customer needs" is powerful, as is the consideration that the facts, insights, and opinions behind the value messages and best sales practices are "the marketing and sales dna of the enterprise".

The only thing missing are more examples of company experiences implementing these compelling ideas.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great read with a practical blueprint for moving forward!, June 13, 2005

By	G. Shimkus (Naperville, IL USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This book is truly a must read for any mid- to upper-level manager in Marketing as well as company Executives! Unlike many books out there today, it provides real world analysis of the situation today within Marketing and Sales departments and then presents the reader with a practical blueprint that company's can begin to use to reduce the communication black hole between Marketing and Sales.

A cornerstone of the book is the need for company's to begin treating their Marketing and Sales content as a core asset. The author challenges the reader to begin thinking of their content in manageable chunks with a foundation based upon the needs of the constituents to which they are trying to sell their product. While the outside-in and solution selling approaches are not new, the concept of applying them to the content that the Marketing department creates and manages is new. While there are many great books out there for Marketing and Sales professionals to read on outside-in marketing or solution selling, there is often a disconnect as to what next and how to begin from a practical perspective. The value of this book is that it presents a real-world plan that company's can begin to implement on their own as to how to apply these valuable concepts and begin acting upon them - starting with their content as the foundation!