Mastering the Complex Sale: How to Compete and Win When the Stakes are High! (Hardcover)

by Jeff Thull (Author) "Today's turbulent marketplace creates constant competitive movement, fluctuating threats, and lucrative opportunities..." (more)
Key Phrases: mastering the complex sale, conventional sales process, prime process, Diagnostic Business Development, Dry Run, Prime Resources (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description
"Jeff Thull’s Prime process plays a key role in helping companies and their customers cross the chasm. It has built into its core the high-integrity communications and depth of commitment necessary to ensure customers succeed with game-changing initiatives."
–Geoffrey A. Moore, author of Crossing the Chasm and Living on the Fault Line

"There’s a powerful message in this book for senior executives: If your margins are eroding and your organization is trapped in the conventional sales paradigm, Mastering the Complex Sale has the road map and Jeff Thull is an excellent guide. He has captured the essence of selling in today’s turbulent times. A must-read for your entire organization."
–Mario Concha, President, Georgia-Pacific Resins, Inc.

"The Prime Process cuts across all trading entities, multiple cultures, geographic borders, and functional disciplines. Mastering the Complex Sale is a clear approach to successfully bringing together the multiple perspectives of sophisticated sales processes. It is required reading for any complex business, whether local or global."
–Gerhard D. Meese, Executive Vice President, Dover Technologies International, Inc.

"Mastering the Complex Sale is a masterpiece! It’s street smart and research backed and full of real-life practical advice on how to move all the chess pieces in the complex sales game. You’ll walk away with not only the ‘what’ and the ‘how’ of the complex sale, but also discover how to build the mental stamina it takes to compete at the top."
–Donato Tramuto, President and CEO, Protocare Sciences

"Mastering the Complex Sale lays out the most significant business and sales strategy to come along in years. It is clearly leading-edge thinking. As a technology innovator, we see it as a must. Read it and win!"
–Tim Klein, CEO, ATTO Technology, Inc.

"Jeff Thull’s leading-edge thinking has contributed to a change in our fundamental approach to sales and marketing and has had a significant impact on our bottom line. Mastering the Complex Sale and the Prime Process is a prescription for global success!"
–Dr. Richard M. Brooks, Vice President–Worldwide Marketing,
Waters Corporation

"Thull’s clear and distinctive advice provides the reader with a real-world road map for maximizing results in high-stakes sales. Diagnostic Business Development takes today’s consultative salesperson’s game to the next level. This book is mandatory for those looking to gain a true competitive advantage and distinguish themselves from the competition."
–Donny Holender, Vice President–Sales, Universal Computer Systems, Inc.

From the Inside Flap
Fluctuating customer requirements and competitive forces are putting more pressure on sales professionals. If you work in complex sales, you know that it’s the most competitive and lucrative arena in the sales world. But setting yourself apart from the competition is tough. Success demands superior strategies and precise execution. If the stakes are high and you’re expected to win, you will need Mastering the Complex Sale to give you the edge you’ve been looking for.

For two decades, Jeff Thull has been teaching leading-edge strategies to professionals involved in complex sales. Now, he presents his proven and effective methods in this precise and comprehensive book that anyone can use to break away from the pack.

In Mastering the Complex Sale, Thull presents the Prime Process, a new business paradigm that gives you a solid system, as well as unique skills and the mental discipline needed to execute it. The Prime Process is a diagnostic, customer-centered approach that clearly sets you apart from your competition and positions you with respect and credibility as a valued and trusted advisor.

It’s a smarter way to sell and it raises the bar for all sales methodologies. In fact, it’s not just about selling–it’s about making quality business decisions. This book will show you how to position yourself as a source of competitive advantage to your customers. It creates trust rather than suspicion, cooperation rather than confrontation, and the most formidable barrier of all to your competition–customer loyalty.

The Prime Process redefines the strategy of the complex sale and shows you how to:

• Gain access to and connect with the highest levels of power and influence
• Differentiate yourself from competitors early in the sales process
• Dramatically reduce the sales cycle time
• Prevent "unpaid consulting"
• Create questions that bring unrestricted flows of information
• Separate real business from resource drains
• Translate your market strategy into sales results

If you’re one of the millions of professionals competing in complex sales–in industries including technology, health care, manufac-turing, finance, and professional services–Mastering the Complex Sale is the only book that shows you a step-by-step process to compete and win when the stakes are high.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 240 pages
• Publisher: Wiley; 1st edition (May 2, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0471431516
• ISBN-13: 978-0471431510
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.1 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.5 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars See all reviews (29 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #83,419 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

31 of 32 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars How to Achieve Superior Results in Sales and Profits, March 11, 2004

By	Robert Morris (Dallas, Texas) - See all my reviews (TOP 50 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

Complex sales are those which involve a lengthy process of cultivation and solicitation, a "circle of influence" within which the purchase or pass decision is made, a product or service whose functions/features/benefits/ etc. require technical verification, and a substantial purchase price. In this volume, Thull focuses on the process by which to "compete and win when the stakes are high." To understand how to master the complex sale, one must first understand how and why the role of the salesperson changed throughout the last half of the 20th century. Thull respectfully but clinically explains the inadequacies today of sales strategies, processes, and skills which were effective from the early-1950s until about the early-mid 90s. How well I recall the advice I received from various sales managers when I earned my way through college by selling automobiles and smaller trucks in the Chicago area during summer vacations. Never take "no" for an answer, for example. "Selling begins when the prospect says `no.'" Another chestnut was flattery: "You look great behind the wheel! This car was built for you!" Times change, of course. One paradigm inevitably gives way to another. I agree with Thull that, today, "It's not about selling -- it's about managing [a prospect's] quality decisions." Actually, I view that approach as the purest form of selling: to serve as advisor, concierge, consigliere, consultant, etc. when collaborating with a pre-qualified prospect to make the most appropriate purchase decision.

Thull carefully organizes his material within ten chapters which range from the first, "The World in Which We Sell" (almost worth the price of the book all by itself) to the last, "A Complex Sales Future," in which Thull agrees with Jack Welch that we must either control our destiny or someone else will. Given what I now do to earn a living, Chapter 6 ("Designing the Complex Solution") was of special interest to me. In it, Thull suggests that "Prime professionals approach [Thull's] solution design phase of the complex sale as an exploratory process. The aim is to equip the customer to make the best, most effective choice among the solutions competing in the marketplace." By taking precisely the same approach, the IBM sales force was able to recapture most of the customers it had lost while improving its chances when cultivating and then soliciting prospective new customers.

As Thull explains, the process built during the Diagnosis, a precise agreement on what a customer is experiencing in the absence of the needed solution and it's financial impact, with a collaborative discussion that determines precisely what a customer's desired outcomes are. "The easiest way to begin to define the parameters is to ask customers how they expect their situation to look after the problem is solved." For me, Thull then makes an especially important point when alerting his reader to the "trap" of unpaid consulting which begins "when we cross the line between defining parameters of a solution and creation of the design of the solution itself." Please consult the book for Thull's complete explanation of each phase of The Prime Process.

Given the importance of winning in sales, especially "when the stakes are high," it would obviously be a mistake to assume that Thull (or anyone else) has all the right answers or is even addressing all of the right questions. My strong recommendation is that each reader rigorously evaluate available sources of relevant information and counsel (including this book), using the same process Thull proposes: Discover what those sources are, Diagnose their relative advantages and disadvantages, Design (or Re-Design) a sales program which is most appropriate to one's specific needs and objectives, and then finally, Deliver satisfactory results through effective implementation of that program.

It would also be a mistake to assume that the relevance of the strategies and tactics which Thull endorses is limited, literally, to the buying or selling of a product or service. Many complex "sales" can also involve effective persuasion to obtain funds from financial sources, for example, or to convince the best-qualified CEO candidate to accept the position offered. If used effectively in situations such as these, the same strategies and tactics can also be invaluable.

In today's increasingly more competitive marketplace, Thull observes, "There is no Magic! -- Spectacular success is always preceded by unspectacular preparation" as well as by a better system, sharper skills, and "above all" discipline. The Prime Process is not for every organization, nor does Thull make such a claim. Carefully consider what it involves and, especially, what it requires.

I presume to add a final observation of my own, that there is both "good news" and "bad news." First the bad news: Very few organizations have as yet mastered the complex sale process. Now the good news: Very few organizations have as yet mastered the complex sale process.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars For 18 years the concepts in this book have worked for us, August 2, 2004

By	David Madsen - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I had a chance to read 'Mastering the Complex Sale', by Jeff Thull, a few weeks before it was released to the public. For the last 18 years we have used many of the concepts contained in the book and had a great deal of success. Like any book, it does not give a reader the complete experience; I often explain it by asking people to read about a football game, compared to watching the game, verses going to the game. You can't smell the hotdogs or hear the 'fanatic' fan reading about the game. While you will learn about concepts and principles that work, you will experience them when you master them and use them to serve your industry and customers.

The concepts in the book have worked and worked very well for us, we are on our 2nd generation of sales managers and 3rd generation of sales reps using the material. Even after going from a market unknown to the dominant market leader, we still enjoy 15-20%, adjusted sales growth, year over year. We have acquired other companies and produced new products; using the fundamentals and the culture derived from implementing them we see a great, consistently growing future ahead.

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Other sales books start to look silly after you read this, March 11, 2004

By A Customer

I thought I knew how to sell. I really did. I usually beat quota, even during the recent bust. I've taken home 6 figure commissions 12 of the last 15 years.

But sales is the kind of career that always surprises you. I've started to see more "No Decision" deals: you qualify the customer correctly, you create the perfect proposal with undeniable ROI. They go away excited. Then no decision the next day, the next week, the next month, the next year. They don't go with your competition, they just don't do anything. What the heck is going on?

Or the customers who demand (and usually get) free consulting. Most vendors were desparate during the recession, and happily gave away free consulting to stay in the game. Now things are busy. How do you deal with the demand?

Or RFP's. Yea, we all know that if we didn't help write them, then we're probably too late to win them. Many of us refused to participate in a lot of them. But most deals are coming in with RFP's now. Customers are researching technology on the internet, and writing detailed RFP's themselves. Some are good, some are crap, many have real dollars behind them that I'm not willing to give up on.

Or commidization. Technology that we were selling as a premium, highly-differentiated solution a couple of years ago is available from three other suppliers who compete on nothing but price.

If any of this sounds familiar, you need this book. Mr. Thull has fugured out what's happening, and presents a step-by-step solution. You'll be shocked when he describes exactly what sales techniques you were using, which you thought was so smart, and shows how flawed it really is.