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From the bestselling author of What the CEO Wants You to Knowhow 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 dont, a lingering malaise sets in.
More than ever these days, the sales process tends to be a war about pricea frustrating, unpleasant war that takes all the fun out of selling.
But theres 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 theres a catch: you wont be able to do that with your traditional sales approach.
Instead of starting with your product or service, start with your customers problems. Focus on becoming your customers 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 sellingwhich Charan calls value creation sellingthat 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 customers problems
Understand how your customers 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 everyones business, not just the sales departments. In the meantime, this eye-opening book will show you how to get started.
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