What the Customer Wants You to Know

The robotic-sounding narrator of this volume plays into its business-focused content. Dick Hill's measured reading of the facts, figures, and decisions that cost companies profits sounds didactic at times. Yet listeners of business texts may find his delivery on par with industry standards for the genre. The step-by-step procedures outlined to transform salespeople from order-takers into proactive problem-solvers are well handled by Hill in precise sentences. Tips on how to get sales staff to think beyond financial figures and consider the needs of the customer are included in this tool kit to jump-start a flagging company or product line. M.R. (c) AudioFile 2008, Portland, Maine

October 29, 2007
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.