Name: Customer centric selling
ISBN: 9780071639842

Customer centric selling

The Web has changed the game for your customers—and, therefore, for you. Now, CustomerCentricSelling, already recognized as one of the premiermethodologies for managing the buyer-sellerrelationship, helps you level the playing field soyou can reach clients when they are ready to buyand create a superior customer experience.Your business and its people need to be"CustomerCentric"—willing and able to identifyand serve customers' needs in a world wherecompetition waits just a mouse-click away.Traditional wisdom has long held that sellingmeans convincing and persuading buyers. Buttoday's buyers no longer want or need to be soldin traditional ways.CustomerCentric Selling givesyou mastery of the crucial eight aspects ofcommunicating with today's clients to achieveoptimal results:Having conversations instead ofmaking presentationsAsking relevant questions insteadof offering opinionsFocusing on solutions and notonly relationshipsTargeting businesspeople insteadof gravitating toward usersRelating product usage instead ofrelying on featuresCompeting to win—not just to stay busyClosing on the buyer's timeline(instead of yours)Empowering buyers instead of tryingto "sell" themWhat's more, CustomerCentric Selling teaches andreinforces key tactics that will make the most ofyour organization's resources. Perhaps you feelyou don't have the smartest internal systems inplace to ensure an ideal workflow.

What Hacker News says

grvdrmOct 2024

Had sales folks throw two books my way:

1. Customer Centric Selling

https://books.google.com/books/about/CustomerCentric_Selling...

2. Never Split The Difference (from buyer angle, but still good)

https://www.blackswanltd.com/never-split-the-difference

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mindcrimeMay 2022

I'd suggest you read The Four Steps to the Epiphany[1] by @sgblank, Mastering The Complex Sale[2], The Prime Solution[3], and Exceptional Selling[4] by Jeff Thull, and Customer Centric Selling[5] by Bosworth, Holland, and Visgatis. Across this sequence, especially the first two, I think you'll find a lot of very good suggestions on how to approach the situation you're talking about.

I don't know if I can put enough into a TL/DR; to even be useful, but the general gist of things starts with something like:

Have some kind of idea of approximately what you're interested in building, or what kind of problem you are interested in solving. If you're really starting from a complete blank slate, this might be tough. It doesn't need to be super detailed, but you should have something to start from. Otherwise you're asking people really airy questions like "What problems do you have?" that don't always work well as a starting point.

Talk to people in industry who you already know (Blank calls these "Friendly First Contacts") and ask questions around their experience in the area related to your vague notion of what you want to build / what kinds of problems you want to solve. Next, and perhaps most importantly of all... ask your "friendly first contacts" to refer you to other people that they think could give you useful insights, but who you don't already know. Repeat this process (and "the process" as laid out by Blank is fairly detailed, structured, and actionable. This is not hand-wavy mumbo jumbo. But you'll have to read the book(s) for the deep details).

As part of all this, you employ an iterative process of developing a detailed "problem hypothesis" which is simply a statement along the lines of "companies (or people) like you often have this problem, and would spend money to solve it." You then go back to your contacts (while also continually working to expand that pool of contacts, as you see fit) and try to validate / invalidate your hypothesis. If you can't validate your hypothesis, you start over and develop a new hypothesis. Once you have a problem hypothesis that you feel is validated (to some extent. This isn't really a totally binary thing) you develop a "solution hypothesis" which says "given that you have this problem, a product like the following would solve the problem and you would pay for it." And you keep iterating, talking to people, presenting your hypothesis, trying to validate/invalidate it, etc.

If it all works, at some point you have good reason to believe that you know something substantial about a real problem that real people have and a real (potential) solution for that problem that they would (theoretically) pay real $$$ for.

I'm eliding a lot of details, but somewhere in all this is where you build an MVP, show it to people you've talked to, and ask questions like "If I built this product would you pay a million dollars for it?" and "If I offered this product to you for free, would you install and use it immediately?" and others to help you hone in on just how real the interest and potential are.

Somewhere after this is where you start asking for either a check and signed purchase order (up until now you haven't been trying to sell anything), or at least something like a non-binding letter of intent that you can use to demonstrate the reality of interest in your solution if you're going to go out and try to raise outside capital, etc.

There's more to it than this of course. But at a super, super high level, that's sorta kinda how you can approach things. HTH.

[1]: https://www.amazon.com/Four-Steps-Epiphany-Successful-Strate...

[2]: https://www.amazon.com/Mastering-Complex-Sale-Compete-Stakes...

[3]: https://www.amazon.com/Prime-Solution-Increase-Margins-Compl...

[4]: https://www.amazon.com/Mastering-Complex-Sale-Compete-Stakes...

[5]: https://www.amazon.com/CustomerCentric-Selling-Second-Michae...

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mindcrimeDec 2019

I've read a lot of books this year (47 so far[1]) and they cover a wide range of genres, topics, etc. So it's hard to say that one is "the best" overall, so I'll break it into some categories:

1. Most interesting, overall: Godel, Escher, Bach by Douglas Hofstadter

2. Best in Hard Sci-fi: Foundation's Edge by Asimov

3. Best in Business: Customer-Centric Selling by Michael T. Bosworth, John R. Holland, Frank Visgatis

4. Best in Technology: An Introduction to MultiAgent Systems by Michael J. Wooldridge

5. Best in Mythology: Norse Mythology by Neil Gaiman

6. Best in "Deserves a mention regardless of category": On Writing by Stephen King

7. Best in Mathematics: A Mind for Numbers: How to Excel at Math and Science by Barbara Oakley

8. Best in Biography: The Man Who Tamed Lightning by Floyd Miller (biography of Charles Proteus Steinmetz)

[1]: https://www.goodreads.com/user_challenges/14999185

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mindcrimeOct 2019

If you're talking B2B / enterprise, then I recommend:

Mastering The Complex Sale

Exceptional Selling

The Prime Solution

Customer-centric Selling

Selling The Wheel

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wdrwilsonOct 2011

The hiring process and possibly placing too much trust in a new employee can be dangerous without the proper due diligence. However I think there is something else that has to do with technical people running their businesses that is worth mentioning.

Being a technical person in sales can be bloody scary, I run a software company and at the beginning I was scared to death about both sales and marketing. So much so that I would avoid it, and only do it when absolutely necessary. Which lead to basically working on whatever came along. Not ideal, and I was basically working for myself, with no real growth.

While working at a co-working space I met a fellow entrepreneur who had a sales and marketing company mainly focused on lead generation and online marketing. I hired his company to help with new messaging for our company. However this engagement quickly turned into sales coaching 101: how to build a sales funnel, effective proposal writing, understanding buying signals, targeting ideal customers, the whole works.

The whole time we worked through this process I was learning and understanding, and becoming less and less scared. One of the books that he recommended to me was 'Customer Centric Selling', it's a good read and I think is ideally suited to technical folks finding themselves in sales roles. It talks about sales as a process, and not a "who you know" connections mystical black box. you know.. Like the VP of the 100 million dollar company wanted to do. Connections always help, but the process is there to make sure that the optimism that the sales people will undoubtedly assign to each deal can be measured and verified. I find you don't get into these situations where a sales person feeds you a loaded forecast with nothing to back it up.

As the founder you need to know what works for your business, and don't hire a sales person hoping they will have magical powers and be instantly able to sell your product/service. Learn and create the process yourself, then hire a sales person and have them execute and refine your process. You know your business best. Others can help, but at the end of the day it's on you!

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dj23Nov 2010

"Customer Centric Selling" is an excellent book. You need to develop a repeatable sales process for your business - this book will teach you how.

Note: I have no affiliation with the above book/authors/publishers....I have been in software/technical sales for over 10 years, and I happen to think this is best place to get started.

Right now you are letting the buyer control the sales process. The other folks here are correct that you need to find out:

1) Do they have funds budgeted for this already? What budget will this come out of? When does their budget year end? 2) How does their buying process work? Who has final approval? Does this decision have to go to a committee if the cost is over $XX,XXX?

3) If your software solves a problem...how are they solving that problem now? What "pain" do they have associated with how they are doing things now? You need to find out what their "critical issue" is.

4) What is the business case for your product? People don't buy "cool features" or "neat software" they buy products that solve business issues. If you are selling something above a certain price point, the decision will eventually be made by someone non-technical....and you need to have a strong ROI case built for that person to get the order.

If you don't know the above information, never do a demo. If a prospect refuses to share this type of information, they are not serious and you should move on to the next one. Sometimes the best sales opportunities are the ones that you lose quickly....don't be afraid to lose the sale quickly. Focus your efforts on serious buyers who are willing to share information on their budget, purchasing process, etc.

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