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Mastering the Complex Sale: How to Compete and Win When the Stakes are High! |  | Author: Jeff Thull
Publisher: Wiley
Category: Book
List Price: $24.95
Buy New: $16.47
as of 9/8/2010 04:17 PDT details
You Save: $8.48 (34%)
Seller: Amazon.com
Rating:  29 reviews
Sales Rank: 33430
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 2
Pages: 304
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.1
Dimensions (in): 9 x 5.9 x 1.2
ISBN: 0470533110
Dewey Decimal Number: 658.85
EAN: 9780470533116
ASIN: 0470533110
Publication Date: March 8, 2010
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
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| Features:
| • | ISBN13: 9780470533116 | | • | Condition: New | | • | Notes: BUY WITH CONFIDENCE, Over one million books sold! 98% Positive feedback. Compare our books, prices and service to the competition. 100% Satisfaction Guaranteed |
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| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
Praise for Mastering the Complex Sale "Jeff Thull's process plays a key role in helping companies and their customers cross the chasm with disruptive innovations and succeed with game-changing initiatives."
—Geoffrey A. Moore, author of Crossing the Chasm and Dealing with Darwin "This is the first book that lays out a solid method for selling cross-company, cross-border, even cross-culturally where you have multiple decision makers with multiple agendas. This is far more than a 'selling process'—it is a survival guide—a truly outstanding approach to bringing all the pieces of the puzzle together."
—Ed Daniels, EVP, Shell Global Solutions Downstream, President, CRI/Criterion, Inc. "Mastering the Complex Sale brilliantly sets up value from the customer's perspective. A must-read for all those who are managing multinational business teams in a complex and highly competitive environment."
—Samik Mukherjee, Vice President, Onshore Business, Technip "Customers need to know the value they will receive and how they will receive it. Thull's insights into the complex sale and how to clarify and quantify this value are remarkable—Mastering the Complex Sale will be required reading for years to come!"
—Lee Tschanz, Vice President, North American Sales, Rockwell Automation "Jeff Thull is winning the war against commoditization. In his world, value trumps price and commoditization isn't a given, it's a choice. This is a proven alternative to the price-driven sale. We've spoken to his clients. This stuff really works, folks."
—Dave Stein, CEO and Founder, ES Research Group, Inc. "Our business depends on delivering breakthrough thinking to our executive clients. Jeff Thull has significantly redefined sales and marketing strategies that clearly connect to our global audience. Read it, act on it, and take your results to exceptional levels."
—Sven Kroneberg, President, Seminarium Internacional "Jeff's main thesis—that professional customer guidance is the key to success—rings true in every global market today. Mastering the Complex Sale is the essential read for any organization looking to transform their business for long-term, value-driven growth."
—Jon T. Lindekugel, President, 3M Health Information Systems, Inc. "Jeff Thull has re-engineered the conventional sales process to create predictable and profitable growth in today's competitive marketplace. It's no longer about selling; it's about guiding quality decisions and creating collaborative value. This is one of those rare books that will make a difference."
—Carol Pudnos, Executive director, Healthcare Industry, Dow Corning Corporation
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| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 29
 Lives up to the High Expectations February 28, 2010
Citizen John (USA)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
A friend in the same industry recommended this book for the same reasons its reviewers appreciated it. Author Jeff Thull did great research that went into producing this book.
Mastering the complex sale is an ideal book if you want to understand how one sells to a bureaucracy. Typically the sales cycle is long and drawn out and the salespeople have difficulty connecting at the higher executive levels. The dollar value of such sales tends to be large, but the sales force must invest considerable resources just to attempt the sale.
Because of the large investment required to make a serious attempt to sell to a large organization, the sales effort must be extraordinarily strategic. This is nothing like a personal one-time sale based on quick tactics. The stakes are high and one can expect strong competitive surprises. Even the "solution" that one produces for the sale can be expected to be rapidly "commoditized."
This book shows how a selling organization can approach the problem of making a complex sale. Trying to make the sale all at once would be overwhelming and wouldn't work anyway. What's required is to plan the sale and support it with sufficient resources, and then break it down into steps. Making such a sale also requires teamwork and a surprising amount of intelligence-gathering from the prospect. The prospect may be quite willing to hold numerous meetings to work out the intended solution to their needs, but the sales force must not get caught up working for free.
In the end, a complex sale seems to me to be a frustrating experience with a large potential payoff. The only reason to try it is that one complex sale might lead to another, and then the selling effort can be efficient, hopefully. You can go broke attempting this without an experienced sales leader.
Multi Party Selling... June 21, 2009
The Sales Reader (Albuquerque NM USA)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
This book is really good for dealing with selling situations when multiple parties are concerned. The complex sale will really teach you how to become a welcomed guest in the eyes of your buyer. I really enjoyed the section about understanding what sales is all about, identifying where someone is in the process of wanting to CHANGE, and how to help that person or people along so they make the right choice. If you are are in any sort of sales position where sales can take more than a week and often a month or more, this book is for you. If you have a chance to glance over the book before buying, I suggest reading pg. 107. The part about the power of an A to Z question. I have found this to be a very valuable tool in my toolbox when prospecting, opening, selling and closing.
Helpful to Any Leader in Government, UN, or Anywhere Else November 2, 2007
Robert D. Steele (Oakton, VA United States)
7 out of 7 found this review helpful
I found this gem in a West Coast airport. I bought it partly because I have spent 20 years "selling" governments on the idea of doing more with unclassified sources and less with expensive secrets that capture only 4% of the relevant information, and partly because when I role play the well-intentioned but largely hand-cuffed Director of National Intelligence (DNI), I see a real inability to make real change when allowing "business as usual" practices to continue.
This book is tremendous. It is coherent, well-presented, with great illustrations, and a superb "reality check" section that the DNI or any other Cabinet leader or non-governmental or corporate or state executive would do well to adopt.
The bottom line: any "sale," whether from an external or internal source, is ultimately about making change; about changing what has been done and how it has been done since time immemorial.
Second bottom line: virtually every customer lacks the high-quality internal decision-process for diagnostics, surveying of what the options are, or evaluating tradeoffs, and once chosen, the customer needs help in implementing any complex solution because this will require internal change that the entire customer's enterprise will resist.
The book opens with a brief summary of the three Eras of sales:
Era 1: follow a sales script, be persuasive, sell and move on
Era 2: listen, develop a relationship, be a problem solver, win-win
Era 3: serve as source of business advantage, be a strategist, nurture the missing decision process and cast of characters within the customer's enterprise, and be ready to implement, measure, and report results
I like the author's emphasis on the fact that win-win is not about selling a product, but rather about helping the customer create a process that leads to greater performance and hence greater profit or impact. In this context, I see real value for any vendor that is willing to step back from their "single point technology solution" and actually offer up a range of best in class offerings that can be integrated seamlessly and do not require "one contractor per laptop" to be effective.
The author stresses that in complex environments, implementing innovation that produces new value is the winning combination.
He points out that complex sales involve:
1) Large financial investments
2) Long sales cycles
3) Multiple decisions at multiple levels in the client organization
As I noted the last point I recollected my participation in the CIA's Mid-Career Course (Class 101, 1986) and the attempts then to create a "one agency culture." These attempts failed, and the current DNI is also failing, in part because we hire, train, and promote according to over 100 different systems--we do not train together, we do not work together, and who we promote has little to do with performance in part because there are no metrics for *outcomes*.
I like the author's illustration and discussion of how to build a bridge to change with diagnostics, which includes the following:
Customer's Business Objectives
Critical Success Factors
Job Responsibilities
Worry List
Indicators
Causes
Consequences
Expectations
Solutions
Wow. Imagine if the US Government saw itself working in this manner!
The author stresses that in complex decisions commoditization is not helpful because one size does not fit all, but at the same time, the customers simply do not have the foundation, process, or insights needed to get it right. I certainly found this to be true in government, where Contracting Officer's Technical Representatives (COTR), with a handful of exceptions, have not been able to do functional requirements surveys nor write Statements of Work (SOW) since the 1980's.
The author recommends a focus on customers in pain, because pain drives the willingness to change, and that, combined with the diagnosis, drives the sale and the willingness to implement change. As I write this I think to myself that the worst thing we could have done for intelligence reform was to increase the budget from $30 billion a year to $60 billion a year--not only is the secret world not feeling any pain, they are not being asked to account for *outcomes* that are all too meaningless--for example, no one is being held accountable for the fact that we still do not have a consolidated terrorism watch list, and the one we do have has over 750,000 names, at least half of which are false positives.
The author warns against providing unpaid consulting (stop at diagnostics--the client has to pay for devising solutions); for creeping elegance (the perennial lure of adding bells and whistles that are both unaffordable, and that will not be used to full effect--one estimate says that employees use less than 20% of existing desktop software capabilities); and of growing resistance inside the customer's enterprise if the needed changes are not explained step by step from day one.
From page 176 forward the author asks and discusses 12 questions. Here
1. What is our company all about?
2. Who are the customers we serve?
3. How do we develop new business?
4. What is our diagnostic engagement protocol?
5. What is our personal business plan?
6. What are our solutions?
7. Can we develop new business?
8. Can you diagnose the customer's situation?
9. Can you determine the cost of the problem?
10: Are you perceived as a creative problem solver by your customers?
11: Can you propose an effective solution?
12. Can you effectively present a proposal?
This is a great book, helpful to those who both sell and buy in a complex environment. The Earth is the most complex environment we have, and this book helped me think about how to help the United Nations, the Foundations, and the non-violent side of the Pentagon (the folks that now understand we must Wage Peace) come together.
A few other books that complement this one:
The Innovator's Solution: Creating and Sustaining Successful Growth
Get Back in the Box: How Being Great at What You Do Is Great for Business
Corporate Creativity: How Innovation & Improvement Actually Happen
The Change Handbook: The Definitive Resource on Today's Best Methods for Engaging Whole Systems
Investing in Innovation: Creating a Research and Innovation Policy That Works
Wellsprings of Knowledge: Building and Sustaining the Sources of Innovation
Transformational Change
Path of Least Resistance: Learning to Become the Creative Force in Your Own Life
Innovation Happens Elsewhere: Open Source as Business Strategy
Orbiting the Giant Hairball: A Corporate Fool's Guide to Surviving with Grace
 Avoid unpaid consulting and become a leader not only a manager of the sales process October 7, 2007
Russ Emrick (Monument, CO)
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
Jeff Thull is one of the 'fathers' of consultative selling and you really can't go wrong by reading and studying any of his books. This book is not only a primer on the subject but a resource that you'll find yourself going back to over and over again.
Business to Business Selling (B2B), that is complex, high dollar, capital intensive selling is different than the transactional sales of a Sandler, Tracey, or Hopkins. The long sales cycles and intense competitive pressures of complex sales require skills that move beyond techniques, closing, and relationship building. A salesperson must manage the sale through a long and involved process with an entire continuum of issues, stakeholders, and obstacles. As Thull says "we need to get beyond selling to managing decisions," "beyond problem solving to managing change," beyond meeting needs to managing expectations," beyond transactions to managing relationships," and "beyond reacting to managing clear communications." This book is the roadmap for doing those things.
In some ways this book moves past the idea of consultative selling because everyone claims to be doing that. Often customers don't have a rational or clear buying process themselves. Salespeople have to navigate these turbulent waters while preventing "unpaid consulting" and loosing to a competitor for unseen reasons. Thull offers constructive and timely advice on how to lead not simply manage, to drive change instead of being a victim of other people's processes.
"New Solution Selling" offers a better 'system' complete with tactical advice and forms to implement a complex selling process. However for important concepts and a philosophical sales foundation this book is a important read.
I have 37 years in sales.... August 23, 2007
Ron D. Neva (Spicewood, Texas)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I am familar with many of the concepts and ideas in this book. I enjoyed the overview of the three eras of sales; particularly since I have lived thru them all! And, the fighter jet complex sale made me appreciate the less complex sales I work with day to day. I believe this is a good book for those new to the world of complex sales and provides a good overview upon which to build and increase your knowledge of the sales process.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 29
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