John Holland and Tim Young have just co-authored a book titled Rethinking the Sales Cycle: How Superior Sellers Embrace the Buying Cycle to Achieve a Sustainable and Competitive Advantage. This book contains a detailed explanation of the three phases of the buying cycle popularized by Mike Bosworth in Solution Selling  and had been created in a dinner conversation with Neil Rackham, author of Spin Selling. If anyone has ever discussed sales and marketing with me for any length of time; the buying cycle, Spin Selling and Solution Selling has crept into the conversation. In fact, the buying cycle I include in just about every presentation I give on marketing. I have depicted a copy of it below that I use instead of the more common graph.

An Excerpt from a presentation I recently did with this slide:

The next thing that I want to take a quick look at is the actual buying phases of a customer. This is from the book, Solution Selling. The slide is particularly interesting and I’ve used it for a very long time. Just think of someone that goes into a store to purchase an item. What they need for their solution and the cost of it is a primary concern as they walk in the door. The salesperson greets them and discusses their needs and price range. They suggest the proper solution. The prospect gets excited about the solution. You know this is the solution you need and the cost is not a primary importance. The risk factors start becoming a concern on whether this store, company can deliver the product. Are they trustworthy? Can they do what is required? Now, a decision needs to be reached. Price again becomes a factor and risk starts climbing up again. What can you take from this? You must provide value statements during the early phases and reduce the risk and price issues that will certainly surface. You have to have very specific value points and they must have been made very clear to the prospect throughout the buying phases. Just as importantly, you have to be a safe choice. Fear (Risk) will break or make the decision at the end of the buying cycle. Many times, you will lose to larger competition or a better brand name and at the final hour, just because of the risk.

Rethinking the Sales Cycle takes this concept and uses it as the base for the book. However, they go much further in discussing modern day concepts as they apply to this cycle. What attracted me most about the book is their ability to bridge that online to offline gap that I believe that has been developing. Crossing that Chasm, a meaningful pun attended, will be an interesting course of events in the next few years.

This is first and foremost a sales book with marketing in the supportive role. It is line of thinking that I enjoy reading. From that viewpoint, I typically gather more direct actionable ideas that are pertinent to my customers and theirs. From the book:

Let’s Make Deal

• Eliminate the use of deal from your vocabulary
• Eliminate the use of phrase sales cycle (I have started a crusade today on getting rid of the Marketing Funnel)
• Refrain from using the term buyer objection
• Do not focus on a close date; focus on when a prospect will be ready to buy.

This book goes over similar material that I have written about and labeled Mirror Marketing. The old saying about marketing: It’s not about you, it’s about the customer. I think salespeople understand that so well (The Eagles always understood!).

Read the book!

P.S. The question I have for the authors is if I should eliminate using the phrase sales cycles, why did they use it?

Related Search: Mirror Marketing