"On the road again, goin’ places that I’ve never been;
Seen’ things that I may never see again
I can’t wait to get on the road again" 
by Songwriter Willie Nelson,
Copyright ©Full Nelson Music

Yes, the Willie Nelson song is quickly becoming thematic for me.  I had no idea someplace could be as cold as Chicago in mid-January.  Enjoyed a Currier & Ives view of Boston.  It’s been fun getting out and seeing folks around the country who are involved and committed to providing their clients with the best possible service.  The accents may change, but the commitment does not.  It’s pretty cool.

Of course, it was on this recent trip that I stumbled across this month’s book to review.  And again, I succumbed to paying full price (because they’re NEVER on sale at the airport book store!).  However, it was SO worth it.  So much so, I purchased two additional copies (from Amazon, of course) for co-workers.  If you want to become a Game Changer, read and apply the principles in this book.

What The Customer Wants You To Know by Ram Charan (©2007 Portfolio/Penguin Group).     As I stated in a previous Book Report (June ’07), Ram Charan is an author I return to often because he has literally ‘been there-done that’ with the giants of industry from GE, Honeywell, DuPont and many others.  In this brief book (178 pages), Charan tackles a new subject for him – the subject of sales.  Not that he hasn’t covered the topic in all of his previous books.  This is different because it’s exclusively dedicated to the subject of sales.

In this book, Charan defines a new approach to sales taken by many of the Fortune 100 companies.  As a result, he has coined a new term – Value Creation Selling (VCS) – to define this approach.  So often, sales has been defined around 1) price and 2) cost savings.  While that may be appealing in the short-term, what is the long-term effect of product or service acquisition?  What is the true value of the product to the customer’s customer?  Can it be quantified?  And, if so, are we not short-changing potential clients by giving them the short-term view?  Charan traces the process in reverse-order, working backward from it’s end-use (i.e., the client’s client) and defining how each stage can be streamlined and defined to give value across the chain.  By focusing on meeting the needs of the client’s client, you define the relationships and the metrics to make your product or service a win-win for everyone involved.  And, by doing that, you set yourself above the pack and can actually charge more for your product or service because you can clearly demonstrate the value created in each stage of the relationship.   The challenge is that this thinking runs completely counter to the ‘rah-rah’ method of traditional selling.  It involves a shift in mindset from principals, staff and vendors.  It requires a long-term view to create value for others, not a short-term view of ‘making the sale’, and then loosing it on price or, worse yet, to a competitor who is actively employing the principles found in this book.  The remainder of the book contains the practical ‘how-to’ of developing and deploying VCS in your shop.  Again, the book is chocked-full of real-world examples from some of the largest companies in the world.

Remember – if you do what you’ve always done, you’ll get what you’ve always got.  The principles in this book will break the cycle of ‘S Squared, D Squared’ - guaranteed         5 Stars