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If you are just out of a Business school, odds are high that you would be aware of the difference between Transactional selling and Strategic selling. The former is a traditional sales approach where in the sales person approaches a prospect, presents a demo of the product, extols its virtues, negotiates, gets the contract signed and walks away, perhaps never to show up again, shoving the post-sales part on to the retention team or accounts/finance department. And if the customer is reluctant in the first place, the salesperson moves on to the next prospect, relegating the unwilling customer forever to the ‘Cold’ customers’ category. Salespeople from this school are mere order-takers. On the other hand, strategic selling – the lynchpin of Ram Charan’s latest book – underlines ‘value creation’ for customers as the basis of sales than mere price. The idea of creating long-term value for customers doesn’t sound astoundingly novel. Same idea has been bandied about by many Harvard professors and numerous other authors even before Ram Charan. Some of the elaborations on Value Account Selling in the book may give you a déjà vu feeling. This book is not a ground-breaking one, for sure, much unlike his earlier stellar works such as ‘Execution’ and ‘What your CEO wants you to know’. Nonetheless, the beauty of this book is the author’s presentation and approach towards the engineering and execution of ‘Value Creation Selling’ in an organization. And, that is what precisely sets it apart from other books of the same genre. Ram Charan, in his inimitable style, breaks down the whole Value Creation agenda into eight chapters; enriches each chapter with examples from real-life organizations while using a fictitious company called ‘Sturgis Corporation’ as a prop; addresses the roadblocks that organizations implementing VCS are confronted with and finally, provides tools to execute and sustain such efforts.
In the world of ever-increasing opportunities coupled with proliferation of suppliers, Ram Charan calls upon the top honchos to embark on an organization-wide 'sales' transformation. The new order, according to Ram, doesn’t have to be a bailiwick of sales only. Instead, Value Creation Selling (VCS) initiative would entail dovetailing of various silos in the organization with Sales department to achieve the ultimate differentiator. Ram opines that such an initiative might take long to take root but once it is deeply ingrained it really can enable the organization to command premiums and contribute profitably towards top-line. Ram emphasises that sales persons have to act like trusted partners with their customers and help them improve their business in terms of cost reduction and accelerated revenue growth. To accomplish that sales function has to break away from silo mentality and engage people from other functions to shape Value-creating solutions for customers. Ram is also in favor of those in the vanguard acquainting themselves of various concepts of Finance. This may sound exaggerated but is, in fact, indispensable to VCS. Unless sales people understand what really matters to their customers, i.e. inventory turnover, cost reduction, ROI, sustainable revenue growth, etc., VCS would only end up as a high-falutin initiative with no ends to achieve.
Ram lays down five pieces of puzzles that a salesperson must crack. Remember these are also the five must-knows about your customers –
a) Competitive dynamics, b) Customer’s customers and competitors, c) Decision-making chain, d) Company culture and e) Goals and priorities.
Finally, let me reiterate that this book is not going to fire you up. But at the same time, it would definitely serve the purpose of being a how-to guide on VCS implementation and challenges. Read it since good books on sales are a rarity.
