The New Rules of Sales and Service, David Meerman-Scott
I’m a huge fan of David’s other books on content marketing and I highly recommend one of his earlier books Real Time Marketing and PR. 
His latest book focuses in on sales and while I didn’t get as much out of it as his marketing series it’s still a useful guide. In particular I like some of the case studies he uses of companies using agile selling and doing things differently (he shares examples from hotels, bike shops, gyms and a range of others.)
Like his earlier books this one illustrates how much the online world has changed (or should have changed) the sales process and what can be gained from focusing on an agile and content-focused approach.
The New Rules of Sales and Service
(headings = mine, all quotes directly from the book)
The new world
“Smart companies understand this new world and build a buying process around the realities of independent research.”
It’s not all about social
“Creating a Facebook page or jumping onto Twitter won’t transform your business. Changing your mind-set to one of understanding buyers and publishing content on the web will.”
It’s about brokering information
“…the smart ones have transformed themselves into a sort of information broker, serving up the perfect content to each buyer at the right time.”
And of course, solving problems
“Rather than talking about the features and benefits of your products and services, consider how you help people to solve their problems.”
What sales really is…
While marketing is the provision of content to many potential customers, sales and service are now about the provision of content to buyers one at a time based on their needs.
Becoming transparent
Yet Halligan observes that sales teams are resisting the inevitable change. “Sales needs to lean into change and embrace it,” he says. “For instance, many companies today still don’t publish their pricing on their website, which is kind of ridiculous.”
More information about this book and others are available over on David’s website here.
Happy reading,
C x
The Marketer's Bookshelf 