The New Strategic Selling provides a firm framework for classifying and following through sales in a structured way that can be repeated and standardized in an organisation.
Having taken an interest in selling, selling tactics, and psychology, I found the book quite informative as it detailed a process focused approach to selling in a structured way that I could see applied easily on top of what most businesses are already doing.
The New Strategic Selling is a process for the "complex sale". That is a sale that involves multiple stakeholders and parties and must satisfy a range of requirements and terms. This in contrast to the "simple sale" which is a sale that typically takes place between two people where the buying decision is made by a single person.
The book provides some great insights, the most valuable of which I found to be their definitions of different Buying Influence's in the sale. These are the Economic Buyer, User Buyer, Technical Buyer and Coaches. The book then details what to expect and how to deal with each of these influences throughout the sale. It is important to identify these persons early on in the sale as they all play a key role in securing the sale.
The other valuable piece of information I gained from the book was the definition of the Sales Funnel. A process for categorizing opportunities and steps on how to move an opportunity further through the sales process.
Other pieces of wisdom gained were around Response Modes; a category of types to classify what mode an influencer in the sale is in and some advice on how to structure and approach an influencer in one of these modes.
Overall, I found The New Strategic Selling to be a great "macro" selling book. Unlike The Challenger Sale or SPIN Selling, it does not focus on the details of interactions and conversations of the sale but instead takes a step back and looks at the entire process. The provide a structured format to qualify and proceed if the conditions are appropriate. The methodology they provide is one that is generic enough to fit all organizations and would compliment well with the aforementioned resources.
