Selling The Wheel: Choosing The Best Way To Sell For You Your Company Your Customers($10.99Value)

Description

Jeff Cox displayed his remarkable gift for translating complex theories into entertaining stories as the coauthor of Zapp! and The Goal. Now, in collaboration with sales and marketing guru Howard Stevens, CEO of the H. R. Chally Group, he tells a story in the style of an ancient parable to reveal vital lessons gleaned from decades of research on salespeople and customers -- lessons that will help you identify the right way to sell successfully. Selling the Wheel recounts the story of Max, the resourceful fellow who invented the Wheel and found himself faced with the challenge of convincing people to accept his breakthrough innovation. In so doing, it demonstrates four essential selling styles, each requiring a distinctly different type of salesperson and selling approach. As Chally's research clearly shows, no company can be all things to all customers: sales tactics and strategies must change as technologies and markets mature to reflect new values demanded by customers. Written with humor and filled with practical insights, Selling the Wheel will be treasured by managers, salespeople, and entrepreneurs everywhere. William J. Lovejoy Vice-President, General Motors This book is wonderful to read, and the wisdom in it is profound! Michael F. Snyder President, ADT Security Services, Inc. Selling the Wheel is one of the best books on sales and marketing that I have ever read. Dozens of business books cross my desk, but this is one of the few that can truly teach the selling process. Wheel will be required reading at my company. Richard Falcone Vice-President and General Manager, AT&T After Selling the Wheel, even the veterans of sales and management will better understand what they are about. Most people in business can't see the whole product life cycle, because it extends over such a long period of time. Reading this book is like going up in the space shuttle and being able to see the world in its entirety -- the sales world, that is. You'll be able to look down and say, "That's my kind of country; that's where I'm going to succeed." Jeff Cox is the co-author or author of seven works of business fiction, which include The Goal , Zapp , The Quadrant Solution , Heroz , The Venture , Selling the Wheel and The Cure . Both Zapp and The Goal ranked first and second, respectively, on a list of bestselling business books from the 1990s. Jeff and his family live near Pittsburgh, PA. Chapter One Once upon a time, a long, long time ago, way back in the days of the Pharaohs of ancient Egypt, there lived a guy named Max. One day, Max was traveling on business, and he had a layover between caravans. Stuck with time on his hands, Max got to talking to a few of the locals, and they told him all about this big Pyramid that was under construction -- it was the largest stone structure ever attempted in the history of the world. "Where is it?" Max asked them. "It's right on the edge of town," they said. "You can't miss it." "What the heck," said Max, "maybe I'll go have a look." So he rented a camel, rode it to the edge of town, and sure enough, there in the distance were the sloping foundations of what would someday be the very first Pyramid. And everywhere Max looked, he saw thousands of sweaty workers cutting big, heavy stones with hammers and chisels, and then dragging the huge stones into place. To move the heaviest of stones, they had elephants, dozens of them, but even with the help of elephants the work was hot, backbreaking, and slow. Man, it's going to take them forever to build this thing, thought Max. Impressed though he was with what he saw, he was very glad that he wasn't working there. When Max got home, he couldn't stop thinking about that huge Pyramid and all those workers dragging the stones around. He even had a dream one night that he was one of the stone-dragging team, toiling in the sun, and after tossing and turning for half the night, he awakened with a terrible thirst. He got out of bed to get a drink of water -- and lo! He had the most brilliant idea he'd ever had in his life. As he sipped his drink of water, he thought about his idea. He went back to bed, thought about it some more, and the more he thought, the more he was convinced that his idea was really something. At last, Max nodded off to dreamland, but in the morning when he woke up, his idea was still with him. And it still seemed brilliant to him. So he went downstairs to the workshop he had in a spare room at the back of his house and he set to it. Years later, after many disappointments and failures, Max had done it. He had turned his idea into a real thing. Very proud of his accomplishment, he rolled it out of the workshop and into the kitchen to show his wife. "Look, Minnie!" he said. "Look what I've invented!" "What the heck is that?" his wife asked. "It's the Wheel!" said Max. "It's the what?" "The Wheel. This is what I've been working on all these years." "Yeah? What's it do?" "Wha