Rating: 
Summary: Excellent Practical Examples
Review: This book is about sales strategy and techniques in complex sales situation. It contains many examples of author¡¦s real experience. These examples is the best element in the book. They illustrate the author¡¦s ideas/concepts perfectly. Practical, Concise, Easy to Understand. It is better to read than amateur work of consultants, professors.This book preaches on long-term, win-win relationship with customers. Not those type of ¡§hit-and-run¡¨ sales. There isn¡¦t really breakthrough ideas/concepts. It is more a combination of conventional ideas/concepts, which are still relevant in today¡¦s complex sales situations. Having said that, there are charts and contents useful for personal reminders and internal training. Rick Page tried to create analogy between some sales concepts and warfare. But some of such analogies are not easy to understand.
Rating: 
Summary: Great title; spot on for the real world of selling
Review: This book is an exceptional view of reality when selling in the non-commodity marketplace. Mr. Page does an outstanding job of articulating the important and critical issues one deals with in the world of the complex sale. To understand what the buyers view of the sales cycle is only helps to clarify the issues and provide a better probability of winning. The 12 words are key to any sale. Thanks for finally bringing clarity to the complex selling environment Mr. Page!!
Rating:
Summary: It is very good book to start
Review: this is a very good book to start if you want to start your career in sales. it is easy to read,understand, and helpful.
i highly recommend this book.
Rating:
Summary: complex solution selling
Review: This is an excellent book that describes a successful methodolgy that coaches salespeople on how to sell high value complex solutions to complex environments or buyers. It identfies the pitfalls that salespeople typically have and how to avoid making mistakes.
This would help salespeople in IT,Telco, system integration, and consulting environments
Rating:
Summary: Packed with Knowledge!
Review: This is an excellent handbook for salespeople in search of a simple summary of the principles of selling complex and costly products and services in a difficult environment. Author Rick Page offers nothing startlingly new, but he does a good job of collecting and presenting the most noteworthy points from collective conventional wisdom about selling. He illustrates these points with amusing, memorable anecdotes. His book is well written, well organized and quite readable. He probably has a point or two to offer even the most experienced and successful salesperson. Noting that chapter six summarizes the meat of the book in just three pages, so - until you have time to read the book - time-pressed salespeople could start by glancing at this section to begin to learn what really matters most in a complicated sales effort.
Rating:
Summary: Required reading for others than just the sales reps!
Review: This work is based on common sense selling principles that have proven themselves consistently in the enterprise level selling arena whether the solution is e-commerce enabling, network infrastructure or high value consulting. Page very effectively frames the complex selling environment itself before outlining a methodology to attack it. This is one of the primary strengths of the book and why I believe it is appropriate for readers other than just sales reps or sales managers. The first five chapters of the book offer significant value to CEO's, CFO's, senior Marketing officers and other members of the management team who share in the responsibility for developing and understanding their company's "go to market" strategy. I have also recommended this book to friends in the venture community who are challenged by the fact that one or more of their portfolio companies is struggling with delivery of their value proposition and consistency of forecast information. I am familiar with the methodology presented in the book having embraced it both in the ERP and internet worlds and find it to be presented in a logical, straightforward manner. Controlling the Complex Sale is the most comprehensive, yet implementable, methodology developed for the "knowledge worker" sales executive. Keeping this book at hand to frequently review the fundamentals can be of high value to sales executive or sales manager. Highly recommended.
Rating:
Summary: Essential Reading for Today's Sales Professional
Review: Too often in the modern business world have salespeople confined themselves to routine and outdated strategies for generating sales for their respective companies. While traditional sales methods might have been sufficient in the past, today's business environment requires a more thorough, intelligent, and complex strategy in order to beat the competition and secure a client's account. Thankfully, Rick Page has provided what SHOULD become a handbook for the modern salesman. Page's strategies show step-by-step methods for anticipating and outthinking the competition, pitching to a seemingly difficult client, and avoiding typical sales strategy pitfalls. In addition, "Hope is Not a Strategy" cites numerous examples from Page's disguished career, as well events from the careers of other salespeople, which help to illustrate key points throughout the book. Not only should this be essential reading for salespeople, but executives and undergraduate business students as well.
Rating: 
Summary: Blah, blah, blah! How to sell mainframe software!
Review: While the concepts discussed in Page's book are foundationally sound, they're nothing new. These are the concepts that have been espoused by thought leaders in the industry (Miller-Heiman, Holden, Target Marketing, Bosworth, Rackham, and others) for many, many years. While the book has stunning graphics (please read that sarcastically) to explain these concepts, they're still telling you nothing new. If finding the magic "6 Keys to Winning the Complex Sale" were all you needed to win more deals, then this book might be worth the twenty-five bucks. However, selling isn't programmatic. It's an art form, not science and it's learned not from reading a book or even just from attending a workshop. It's learned from experience, coaching, trial and error. And reading page after page after page how he and his cronies sold mainframe software in the 1980s doesn't really add tremendous value to how those of us in other industries need to sell today in a networked, matrix-oriented environment. As for creating a "common language" or "sales shorthand" as touted on the dust jacket, any effective sales methodology or Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system will do that for you. The key to it working is not the language itself, but management's commitment to using it. This is another of the magic "keys" that is superfluous. Having never participated in one of Mr. Page's classes, I can't critique their effectiveness, but if they simply focus on the same foundation aspects such as "Selling to Power" then I have to imagine that some or most of the "25,000 Sales Super Stars" that Mr. Page claims to have trained must have been bored silly. But then again, having spent the twenty-five bucks, I guess I just saved myself the entrance fee to the course.<... If this book was a "keeper" people would hold on to it. Don't waste your money!
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