Think Like Your Customer : A Winning Strategy to Maximize Sales by Understanding and Influencing How and Why Your Customers Buy

Rating:
Summary: Take the uncertainty out of the sales cycle. Great Book!
Review: After attending Bill's seminars, the material I learned produced such great results when I applied it to a real customer that I always wished Bill could be there every time I had a question with a particular account... Well, now I can!

"Think Like Your Customer" documents Bill's proven methods so well, that I can be equipped to understand my prospective customers in such a thourough way, that my sales process and results translate into predictible and measurable profits!


Rating:
Summary: Essential real-world advice for all salespeople
Review: As a sales and marketing executive with 20 years experience selling high-end products and services to Fortune 500 customers all over the world, I thought I already knew how customers think. How wrong I was. Bill Stinnett's terrific "Think Like Your Customer" is chock full of practical and easy-to-use techniques to connect with prospects and to sell effectively. The book provided tons of ideas I had never even considered. What an eye-opener!

This isn't gobbledygook from some sheltered MBA professor. Bill presents his essential advice based on decades of practical experience as a highly successful sales rep as well as a consultant and speaker to the world's greatest sales teams. I was particularly drawn to the hundreds of personal anecdotes and stories Bill tells about winning (and losing too) that help to illustrate the points in the book. The book reads like the sales VP you admire most in the world taking you to lunch every day for a month and spilling all his secrets and stories!

This is a book you will turn to again and again. In fact, maybe you should buy three copies: one for the office, one for the briefcase, and one for home.


Rating:
Summary: Stinnett's book hits a home run.....No steriods needed!
Review: Bill Stinnett has captured so many useful elements in his new book that you actually start "thinking like a customer" before you know it. He is able to transform a complex series of events into a more thoughtfull approach to capturing new business. I was fortunate to hear Bill speak at a sales conferance a few years back.....and now know that he writes and practices what he preaches. Valuable insights, timely and well worth 10+ times the price of the book. A great gift too for anyone starting out in sales....or even for "experienced" pro's that might still think like a salesman...and not like their customers.

CM Douglas
Senior Sales Director
Los Altos, Ca

Rating:
Summary: Required Reading
Review: Bill Stinnett's book is a well organized and structured 'tour de force' for the sales profession. He solidly documents every essential element, especially qualification, starting with the origin of the perceived customer need, top-down vs bottom-up. He provides a refreshing value analysis through the customer's eyes and he lays out the vendor-customer roles in decision making with an eye towards how sales must coordinate and support the latter to facilitate success.

Bill offers a great scheme to diagnose sales progress through the essential acquisition stages and provides a way to check on why you may not be where you would like to be. Another helpful concept is his view of the essential elements of trust creation. Throughout the book, there are provocative questions and models to guide the reader through the logical selling process that puts the salesperson into the customer's mindset.

Think Like Your Customer is for anyone who sells. Every sales manager who wants the most from their team should make it required reading. In forty years I have note seen a better book.

Rating:
Summary: Stinnett Practices What He Preaches!
Review: Having been a customer of Mr. Stinnett's for the past several years, I was most interested to read his book entitled "Think Like Your Customer"! The same straightforward approach Bill uses during one of his live sessions comes through in his writing, as well. He is part common sense and part challenger of the status quo -- all done with a sense of humble, self-depricating charm! This practical guide for success should be in the hands of everyone who has something to sell.

Rating:
Summary: This book will produce guaranteed results!
Review: My company's sales have exploded after Bill Stinnett's 8 training seminars. Based on our experience using several sales trainers in the past, I have never seen our sales team absorb and apply any material, the way they have with the sales techniques contained in "Think Like Your Customer:" Our sales team has never been more confident and motivated. "Think Like Your Customer:" is truly the "best of Bill Stinnett" and serves as the perfect handbook for our sales team to use before (and after) every sales visit.

Rating:
Summary: Destined to Become a Classic
Review: Sub-Title: A Winning Strategy to Maximize Sales by Understanding and Influencing How and Why Your Customers Buy --This is one of those little books that you simply need to buy and read about once a year. Throughout the book there are little hints and tips that turn into wisdom when you think about them. You need to review it every so often because in the pressures of day to day work you find that you forget things. You read it again and all of a sudden you come up with an idea that perfectly fits that sales situation you find yourself in at the moment.

It's important to remember that your customer (or prospect) and you are there to work out a mutually beneficial business relationship. If both of you don't make out well on the deal, you won't have a deal for long. The customer is buying, not to help you out, but to help himself meet his own goals, whatever they may be.

I particularly liked his chapter on the Anatomy of a Buying Decision. For instance, price is important, but price is rarely the most important thing in a decision. It doesn't matter what the price is if you are selling fertilizer and the customer is looking for week killer. But if you find out that he had a weed problem, perhaps you can reach into another part of your sales bag and solve that problem. Then next week, when the weeds are dead....

Another important part is that you really are selling yourself, not the product. He has to believe you when you say that your week killer will solve his problems, otherwise you're doomed.

This book seems likely to become one of those classics that remain around forever. It's simply too good to go away.

Rating:
Summary: The Absolute Best Sales Book Ever written!
Review: This book caught my attention simply by its title. There are many sales and marketing books that focus on what the salesperson must do to become successful, but is it what we do that determines the sale or is it what your prospect does? This book provided the content and insight that has been missing from sales and marketing literature for years. This book is a must read for any individual seriously interested in becoming the trusted advisor as oppose to a quota chasing salesperson. The difference certainly showed up in my income!

Rating:
Summary: Great BOOK and a Great INTERVIEW
Review: What came out clearly from this book is that you'll never be a truly great sales executive until you understand "Customers" and more specifically what customers really think about and truly want when they buy. Because it's not the actual value of what we sell, but the customer's perceived value, that really matters.

Bill Stinnett says, "We have to learn to influence our customer's perception of value and help them to do something they need to do in their buying process." He also suggests that "Understanding how and why customers buy is probably the most important thing a salesperson can learn ... and we must realize that nobody wants to buy what we sell, but what they want are results and to achieve their own goals and objectives."

I interviewed Bill Stinnett on "The Inside Success Show" and was impressed by his depth of knowledge and his ability to clearly share the important parts of the selling process as they relate to our customers.

If you want to increase sales and your boost income by understanding your customers buying hurdles and helping them to overcome them, then I highly recommend you grab a copy of this book learn these strategies - believe me, it will be worth your time, money, and effort many times over.

Randy (Dr. Proactive) Gilbert, host of "TheInsideSuccessShow.com" and best-selling author of "Success Bound"

Rating:
Summary: A Must Read For All Sales Professionals
Review: Whether you are rookie sales person trying to get ahead, or a veteran sales person looking for some fresh ideas on how to grow your business, this is the book for you. Bill Stinnett has really raised the bar on sales books in my opinion and provides easy to understand strategies and techniques for becoming a valuable partner with your customers.

Think Like Your Customer gives easy to understand processes and strategies for outselling your competition and becoming an invaluable asset to your customers. Unlike most books which share only cute strategies on getting a customer to say "yes," Think Like Your Customer spells out specific strategies on developing value and goodwill towards your prospects and customers. Each transaction must be mutually beneficial for both the customer and your company and often times many sales people forget this. Bill points out the extreme long-term value of developing this kind of approach and ultimately this kind of relationship with the customer and how it pays off in real dollar opportunity for you and your company.

I would highly recommend this book to anyone that is looking for that edge over competition and wants to truly develop a long lasting relationship with their customers. It is a book that is jam packed full of excellent information that will have the mind racing and your heart pounding to get out there and get to work. It is a book that I know I will be returning to over and over again for both inspiration and motivation.

I would say without a doubt this is a must read for anyone in the selling profession!