Selling to Big Companies Book Review – Part One

📅 28th February 2022 | 2022 Sales Book Reviews

Treat gatekeepers with as much respect as you would decision makers

Jill Konrath‘s “Selling to Big Companies” was first published in 2005 and a few years before her top-selling title Snap Selling which was reviewed here in 2020. In SBC, Jill offers the reader a sophisticated road map on how to capture big sales from big companies – or as we used to call it at one time, selling to major accounts.

Read on….

What’s New

By now, many of you will have realised that there’s nothing really new in sales books written in the 21st century. There are, however, new and different ways of portraying certain sales processes or activities. And this is exemplified in Chapter 21 where the author gives a structured breakdown, almost minute-by-minute, of what to say and when in a sales call. This is then followed by a series of what if scenarios and the responses one should consider.

It’s refreshing to read this piece of text from a passage entitled ‘Know Your Biggest Competitors’ – Their (corporate buyers) extreme need to protect their time time at all costs makes the status quo your most formidable competitor when selling to big companies. I would add, to any company or individual. The point here is that publishing anything to do with the status quo and/or the status quo bias well before decision making science and behavioural science became a thing (over here at least) shows how ahead of the curve the author was back in 2005.

The book’s Chapter Four which is all about making a difference will make the reader sit up and take notice. Jill Konrath highlights why and how top sellers produce greater volumes of business than the traditional sales guys – who by now in 2022 could be considered dinosaurs – whereas the modern sales executive focuses on the customer’s business and not their “solution”. This is a trend which one sees in many titles in recent years and is closely linked (obviously) to the sales proposition.

In Part Two of this review, I examine this area in more depth…..

Tags: cold calling, Finding Customers, sales training