Snap, Crackle, and Pop

📅  11th June 2020 | 2020/21 Sales Book Reviews

Snap Selling by Jill Konrath was published in 2010. It was preceded by her first book Selling to Big Companies which I shall be reviewing in due course. For the most part, Snap Selling revolves around selling to those who suffer from FCS (Frazzled Customer Syndrome). We all know these types – they have little time on their hands to make decisions on a new product or service. Konrath takes you on a path to where you can navigate around the road-humps and win business.

 

The Good

Unlike many other sales titles, Snap Selling has acknowledgements, appendices, other books for recommended reading and a comprehensive index. And this in itself inculcates the reader towards thoroughness and preparedness. Sales is not about shooting from the hip.

Konrath, by way of repetition, explains the importance of value proposition statements – not only when one is trying to obtain a first or discovery meeting but also once you’ve convinced your prospect to move away from their status quo.

One of the stand out lines lies in the book’s introduction. Under ‘What Sales Really Is’ Konrath writes Sales is an outcome, not a goal but this is trumped by this ‘Knowing as much as you can about targeted prospect is more important than your knowledge of your own product, service, or solution. Most sellers don’t realise that but it’s true’.  This is highlighted once again later in the book…….”nothing is more important than your customer knowledge”. Part of that knowledge is to understand what motivates, inhibits them or caused them undue concern.  I liked the way Konrath explains all this is a table-style format called the Buyer’s Matrix.

The broader sales process shown is wrapped up into three distinctive “decisions” using the ‘SNAP Considerations’ these are 1. Simple 2. iNvaluable 3. Aligned and 4. Priority.  Alignment, or as I see it, relevance is gone into in some depth. Konrath implores the reader to use appropriate language and terms to get their ‘front-end alignment’ in tune with the customers business. Simple really, it just takes effort.

Top performers in sales set themselves apart by asking intelligent and sometimes difficult questions. There’s a raft of these throughout the book which you can adapt to your own particular circumstances. Overall, I give Konrath 10/10 for the amount of really useful content there is about selling value and value propositions.

 

The Bad

This is summed up on P. 58.  It’s just a few lines about what customers hate!  Take your pick:

Self-serving salespeople and passionate entrepreneurs

Sellers who do not invest time researching customers needs, issues, challenges and finally…

Rookies (or inexperienced salespeople as we say in the UK) who clearly don’t know anything.

 

The Ugly

Konrath unleashes a stern warning to those who ‘wing it’ in sales appointments. She cites statistics which explain that only just over a half of first meetings lead to a second. This is usually a direct result in one of the points made above – a lack of research. So Konrath explains what you need to do. This ranges from looking at customer’s websites, press releases, newspaper articles and so on. Some years ago, I would visit a business library to find out about customers.

There’s no getting away from it, this stuff is ugly, time-consuming and real grind but one has to do it. By putting in early effort, you will certainly be rewarded in the future. Konrath explains this in her amusing story about Mr Kronick and his egg-timer!

 

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I wouldn’t say that Snap Selling was a game-changer (as some of the testimonials suggested) when it was published in 2010. It is, however, a great guide to thoroughness in sales and the sales process.  I also love the way Jill is open about past mistakes. I really enjoyed this book and you will to.

Oh and by the way, SNAP, Crackle, and Pop is the title to Chapter 18.

Tags: sales training

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