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The Fundamentals of Business-to-Business Sales & Marketing
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The Fundamentals of Business-to-Business Sales & Marketing

John M. Coe
McGraw-Hill, 2003
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Editorial Rating

6

Qualities

  • Comprehensive
  • Well Structured

Recommendation

Business-to-business marketing has three components: product management, marketing communication and sales. Author John M. Coe focuses primarily on marketing communication, particularly on working with your sales team to create a more effective sales model. Few previous books have addressed the need to update the business-to-business sales process, so getAbstract welcomes this useful addition. In this concise but detailed manual, Coe addresses everything a company must know to revive its sales and marketing process, and boost its B2B sales.

Summary

For years, companies have emphasized sales over marketing because salespeople were the ones who brought in the business. Today’s marketplace calls for a new sales model that shifts from the dominance of sales units to combining sales with marketing-based communication. Despite this change, the sales staff retains the job of building and maintaining customer relationships. Four main factors impel this update in the business-to-business (B2B) sales model:

  1. Time-pressed customers now rely on sources other than salespeople for information, but even as they turn to catalogs and the Web, they still need salespeople, especially for large, complex contracts.
  2. Customers receive too much information. In 2000, Advertising Age reported that the average person sees or hears 4,000 to 5,000 messages per day.
  3. “The buying process is more complex.” At most firms, one person no longer makes the buying decision. Now the buying process contains more steps than the sales process.
  4. Customers have more choices and channels.

Many other areas of the business environment already have changed, from the way companies...

About the Author

John M. Coe is the founder of Integrated Target Marketing, and has worked for IBM and Rapp Collins Worldwide.

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