University of Minnesota - UMN Executive Leadership Insights
The New Rules of Sales and Service
Book

The New Rules of Sales and Service

How to Use Agile Selling, Real-Time Customer Engagement, Big Data, Content, and Storytelling to Grow Your Business

David Meerman Scott
Wiley, 2014
Buy book or audiobook

Read or listen offline

Amazon Kindle
  • 0.5×
  • 0.75×
  • 1×
  • 1.25×
  • 1.5×
  • 1.75×
1×

Editorial Rating

8

Qualities

  • Applicable

Recommendation

Web-based communications advances are turning sales inside out and upside down, transferring dynamic selling power from salespeople to buyers. Notably prescient marketing and sales strategist David Meerman Scott explains how discerning salespeople can leverage today’s technology to become stars. Scott’s very detailed table of contents, interesting stories, highlighted main points and bulleted lists make his instructions relatable and useful. getAbstract recommends his expert manual to small-business owners, salespeople, managers, start-ups and others trying to reach more customers and make more sales.

Summary

Emancipated Buyers

Travel used to be the proprietary domain of travel agents: If you took a vacation, you had to call your travel agent to understand your travel options. A good travel agent presented comprehensive information, including detailed pricing and you took the trip your agency worked out for you. Since only professionals could access all necessary data, they controlled the decisions. The same situation prevailed with many purchases: customers had to hand matters over to agents or salespeople to carry out most major transactions. Because the salespeople held all the information, they exercised control. Customers were at their mercy, but they aren’t anymore.

Today’s technology has remade travel planning – and most other areas of sales. Vacationers bypass travel agents to find travel and destination information online at no cost. Now buyers, not sellers, are in the driver’s seat. Companies that accept this premise and organize their marketing and sales development activities accordingly will thrive, but making this shift requires understanding the new dynamic and developing straightforward purchasing processes for consumers who perform their own online product...

About the Author

Marketing and sales strategist David Meerman Scott is on the boards of advisers of HubSpot, ExpertFile, GrabCAD, VisibleGains and GutCheck. He wrote The New Rules of Marketing & PR.

Comment on this summary