Book Review: What the Customer Wants You to Know

What the Customer Wants You to Know: How Everybody Needs to Think Differently About Sales by Ram Charen calls for companies to shift their sales focus from their product or service and move it to the problems of the customer.

This has, of course, echoes of the old "close to the customer" mantra of In Search of Excellence but Charan draws these distinctions:

Sales representatives have evolved from order takers to ambassadors who must carefully build long-term relationships in order to give themselves an edge. With the expansion of the Internet and greater access to information, Charan argues, that old-line diplomacy is insufficient. Competition is tougher, customers can more easily shop for lower prices, and the high quality from one outfit can probably be matched by another.


Charan's solution is to recognize that today's customers are under pressure to find extraordinary goods and services so the customer in turn can succeed in the marketplace. This means the sales person must measure success not by how many widgets were sold but by how much those widgets helped the customer to succeed. Charan calls this approach Value Creation Selling (VCS).


VCS is a lengthy, bear-hugging, process in which the sales person and others (e.g. engineers and designers) learn the needs of the customer and the customer's suppliers. This requires time and the establishment of an extraordinary level of trust; such a level, in fact, that I wonder if most organizations will be willing, much less able, to achieve it.


Charan sees the sales people as evolving from lone operators to team leaders and, although he notes some must resist this transformation, they will ultimately embrace it. [He must be dealing with a different breed of sales person. The ones I often encounter have gleaned much of their teamwork training from Lord of the Flies.]


Charan acknowledges early on that in order for his strategy to work a company must change its reward and recognition system to foster a slower, relationship-building, take time out to know the customer, process. I see that as the greatest hurdle. The mentality of the standard sales team is one of don't waste your time, go for the low-hanging fruit, and do it fast so you can move on to the next prospect. Furthermore, the customers perceive the sales force in that light and so alarm bells will start ringing the minute a sales representative says, "I want to know more about your operation." A similar problem arises with Charan's recommendation that sales representatives stop dealing solely with the purchasing departments. Sales reps don't limit themselves to the purchasing people because they think they are the only people who count; they do so because they know they will be probably suffer some form of retaliation from their usual contacts if they go outside of the loop.


Despite the above reservations and a few others, I like Charan's willingness to challenge the parochial nature of sales. It pushes organizations into better and more ethical relationships. What is needed, however, is a clear-eyed understanding of just how illogical organizations can be. Charan crunches the numbers and shows savings in some examples in which I can see - and have seen - executives will think, "That will detract from our ability to control matters and control is a higher priority than excellence or higher profit." These executives won't specifically say the latter, of course. They'll casually refer to "what you propose" but they will just as assuredly sink the deal.

Overall, Ram Charan's prescription resembles that of a doctor who tells a fat patient to jog five miles a day and to eat nothing but vegetables. The healthy effects of the advice may be solid but I seriously wonder how many patients will have the discipline and stamina to follow it. If you sense that your sales operation needs to be revamped, this book will spark some helpful questions. Recognize, however, that it is far from a mild solution.