The Machine
A Radical Approach to the Design of the Sales Function
by Justin Roff-Marsh
This title was previously available on NetGalley and is now archived.
Send NetGalley books directly to your Kindle or Kindle app
1
To read on a Kindle or Kindle app, please add kindle@netgalley.com as an approved email address to receive files in your Amazon account. Click here for step-by-step instructions.
2
Also find your Kindle email address within your Amazon account, and enter it here.
Pub Date Oct 20 2015 | Archive Date Jan 21 2016
Smith Publicity | Greenleaf Book Group Press
Description
In The Machine, Justin Roff-Marsh shows readers how to follow the intrepid executives on three continents who have implemented his ideas over the last 15 years, building ridiculously efficient sales functions—and market-dominating enterprises—as a consequence.
Roff-Marsh calls these executives his silent revolutionaries.
This revolution has been brewing for a long time. For the last 20 years, organizations’ ability to produce has overtaken their ability to sell, and, for at least as long, customers have unfailingly embraced every opportunity to avoid interacting with traditional field salespeople.
Applying the division of labor to sales might not seem controversial, but this innocent-sounding idea decimates the sales management orthodoxy and replaces it with a strange new world where sales is primarily an inside activity, where salespeople earn fixed salaries and focus their attention exclusively on selling conversations, where regional sales offices become redundant, and where marketing and engineering become seamlessly integrated with sales.
The Machine is a field guide for the executive who’s prepared to wrestle sales away from autonomous field-based artisans in favor of a tightly synchronized team of specialists. Readers will embrace The Machine either to exploit the new sales order or to avoid falling victim to it.
A Note From the Publisher
Author is available for interviews, blog tours, autographed book giveaways, contests, and book club discussions. Print copies are available upon request.
Marketing Plan
Justin Roff-Marsh is the founder and President of Ballistix and author of the new book, The Machine: A Radical Approach to the Design of the Sales Function. Roff-Marsh is considered by many as the thought leader in Sales Process Engineering, a radical new approach to the management of the sales function. He is also the editor of the popular Sales Process Engineering blog, read by thousands of people around the world.
Over the past decade, Roff-Marsh has presented Sales Process Engineering at events to tens of thousands of executives the world over. He has been guest speaker at scores of industry events, conferences and association meetings, and has facilitated Solution Design Workshops to hundreds of companies in a variety of industries throughout North America and Australia.
Available Editions
| EDITION | Other Format |
| ISBN | 9781626342248 |
| PRICE | $22.95 (USD) |
Average rating from 1 member
Featured Reviews
Darren I, Media/Journalist
This book is sub-titled “a radical approach to the design of the sales function” and in many ways it clearly does what it promises. It shares the insights and observations of executives who have implemented the author’s idea about building “ridiculously efficient sales functions” around the world which lead to “market-dominating enterprises.”
The author has came up with some interesting analysis and perspective, noting that, for example, in the past couple of decades companies are producing far more than what they can sell and, at the same time, customers are becoming more and more resistant to traditional field sales representatives. The solution is to change the whole sales dynamic, letting salespeople earn fixed salaries and change their focus to sell conversations and solutions, mixed in with marketing and the engineering function. Heretical?
How about this extract to shock management? “Why is sales underperforming? One reason is that salespeople aren't selling. A typical field salesperson performs just two business-development meetings a week. You read it right. Less than 10 per cent of a typical salesperson's capacity is allocated to selling. And that figure is pretty standard across industries and across continents. The majority of a salesperson's day is dedicated to customer service and administrative activities, to solution design and proposal generation, and to prospecting and fulfilment-related tasks.”
The book’s title is based on a metaphor to the author’s grand design, since sales would become the consequence of a number of interrelated processes rather than the output of a person. Salespeople become a component in a much larger machine (albeit an important component) in other words. Through the book the author will help the reader create their “smoothly functioning sales machine” as well as implement it within their organisation.
Often books like this can be difficult to evaluate; yet even if you don’t seize everything the book offers, there is a good chance that you’ll get some good takeaway points or discover an alternative perspective. It can be a bit of a heavy read due to its content and message, but a worthy read. Even if you don’t immediately get sold on the idea and reasons for change, maybe something will stick anyway that can be beneficial to your company’s sales efforts. It might be a case of revisiting the book on many occasions but one day you might be inspired to start and change things.
This review cannot state whether this programme would work for you, even though it makes a compelling argument to investigate change. It is worthy of a read and some consideration in any case. It is a lot better than many sales boosting-type books out there.
The Machine, written by Justin Roff-Marsh and published by Greenleaf Book Group Press. ISBN 9781626342248. YYYY
