Loyalty Truth

We’re voracious readers at LoyaltyTruth.com and like to share news about books that we feel deserve space on your bookshelf or Kindle reader.

Creating the Strategy – Winning and Keeping Customers in B2B Markets hit our desk recently and we think you will find it a useful tool in crafting a focused sales strategy in your organization, large or small.

Written by Rennie Gould, the founder of Customize UK Training and an experienced consultant with experience working with Ford Motor Company and British Telecom as well as strategy work with the likes of Mercedes Benz and AXA Insurance.

Creating the Strategy may not a book to take on your next vacation, but is a “practitioner’s toolkit of ideas and techniques in sales and customer strategy”. The book is a highly useful training tool which can be distributed among your business development teams to guide in forming strategic selling plans and focusing on achieving in business results. The author lays out a logical path which is meant to stimulate awareness and create understanding of the relevant issues concerning B2B strategy development while sharing insights to inspire the actions necessary to generate results. Central to Gould’s philosophy is the Business Performance Value Chain which is the framework the author uses to illustrate his advice and techniques throughout the book.

After beginning with a self assessment quiz, answers to which can be sent to the author for his review and response, he marches through a structured methodology for B2B sales planning. To his credit, he dedicates time discussing the role of your people, the heartbeat of any organization and emphasizes the importance of tapping into their talents and intrinsic motivations to reap results.

As he wraps up the book, Mr. Gould invokes Sun Tzu’s Art of War to underscore key points of his Value Chain. For anyone setting out to create a strategic selling plan, this is a good primer with practical tools and techniques to transform strategy into execution.