Selling is Dead: Moving Beyond
Traditional Sales Roles and Practices
to Revitalize Growth by Jason
Sinkovitz
If Your Product/Service Is Not Mission Critical -- Buy This Book
A manifesto for reinventing the sales function
Selling Is Dead argues that selling teams and growth-motivated
organizations must change to remain competitive. It presents a new selling
framework based on research that indicates that buyer behavior can be
modeled and that large sales and small sales are fundamentally different.
This new framework provides salespeople with a practical structure for
giving buyers significantly more value for their dollar-value well beyond the
products and services being sold. Rather than focusing on one selling
model, regardless of the type of sale, this book offers four different types of
large sales and presents specific strategies for succeeding at each. Many

sales organizations are systematically mismanaging their selling
opportunities and failing to optimize their markets. Through effective selling
models, illustrative case studies and examples, and real-world anecdotes,
Selling Is Dead brings strategy and efficiency to sales-and shows every
sales-based business how to reap the rewards.
Personal Review: Selling is Dead: Moving Beyond Traditional
Sales Roles and Practices to Revitalize Growth by Jason
Sinkovitz
"Selling is Dead" is one of 10 best books on sales effectiveness published
in the United States in the past 20 years. It makes a strong contribution to
sales effectiveness for sales reps and sales managers who are involved in
complex sales in major accounts. It is especially valuable for companies
that sell innovative solutions.
Because of its focus on selling innovative solutions, the book cites
examples that tend to be skewed toward sales of technical solutions and
especially of information technology. But the book also carries useful
advice for selling less innovative products and services.
Of course selling isn't dead, literally. But it's changing in major ways, the
authors say. Sales teams are underperforming because they are
ineffective. The cost of sales people has risen much higher than their
productivity. If selling isn't exactly dead, it's broken. The authors say the
main reason is that sellers are generally unable to cope with the
quickening pace of innovation.
"Sales teams rarely falter when selling commodities because buyers see
commodities as safe, comfortable, existing applications," they say.
"However, once a company's core business has matured and the market
for those commoditized offerings has become saturated, organizations
must turn to innovation for growth and survival. Unfortunately, there is
powerful evidence that the transition of sales teams from selling
commodities to selling innovative new platforms is difficult and fraught with
failure. The real challenge in selling is selling innovation."
The authors' answer, in part, is to develop sales people into "business
people who sell."
The authors rightly give credit to Neil Rackham for his prior contributions in
"SPIN Selling," "Major Account Sales Strategy" and other ground-breaking
work. They then build beyond Rackham's work to distinguish between
appropriate selling behavior for what they call "continuous" and
"discontinuous" products.
Continuous products are already well known in their marketplace. Some
level of demand already exists for them. Many customers are familiar with
such products and are likely to know when they need them. They may

already have set a budget and established a selection process to acquire
them.
Discontinuous products, on the other hand, did not previously exist in their
target market. They are so new that no budgets are set for them and
decision processes are not in place to evaluate them. Most prospects have
no idea they need them. Such products represent the greatest selling
challenge and also the greatest profit opportunity. They are highly
differentiated. Because they are not subject to direct competition, they
command premium prices. The challenge for the seller is to help people
recognize that they need them enough to outweigh the cost and perceived
risks of buying them.
For sales of discontinuous solutions, the authors propose that sellers use a
structured questioning process the authors call FOCAS. The acronym, like
Rackham's SPIN, stands for different kinds of questions: Fact Questions,
Objective Questions, Concern Questions, Anchor Questions and Solution
Questions. The purpose of these questions is to help the prospect
recognize his or her latent needs. Having done so, s/he can overcome
innate resistance to change and aversion to risk. Only then is a sale
possible.
For sales of continuous products, the authors propose a significantly
different sales behavior. It is more oriented toward helping buyers choose
which of several alternate products they prefer in a category they already
know and understand.
As good as the book is, it could be better in some areas. The authors refer
to empirical research they say they've done, but they provide no details on
methodology or results. The book contains a few copy-editing errors and
oversights. It seems to take more time than may be necessary to describe
the differences between continuous and discontinuous sales. The book
also seems to spend excessive energy in explaining the need to sell each
type of solution differently. The authors describe FOCAS questions very
briefly, and they provide no advice on how to develop or refine them. Nor
do they give enough guidance on how to use FOCAS questions in
everyday selling situations.
Even so, the book is well worth reading multiple times.
This field is full of books that are little more than thinly disguised, high-
priced sales-promotion vehicles whose primary objective is to build the
authors' consulting business. While it's clear the authors would also be
happy to provide their consulting and training services, this volume is a
quality stand-alone effort from a quality publisher (John Wiley). It does not
invite you to visit the authors' web site to learn how much you can pay for
the really useful stuff they've maddeningly withheld from the book you
bought for $30.00.

With dedication and imagination, you can begin right away applying the
principles they teach. When you overlay the ideas in "Selling is Dead" onto
the step-by-step question-generation process in Rackham's "SPIN Selling
Field Guide," you can start improving your sales effectiveness almost
immediately.
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