The new book by Prof. Dr. Jan Wieseke (Volume 2)
Combining SALES & STRATEGY
Guiding Innovative Business Models to Success
Guiding Innovative Business Models to Success
SALESTEGY has been developed for sales and strategic management decision-makers. The approach combines the worlds of sales and strategic management, which are often analyzed separately from one another.
SALESTEGY means that SALES & STRATEGY are combined to find promising business models and implement them, ideally in terms of sales.
In this book, the practical implementation of innovative business models is shown based on detailed examples of real companies. Managers are provided with step-by-step instructions on how to assess their business models and successfully structure their sales management.
It is becoming increasingly important due to the spread of Death Valley markets.
Why are Death Valley markets spreading?
Death Valley markets are market sectors in which suppliers are only able to sell their products and services with very low profit margins. Under such market conditions, the vital margin for companies is in equally short supply as water is for plants in Death Valley.
Many companies from highly developed industrialized nations are increasingly finding themselves in the maelstrom of Death Valley markets. This process is picking up pace as a result of globalization, digitalization, and crises.
How can companies reach green hill markets?
Green hill markets are market sectors in which customers are willing to pay for a company’s products and services at a price that enables the supplier to achieve a healthy profit margin.
To achieve the objective of a high willingness to pay, companies have to develop intelligent solutions for their customers. Many B2B companies are therefore increasingly investing in solution business models. Only 43% of the B2B companies analyzed by us still regard themselves as being in a pure product business.
SALESTEGY is the combination of SALES & STRATEGY. Solution business models require this combination, both to find them and to implement them.
SALESTEGY uses sales in a dual role: 1) As a catalyst during the finding process and
2) as an implementer in introducing solution business models.
The concept of SALESTEGY runs counter to the classic distribution of roles, according to which strategic management and sales act remotely from one another, and the sales department acts according to the strategic management’s specifications.
Conversely, the SALESTEGY role distribution provides for the close intermeshing of strategic management and sales. Here, sales acts on an equal footing, since sales representatives are involved in strategic decisions or are even permanently integrated at board level.
The STRATEGY area of SALESTEGY involves finding promising business models (see Chapters 3–6).
To do this, a logic that can be used to boil a variety of possible business models down to a manageable level is first required. The logic in this book enables a distinction to be made between five business model steps that can be encountered in highly developed markets today (commodities, premium, 1st step solutions, 2nd step solutions, super complex solutions).st step solutions, 2nd step solutions, super complex solutions).
With the “SNOOFY business model audit” a procedure is introduced, that you can use to evaluate your competitive advantages within the five business model steps.
The SALES area of SALESTEGY involves implementing promising business models (see Chapters 9–14).
Entering a new business model step influences all areas of sales management, namely:
However, there are “Death Valley risks” in sales (see Chapter 8). Each of the above areas of sales management is so powerful that an entire business model can fail because of them.
Prof. Dr. Jan Wieseke
Jan Wieseke is one of the world’s top four sales researchers.*
He is a tenured professor at the Sales Management Department at the Ruhr University of Bochum and and works as a visiting professor at ESMT Berlin and Loughborough University (UK). He has been presented with the national “Professor of the Year” award for the practical relevance of his teaching. He is a member of the scientific advisory board of Prof. Schmitz & Wieseke – Sales Management Consulting, a management consultancy focused on sales.
* Over the last decade, he has ranked in the top 20 of all Marketing professors in the “Author Productivity” rankings of the American Marketing Association (AMA) for his research contributions to premier journals. For the topic of Sales, he has consistently ranked among the top four.
The Sales Profit Chain (SPC) has been developed for sales decision-makers. To accomplish this, we worked with more than 4,000 companies. The SPC approach uses 12 questions to analyze the most important causal chains of sales and therefore to access the most effective growth and efficiency levers.