Roadmap to Revenue: How to Sell the Way Your Customers Want to Buy

Citation

Parsons, A.L. (2012), "Roadmap to Revenue: How to Sell the Way Your Customers Want to Buy", Journal of Consumer Marketing, Vol. 29 No. 3, pp. 241-242. https://doi.org/10.1108/07363761211221792

The overall theme of this book is that buyers have changed the way they buy. Consequently, companies must change how they think and then adapt their strategies to reflect how their current and potential customers think to more effectively sell to them.

Roadmap to Revenue outlines a comprehensive system designed to make companies more customer centered to ultimately increase their revenue. This system seems appropriate for both business‐to‐consumer and business‐to‐business marketers.

Buyers today shop and make decisions differently; in fact, many decisions are “Google‐driven,” implying that buyers have about 80 percent of their questions answered before they contact the company directly, whereas in the past buyers may have had only about 20 percent of their questions answered prior to company contact. This change in buying behavior suggests that firms need to make as much useful and accessible information available as possible to address potential buyer concerns to increase the likelihood that the buyer will contact them.

The book has an introduction and twelve additional chapters. Chapter 1 asks readers to assess and evaluate where their organization is now. The author suggests that in many companies the marketing and selling functions and are worlds apart from customer buying and even suggests throwing out the terms “sales” and “marketing” to more effectively think like a buyer.

Chapter 2 provides readers with a look at the future to see where their organizations could be once they implement the roadmap to revenue system. It also introduces the three key steps that must be completed in order to implement the system:

1. 1.

   Discover – Find out what they want and how they want to go about buying it.

2. 2.

   Debate – Resolve the differences between what they want versus what you have to sell, and how they buy versus how you sell.

3. 3.

   Deploy – Document your customers’ buying processes so you can support them every step of the way, then build an action plan.

Chapters 3, 4, and 5 provide detailed outlines of the three steps involved in implementing the roadmap to revenue system. Chapter 3 describes the challenges involved with the system's starting point and focuses on how to interview current customers to gain a better understanding of how they buy and what they are looking for when buying. Chapter 4 discusses what to do with the interview results, including whom to share them with, how to analyze them, how to use them to brainstorm, and how to prioritize them. Chapter 5 outlines how to use the interview results to develop an action plan and introduces the idea of the four levels of buyer scrutiny (light, medium, heavy, and intense). At the end of each of these three chapters a summary in the form of a bulleted checklist effectively summarizes the key issues and tasks that must be addressed to complete each step of the implementation process.

Chapter 6 provides a general outline of the steps involving buyer behavior (need, search, arrival, answers, purchase, and rating) and discusses each step using an example of Joe the Buyer. Chapter 7 provides an overview of the next few chapters as well as some advice on how to proceed with the remainder of the book. The author suggests paying attention to all four levels of scrutiny even if your company's customers primarily use only scrutiny level in their buying decisions because you can learn how to better support your customers' buying process by understanding each of the different levels.

Chapters 8, 9, 10, and 11 elaborate on the nature of each of the four levels of scrutiny and make suggestions for how companies can or should adapt their strategies to support each level of their customers' buying process. In each of these chapters a more through description of the characteristics of each level of scrutiny is followed by a road map that presents customer actions and then suggests company tasks that should be addressed based on the customer actions. The buying process for light scrutiny products and service involves the least amount of effort, decisions may be made in a short period of time and at minimal cost, and buyers may only ask a few questions while making their buying decision. Medium scrutiny products and services are not impulse purchase, buyers may ask five to 20 questions when making a purchase decision, products range in price from tens to hundreds of dollars, the buying process can take minutes or hours, and some comparison shopping may be done. Heavy scrutiny products and services are big events for the purchaser, the buyer may ask 25 to 50+ questions during the buying process, the price can run from thousands to millions of dollars, the buying process can take weeks or months, and more than one person can be involved in the buying decision. Intense scrutiny products and services buying decisions involved multiple decision makers, the price can be thousands to billions of dollar, the buying process can take weeks, months, or even years, and contracts are signed to establish long‐term relationships.

Chapter 12 presents strategies for maintaining the system once it is implemented to continue maximizing revenue by focusing on the customer's perspective when designing your business strategies.

Throughout the book the author provides a number of examples of companies that embrace the idea of understanding how consumers think, but it would have been helpful to have more examples of actual companies who had successfully implemented the roadmap to revenue system even if the names of the companies were not revealed.

Implementing the roadmap to revenue system requires that the reader “buy into” the idea of the roadmap to revenue system and that everyone in the organization fully embraces the concepts presented within the text in order for the system to deliver as promised. The author reiterates this point throughout the book. While this book offers many interesting and valid insights about customers and company strategies, it does not present them as a “quick fix,” so those who are not willing to make significant changes or who are not looking for a long term solution may not get as much out of this book as they possibly could. Implementing the system seems to require a great amount of time, effort, and commitment to change. This commitment must involve the entire organization. The audience for this book would be CEO's, customer service managers, operations managers, sales managers, marketing managers, and any employee who is involved in interacting with customers.