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The Leaky Funnel was inspired by
many original thinkers. The sales and marketing strategy books below are those that most influenced
us (and therefore Sue and her team). They are presented in the order in
which they appear in Sue's journey, within the book. If you haven't yet
read The Leaky Funnel, buy your copy now.
SPIN Selling
Neil Rackham. McGraw-Hill Inc., USA, 1988.
 Business
libraries and book stores are littered with texts on sales management.
Published in 1988, this is still the one that will most impact your
immediate success. SPIN Selling draws on over 35,000 interviews
with sales people, or observations of them in the field, and concludes
that good sales people build needs and poor sales people pitch products.
You'll see influences of SPIN Selling in MathMarketing's approach
to improving sales and marketing effectiveness.
(SPIN is a registered trademark of Huthwaite, Inc.)
A New Brand World: Eight Principles
for Achieving Brand Leadership in the 21st Century
Scott Bedbury, and Stephen Fenichell (Contributor). Viking Press,
USA, 2002
 His
major role in the development of two great global brands - Nike and
Starbucks - says enough. Although the positioning chapter in Kellogg
on Marketing explains why many teachings which are exclusively drawn
from consumer markets don't hold in business markets, it is a brave
marketer who completely ignores the experience of a senior marketing
executive with runs on the board like Fenichell.
Rethinking The Sales Force: Redefining
Selling to Create and Capture Customer Value
Neil Rackham and John DeVincentis. The McGraw-Hill Companies,
Inc., USA, 1999.
 Although
somewhat less impactful (for us) than Rackham's first book SPIN
Selling, in Rethinking the Sales Force, Rackham and
DeVincentis point out that sales forces are often structured around
conveniences for the vendor rather than the buying style of the
customer. They offer a simple, usable framework to deal with the three
types of buyer: intrinsic (their value comes from the product alone),
extrinsic (their value comes from the way the product is applied), and
strategic (they want to create new value by aligning their resources
with yours).
Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind
Al Ries, and Jack Trout. McGraw-Hill Inc., New York, NY, USA,
1981
 Although
Kellogg on Marketing (see later) provides a framework for
positioning that we find more usable (especially in business-to-business
marketing), Ries and Trout were the pioneers of positioning, and a full
appreciation of this not-so-subtle art is enhanced by knowing its
origins.
Competitive Strategy: Techniques for
Analyzing Industries and Competitors
Michael Porter. The Free Press, Simon & Schuster Inc., USA,
1980.
 25
years after first being published, the framework for understanding
profitability detailed in Competitive Strategy holds as valid
today. Porter explains why those generating more profit than their
rivals in any given industry hold to any one of three strategies: cost
leadership (not price), focus or differentiation. It is heavy going, but
well worth reading and rereading.
Kellogg on Marketing
Dawn Iacobucci (editor). John Wiley & Sons, Inc., USA, 2001.
 Alice
M Tybout and Brian Sternthal from Kellogg University strip the 'fluff'
from market positioning to leave a believable and usable core. They
explain that efforts to position a brand are usually around
communicating its point of difference, but that this doesn't 'stick' if
the brand is not already firmly positioned within the product category.
For brands yet to hold such a position, marketers should instead
communicate the brand's similarities with established members. Seemingly
academic, this is a simple revelation, and explains why so often
positioning efforts for new brands fail.
Permission Marketing: Turning
Strangers Into Friends, and Friends Into Customers
Seth Godin. Simon & Schuster Inc., USA, 1999.
 As
a pioneer of effective email marketing, Seth Goddin introduced a novel
idea in this popular book: most of our marketing is interrupting our
audience. Ineffective advertising and offensive SPAM are not markedly
different from each other, in that at best they miss the point, or
perhaps more likely, they evidence how much the seller is willing to
ignore they buyer. Goddin gives great examples of unwelcome
interruption, and encourages the reader to build a permission-based
dialogue with their market.
The Buck Starts Here: Profit-Based
Sales & Marketing Made Easy
Mary & Michael Molloy. Pinnaflex Educational Resources, Inc;
Cincinnati, Ohio, USA, 1999
 In
an effusive and compelling manner, Mary and Michael Molloy lead us to a
practical understanding of a simple means to determine the ROI of
sales and marketing options.
Inside the Tornado: Marketing
Strategies From Silicon Valley's Cutting Edge
Geoffrey Moore. HarperCollins Publishers, Inc., New York, NY,
USA, 1995.
 An
excellent insight into the macro strategy settings needed by a business
as its prospective customers move from scepticism to active enthusiasm.
It also contains an adequate summary of Crossing the Chasm
(Moore's first book), which describes the macro strategy settings needed
by a business after it has picked the low-hanging fruit of an early
market.
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your copy of The Leaky Funnel.
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marketing
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© 2005 MathMarketing, Level 10,
390 St Kilda Road, Melbourne Victoria 3004, Australia
(Producers of the free online sales funnel calculator tool -
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