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Author Interview
Why should a busy company owner or manager take the time to read this book?
Because he or she is probably overlooking revenue opportunities and doing marketing the hard way—from the "seller's" perspective.
When you take off your "seller" hat and put on your "customer" hat, it's obvious that most sellers miss the mark.
People are happy to spend money when they find what they want and the seller makes it easy to buy.
You can read this book in a weekend (Charles Knapp says it is "engaging and surprisingly quick to finish"), and afterwards you will never view selling the same way again.
You will see what you've been doing wrong. You'll stop making "stupid marketing mistakes." But best of all, you will know exactly how to stop "selling" and start making it easier for your customers to buy.
Why did you write this book?
I was tired of seeing company owners and managers wasting their time on ineffective marketing efforts, hoping that the next thing they do will be "it." But it never is.
Viewed from the seller's perspective, marketing—as it is normally practiced—is a black art. There is no clear answer. One theory sounds as plausible as the other.
That's because the answer can't be found on the seller's side of the equation. What makes sense to sellers doesn't make sense to buyers.
Since the buyer is the one with the money—and the decision-making power—it makes a lot more sense to look at the selling process from the perspective of the buyer. That's what I've done in Rivers of Revenue.
When you look at selling from the buyer's perspective, your course becomes clear. When people buy things, they follow a buying process. Learn how to facilitate that process—make it easy for them—and they will buy more from you.
I also wanted people to know that you don't have to be a jerk to get ahead. There are a lot of "gurus" out there, telling company leaders that they should manipulate their customers into buying things. We see so many tricksters in marketing now. It's a very destructive trend. It erodes trust and makes customers very cynical.
One of the reasons there's such a peaceful illustration on the cover of the book is to remind people that it is possible to make money by helping people, rather than hurting them. In fact, that's how most money is made. Someone needs help, someone else provides it, and the person needing help pays the person who provided it.
I love to see company owners get on the right track. It's better for them and for their customers.
How is this book different than other business and marketing books?
Rivers of Revenue provides a specific, actionable procedure.
Most business books state a problem, offer one solution, and then go on and on providing examples. They don't tell you how to fix the problem in your situation. This book gives you specific, to-do list advice.
Marketing books, in particular, talk about things like your "brand" and "image" and "positioning." They recommend that you "love your customer" and "pursue excellence" and "dare to be different."
These are nice enough sentiments, but they aren't actionable concepts. If you were to tell a CEO to "improve his brand," where would he start? What steps would he take? And what would "success" look like? How could he measure it?
Advice that can't be turned into a to-do list is worthless.
Rivers of Revenue is a practical guide. It contains a system that addresses the full scope of problems encountered by businesspeople attempting to market and sell their products. The solutions in the book have been tested and refined repeatedly, and are organized into concepts and methods that a business manager or owner can carry out. This book was written by a successful practitioner, not a theorist.
Rivers of Revenue looks at the entire marketing and selling process from the other side of the equation—the customer's side. What do they want to buy? How do they want to buy? What would cause them to come back—and buy more? What do they avoid? How can you make sure your organization is giving them what they want?
Rivers of Revenue teaches company owners and managers how to find out what their customers really want, using sophisticated, do-it-yourself interviewing techniques that have been tested and refined over thousands of interviews.
You'll be able to analyze your customers' unsatisfied needs and determine which of them your company is best equipped to satisfy. You'll understand the customer's buying process—the steps they follow as they purchase your type of product. You'll know, in advance, how to allocate your marketing budget.
You'll be able to map out your customer's buying process, including who's involved in the purchase, the questions they ask, the answers that satisfy them, and the marketing tools and selling methods you must use to support every step of their buying process.
After reading Rivers of Revenue and putting these concepts to work, it will be easy for customers to find your products, buy them, and convince others to do the same.
Can the advice in this book be applied to any type of product or service?
Yes.
Many marketing books are written by a person who succeeded at one company and then wrote about it. You can always learn something from these books, but they are too situation-specific. The marketing strategies and techniques described worked for a particular product, in a particular market, at a certain point in time—and that time has passed. The advice given in these books can easily cause you to make disastrous decisions, if you apply that same advice to your own quite-different situation.
Rivers of Revenue shows you a completely new way to view selling that will appeal to all customers, regardless of the type of product or service you're selling. It divides the world's products into easily recognizable categories, depending on how they are purchased. Simple products are purchased without much thought; complex products are subjected to complicated, flinty-eyed scrutiny.
The book identifies four types of products, characterized by the level of scrutiny applied to them: Light, Medium, Heavy, and Intense. Each buying process is examined and explained, and the appropriate marketing and selling approach is described for each type.
This is the book for entrepreneurs and CEOs in any market, selling any type of product or service, who wonder if they could be doing better. The answer, in our experience, is always "yes." I have yet to walk into a company that wasn't leaving revenue on the table.
You devote an entire chapter—the "Power Baton" chapter—to the "politics of marketing." Why?
Read a typical marketing or selling book, and then attempt to apply that advice in the real world, and you will quickly discover that your efforts will be derailed by office politics. In particular, the ongoing and bitter civil war between sales and marketing professionals sabotages more campaigns than any other single factor. And yet it is seldom discussed. It is the dirty business secret that no one talks about because no one has a solution.
Rivers of Revenue contains the answer. If you view the "selling process" as a "buying process," with identifiable, discrete steps, you can map out the buying process for your product or service. You can then identify the marketing and selling tools needed at each step in the process, and marketing can produce these tools.
Salespeople equipped with these tools will find their customers pleasantly surprised; the salesperson will be able to answer customer questions, and the sale will be more easily made. Finally, marketing and sales will be working in harmony—in a way that satisfies the customer and raises revenues.
In order for a company to become a revenue-producing machine, everyone has to understand, from the highest levels on down, what customers want, and focus the entire organization on meeting those needs. If this happens, marketing and selling efforts will start to succeed. If this doesn't happen, the company's internal battles will kill it from within.
The politics chapter also talks about career advancement, even though one could argue that the book is written mainly for the entrepreneur and CEO. Is this because there's a connection between "understanding the customer" and rising in an organization?
Absolutely. In addition to coaching CEOs on how to bring more money into their companies, I also counsel many individuals about their careers. I see them making common mistakes as they "sell themselves" inside their companies and try to help their companies succeed. This book will teach them how to be more valuable to their CEO, how to rise up in the organization, and finally, start a company of their own.
People often don't believe that it is possible to do what they love and make money doing it. They are afraid to pursue their dream, when in fact, pursuing your dream—as long as they do it from the customer's point of view—is a proven way to be happy and prosperous.
Why does the cover look like a novel?
The book starts with a fable about three families living on—and harvesting money from—a river of revenue. One day the river dries up. How those families handle this provides a foundation for the revenue-growing concepts in the rest of the book.
Readers have told us that even though they hate the idea of reading a fable, it has hit them over the head with some incredible ah-ha's"—such as realizing how they've been keeping their own company from making more sales. The cover illustrates the fable.
But there's another important reason we made the cover look so peaceful. There are a lot of people who don't realize that you make money by helping other people.
You can go to work every day, happy and filled with joy and excitement, if you realize that you have something valuable to offer to people who need your kind of help.
Truly understand what people want and how they want to buy—and then build your business to give it to them—and you have a perpetual happiness and success formula.
No matter what happens—cutthroat competition, massive market upheaval, disruptive new technologies (who hasn't been affected by the Internet?)—you can stay right in sync with your customers. They will reward you handsomely for making life easier for them.
One more word on the fable. This book forces your brain to rethink selling—to see it as "the customer's buying process."
This is not a natural way for your brain to think. The deep recesses of your subconscious will fight you, every step of the way: "I don't care what they want! I want more sales!"
These thoughts will keep you from being as successful as you could be. The book helps your subconscious brain get with the program.
One very talented marketer told me recently he read the fable not once, but twice. He wanted to help his clients understand the book's concept—there is money all around us, created by customer desire, and you'll make a lot more money if you go with the flow.
Every day, you bring your logical brain and your not-so-logical brain to work. They both have to be on board for maximum benefit. The fable helps it all sink in, so your whole brain can put the Rivers advice to work.
What is a "smokin' donut"?
Picture a race car driver who has just won the biggest race of his career. Completely pumped, he does a "360" in front of the grandstand. That's a smokin' donut.
That image—of the precious, white-hot moment of success—epitomizes what we hope our readers will glean from Rivers of Revenue.
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"A powerhouse of wisdom. Kristin revitalizes
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Author of Web Metrics and Marketing on the Internet
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