Reviewed By Bob Boyles, President
Smarter Distribution

Bob Riefstahl is a former super-star salesman for NxTrend Technology in Colorado Springs. NxTrend has been one of the leaders in providing software to distribution companies for the past 15 years. Bob left NxTrend and started his own consulting company, "Demonstrating To Win" several years ago and has had great success in taking the principles learned at NxTrend and applying them to the sales process of other software companies. In "Demonstrating To Win" Bob shares the secrets of how software company salesmen do their thing.

If you are like me you assume that software sales is a slimy business with salesmen doing what ever they can to push their product out the door onto un-witting victims, their sole qualification being they were willing to part with a check. After reading this book I came to a completely different understanding of how the software sales procedure works and the role of the salesman in the process.

Software sales is a difficult job because you have nothing to hold up and say "this is my product", the customer can not touch it, that can not smell it or even use it until after they purchase the software and it has been correctly installed. So the basic premise of "Demonstrating To Win" is that in order to close sales the salesman must help the customer visualize how his company will be operating using the new software. It turns out that an effective demonstration is one that helps the customer bridge the gap between how they do business today and how the software will help them to do business faster, better and cheaper in the future. It is this assisting the customer across the bridge of understanding that Bob believes is the demonstrator's primary responsibility. The effective demonstration allows the potential customer to discover how the software will help them not necessarily how all the bells and whistles work!

Several of the chapters deal with specifics of how to perform a demonstration. But the most interesting part of the book for me, after being exposed to software salesmen for decades is the process of "discovery" that Bob believes is critical to the successful demonstration and sale. As a purchaser of distribution software and as someone who has made his living the past few years attempting to help distributors purchase the correct systems for their needs this was a refreshing revelation. The purpose of the discovery process is to not only arm the salesman with points to pepper the prospect with on how the software can ease their points of pain but also how the salesman can assist the prospect in understanding the software.

Summary - I have known Bob Riefstahl for a number of years and this book is another in the long line of successes that he has had in his career. I would highly recommend this book to anyone that is involved in software sales.

About Bob Boyles and Smarter Distribution:
Bob Boyles is the principal of Smarter Distribution in Coppell, Texas, a strategic coaching business focusing on assisting distributors in using technology. He is also the author of "Succeeding With Distribution Technology" a practical how-to guide for selecting and implementing the right technology. You may reach him at (972) 304-1180, via e-mail at bob@smarterdistribution.com or on the Web at www.smarterdistribution.com

© Copyright 2003, Robert S. Boyles Jr. All rights reserved. This article cannot be reprinted or reproduced in whole or in part, without the express written permission of Robert S. Boyles Jr.