Predictable Revenue

Predictable Revenue: Turn Your Business Into A Sales Machine With the $100 Million Best Practices of Salesforce.com

by Aaron Ross

As an old Chinese Proverb says: 

— If you want one year of prosperity, grow grain. 

— If you want ten years of prosperity, grow trees. 

— If you want one hundred years of prosperity, grow people.

Predictable Revenue describes the process used by Salesforce to exponentially grow their recurring revenue. The book is a practical guide to develop client relations from a B2B company's point of view. The main lesson in the book is that the classic ABC - always be closing is wrong.

Aaron Ross talks about developing a sales culture that empathizes with the customer's needs and tries to develop a win-win relationship with prospective customers. Ross argues that the fastest way to a predictable revenue stream is to build strong relationships with potential customers. By investing time in the clients that represent a good fit for your product, your organization will eventually figure out how to establish a commercial relationship with that client. The sales approach becomes personalized and based on the user's needs. By becoming good at prospecting clients, and understanding which clients could yield a bigger payout if more time was dedicated to getting to understand their needs better, you can reach predictable revenue.

Some of the key lessons that I took from this book are:

• Buyers are sick of being sold to!
• PREDICTABLE REVENUE comes from: predictable lead generation.
• Empathy with prospects is lost in the push to "Just close the deal!"
• Caring too much about the close will cause you to give off subconscious signals to the customer that you really don't care about their success, you care more about getting paid or getting your manager off your back.
• Fatal Mistake: Thinking “Product-Out,” Not “Customer-In”
• Prospects Should Earn Proposals!!

Here is a chapter-by-chapter summary of the lessons I learned from the book - link