Sales Book Review: Purple Cow

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Purple Cow is an important book for sales and service professionals.

Seth Godin points out in this 2003 book that it’s become imperative that companies “build remarkable right into their products and services.”

For professionals in our line of work, that sounds like the responsibility then lies elsewhere. That senior sales and marketing executives carry the burden to craft a strategy that separates companies from the competition. But does it?

What happens when you can’t or won’t deliver remarkable sales or service experiences for your clients? What happens when you can’t or won’t tell the story of how you ease or eliminate an individual’s or company’s frustrations, pains, and inefficiencies? What happens when your clients can’t remember your full name? As Godin says, “Today, the one sure way to fail is to be boring.”

Purple Cow is more practical how-to book than many think. A few specific takeaways, if you read carefully:

• Don’t play it safe. Safe leads to boring. Boring leads to failure.
• Being remarkable requires regular reinvention. You can’t stick with your offering forever and expect it to carry the same emotion into clients’ and prospects’ hearts.
• Test the absolute limits on being the easiest, the fastest, the slowest, the most efficient, the loudest, the hottest, the coldest, the hardest, the oldest, or just the most.
• Do the things that are just aren’t done in your industry.
• Think about the little things, too: the way you answer the phone, launch a new product, or price a revision or upgrade. Do the unsafe things.

It’s 2007. We’re back on the wagon with the Salesteamtools Book Reviews. What a great one to start with. Read this important book — it’s been out four years, what’s holding you back?