Retail Detailed: Secrets to Selling Retail Chain Stores

Concept of book is interesting. Written from the retail buyer's perspective in a verbose conversational style that becomes tiresome to read. There may be some good advice in the book, but its just a chore to uncover. In the end, it may all boil down to the salesperson acting professional, knowing a few good jokes and restaurants, and then caving in to the retailer's demands. Price is cheap enough to try the book. Production quality is very low budget.

This book is written in the concversational style of Merrill Lehrer, he writes as if he is speaking, maybe even lecturing you about the hard truths of selling your product(s) to the Buyer of a large retail chain. Although, at times, more details would have been good, early on you get the drift. You need the buyers and the buyers don;t want you to think that they also need you but if your product is "hot" then they will need you just as much.There's a lot of tricky business in selling to retail chains nowadays. Once apon a time, if a store purchased your product then that was the end of it. The onus to sell the product to the consumer was then upon the store...this is not the case in the present day.Lehrer is blunt. He explains whhat you need to be, what you need to do and also what to look out for (eg. a retailer asking for your best price where no rebates, etc are taken into account...make sure you have that in writing or you may be charged for advertising, etc).At under 200 pages it is an easy, quick read with some real gems of information in there!

Merill has done a good job on a topic that's receives very little coverage in the publishing world. The book is worth the money because it touches on most of the critical issues that needs to be covered in order to establish/strengthen business relationship between manufacturers/distributors & chain store buyers.Two ways in which this book can be further enhanced, if there is going to be a revised edition someday:1. Some topics, like planograms, needs a slightly more indepth coverage.2. Merrill writes as he speaks; which is mostly good, but sometimes it's hard to follow. I think the editors might like to work on rephrasing some of the content.Overall, this is a fantastic buy.

In my years of selling I have taken sales courses and have read many sales management books. Most have spoken on things like features and benefits, or how to close the sale. Others have given me tips on scheduling my time. Merrill's book has brought to light an issue all sales people need to understand, that is, what is important to the buyer. Seldom does the average salesperson understand what it takes to be on the other side of the desk. This book has a great deal of insight into the analysis that a buyer goes through to maintain their assortment. My advice is to take this book and understand the process the buyer will be going through prior to making your next presentation.