Trade Reviews of
The Quadrant Solution
Publishers Weekly
CAHNERS/R.R. BOWKER PUBLICATION
THE INTERNATIONAL NEWS MAGAZINE OF BOOK PUBLISHING
OCTOBER 12, 1990
FICTION
THE QUADRANT SOLUTION:
A Business Novel That Solves the Mystery of Sales Success
Howard Stevens and Jeff Cox.
The HR Chally Group, $19.95
A sales and marketing manual thinly veiled as fiction, this fast-paced "business novel" brings to life the market quadrant concept developed by The H.R. Chally Group, a sales and customer assessment firm of which co-author Stevens is chairman. Matching a salesperson's selling style, personality and knowledge to customers' needs is the gist of the quadrant theory, a tool applied by idealistic, upright hero David Kepler, the acting marketing chief at a Chicago electronics/computer firm where sales are sluggish despite superior product. Two plot devices---a potential romantic interest with a regional sales manager, and a conflict between Kepler and his glib, lunkheaded boss, who goes on medical leave but later returns---leaven the didactic story. Sales personnel will readily identify with the situations and characters presented. This savvy handbook affords readers the sensation of eavesdropping on high-level decision-making and infighting in the same vein as Cox's previous business novels, Zapp and The Goal. (Nov.)
SALES & MARKETING MANAGEMENT
March 1991
H I R I N G & T R A I N I N G
A Novel Approach to Training
There are lots of sales training books of varying degrees of usefulness out there, but to our knowledge there are only a handful of training novels---and only one in particular that, to quote its jacket copy, "turns theory into practice by illustrating a business concept with realistic characters embroiled in everyday business dilemmas."
The Quadrant Solution (Amacom), by Howard Stevens and Jeff Cox, attempts to track and codify one man's sales success via a plot that owes a lot to all those westerns where the new marshal cleans up a brawling cowtown and wins the heart of the new schoolmarm along the way.
The "quadrant" referred to in the book's title is a grid system that matches the style of selling to four basic personality types: High-Tech/Low Touch Marketing, which calls for the Super-Closer Sales Personality; High-Tech/High-Touch Marketing, matched to the Consultive Sales Personality; Low-Tech/High-Touch Marketing, paired with the Relationship Sales Personality; and Low-Tech/Low-Touch Marketing, which calls for the Display Sales Personality.
The novel opens with the Hero, "David Kepler," who has been special project manager for the fictitious Elemenco Corp. for just three days, resolving some sticky sales problems by applying the Quadrant Solution, which accounts for a 32% rise in overall sales in one region. Naturally, this leads to a rapid promotion to vice president of sales and marketing. Don't forget, this is a novel---in other words, a work of fiction.
What gives The Quadrant Solution its special spin, however, is that it's based on genuine research into differing sales techniques, personality types, and marketing criteria as developed by The H.R. Chally Group, of Dayton, Ohio, a consulting firm that does professional selection and market-and customer-assessment services for customers like Saatchi & Saatchi, Weyerhaeuser, Monsanto, and GMAC, among others.
With The Quadrant Solution, writer Jeff Cox (who has also penned two other "novel textbooks"---The Goal and Zapp) has created a unique genre of fiction with practical sales force applications. As part of his research, Cox went out on the road with Chally Group executives to learn firsthand from the firm's customers what managers and salespeople are really like.
Co-author Stevens, president of The Chally Group, explains that the book's purpose is "simple and very basic: There isn't one single kind of salesperson, and trying to find a superstar who can do everything is impossible. Therefore, we've tried to show readers how to find the right people for the appropriate sales situation." And, Stevens adds, "Every character in the book has a real-life counterpart, and the positive ones were all credited in the front."
Although we can't in good faith call The Quadrant Solution great fiction, the characters are nonetheless both recognizable and likable (which is not necessarily true of the personalities in many non-fiction business books), and the plot has relevance to virtually any size company and its sales force. In addition, the resolution makes sense---both as fiction and as an example of how Chally's quadrant system works.---RS
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