
Author: Rennie Gould
Publisher: Kogan Page
Reviewer:Emily Randall, marketing and business development officer, Mott MacDonald
Creating the Strategy is a good read for business leaders, not just marketing managers and directors. The book sets out to provide a practical guide for businesses and it delivers on this promise. The book starts with a self-assessment for the reader to objectively consider their organisation and identify some of the more important issues they have in ‘Creating and managing sales and customer strategy, and in winning and keeping customers’. I completed this assessment for my company before reading the book. The final chapter then revisits those areas and gives some sample actions for you to undertake in order to improve your organisation.
The first few chapters of the book explain models I am very familiar with from studying marketing at degree and CIM levels. So I initially thought I wouldn’t learn much. But I was wrong, since Gould relates the models to the real world of business. Each chapter ends with case studies to show the models in practice and suggested workshops for you to complete with colleagues.
The book provides lots of different methods by which to measure activity and success. Such as how to develop a sales competency profile for your sales team and how to find out what motivates individuals in your organisation.
The book makes for an informative read and sitting alone I can see how to apply much of the thinking to my organisation. However, for the advice to be effectively implemented several other key staff in the business would need to read it, not just you, otherwise you will struggle.
Star Rating: 4/5