Book Reviews
Creating Competitive Advantage By Jaynie L. Smith
Creating Competitive Advantage was published in April 2006 by Doubleday and hit Amazon’s best-sellers list within two months of being released. Jaynie Smith’s first book is in its 13th printing and still receives commendable reviews and praise. Select reviews are listed below.
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Submit My Creating Competitive Advantage ReviewSmith’s elegant little book should be mandatory reading for all entrepreneurs.
Ninety percent of the information used in organizations is internally focused and only ten percent is about the outside environment. This is exactly backwards.
In this highly readable book, Jaynie Smith makes a compelling case for why you’re almost certainly mistaken if you think that your company’s sales and marketing pitches are relevant to customers.
Compelling! The clarity in which Jaynie presents her message is particularly valuable. Finding and using your competitive advantage is the key to not only survival but more importantly, profitable survival.
Jaynie Smith’s Relevant Selling is the perfect complement to her first book, Creating Competitive Advantage. She challenges you to think like your customer.
As an attendee of Jaynie’s Smith’s keynote speech during Chemcraft’s national distributor meeting in Ft. Lauderdale early this year, I enthusiastically endorse and recommend Jaynie as a speaker. A key reason for my Chemcraft meeting attendance was to hear Jaynie speak and learn more about the Smart Advantage research approach. Her content was widely interesting to attendees, who were owners or leaders of their respective businesses. I found Jaynie’s content to be informative, innovative and entertaining. Hearing Jaynie speak cemented E.B. Bradley Company’s interest in engaging her Firm in a project to identify competitive advantages and execute against those findings. I highly recommend Jaynie as a speaker.
Jaynie was articulate, focused and gave high level advice to over 100 New York City CEOs. The audience stayed engaged and interacted throughout the entire presentation. It was impactful and all walked away with tangible action items that could add value to every company, if implemented.
In a world where most and I mean MOST selling is irrelevant selling, Jaynie Smith’s Relevant Selling can mean the difference to you between profit and loss. My head is spinning with the wisdom in her book.
If you don’t have a competitive advantage, don’t compete.
Relevant Selling very effectively reveals that a company’s self-image can blind it to the realities of the marketplace, and that customers are attracted to (or repelled by) features that the company may not consider to be important. You need to look outside of yourself and make a proactive effort to learn what your marketplace demands, and respond to it. To me, a business book really resonates when its message goes beyond the narrow intention of the book. This one does.
Relevant Selling is a playbook for all times, all geographies, and all products and services. It is universal in its wisdom and makes that wisdom crystal clear.
Throughout my ‘athletic’ sales career, I have held positions with companies like Nike, Stride Rite and Sketchers before making my move to Puma. In all that time, I was never exposed to a training session like [Jaynie Smith] conducted for us on Friday. In that short time, your presentation truly made me think about how I pursued my business and through your suggestions and exercises, made me rethink/revise my ‘old ways’ of attacking / maintaining my customer base – Thank you!
Jaynie’s presentation was one of the top-rated presentations at our meeting, both in terms on content value and presentation effectiveness
Relevant Selling is cleverly practical and extraordinarily insightful. The straightforward style of Ms. Smith makes this invaluable book a must read for every business person.
Jaynie Smith took great care in providing the critical information needed to help our members understand how to gain a competitive advantage. She is an excellent speaker and her presentation was extremely relevant.
