Go to Market Strategy

by Lawrence G. Friedman

Book Overview

In this path-breaking new book, best-selling author and leading go-to-market strategist Larry Friedman provides a practical and battle-tested approach for taking products, services, divisions, or even... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0750674601
• ISBN13: 9780750674607
• Release Date: June 2002
• Publisher: Routledge
• Length: 308 Pages
• Weight: 1.27 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 6.1" x 9.2"

Customer Reviews

Very comprehensive and practical !!!

Author Friedman provides a very comprehensive picture of how to take products and services to market, in the most efficient and effective ways. This book is practical - it's more for sales management and marketing executives than for students and academicians. Going to market today is complex and risky, and difficult to figure out the right mix of people, channels (Internet, phone, mail, partners, etc). This book helps sort it all out in a well structured way. I highly recommend.

can't go wrong

Attended the author's strategy workshop in NYC in December, got a freebie copy of the book...can't argue with that! Best biz book of last 3-4 years, hands down...the "Bible" of go to market. 360 degree view of market / channel / sales / partnering strategy. Shows how all pieces of puzzle fit together. Really, really, really, really like the chapters on partnering, channel integration. A+++

Great marketing book

This is a great marketing book. No hype and no b.s., just a lot of sound, practical ideas for connecting better with your customers and doing more business with them. The theoretical ideas are very well supported by practical advice and what must be 25 or 30 useful cases examples from Corporate America (and Europe - some Asian examples would have been nice too). I thought the chapters on choosing markets and aligning with customers were especially well written and useful. I also thought the part on value propositions was eye opening and likely to lead more than a few executives to rethink whether they really have a winning message. For a marketing book, you always have to wonder whether it's serious or if it's just a bunch of stupid McKinsey 2x2 matrices. This book is one of the rare ones that trades in all those tired "cash cow" pedantics for practical, sales-oriented advice. So I give this book a solid 5 stars because I don't know what more you could want from a marketing book. Finally, the two chapters on channels are detailed, complete, well written, and full of important post dot-bomb ideas for building a new channel strategy. These two chapters alone would be well worth the cost of the book.

Oustanding

I agree completely with the other reviewers; this is a best-in-class book that will become a "classic" over time. While it is at the top of its game for its knowledge and insight, it also is an easy, laid back read. For at least five years, I've been hearing about Go To Market Strategies but no one has defined what it means yet, or tried to. When you see the cover of this book, you think "Of course. It is about time someone wrote this book". Once you go inside the covers, you will be pleased. The best endorsement I can give is that I am buying a copy for each of my 41 direct reports. Author Larry Friedman offers a clear and practical framework for going to market, which involves choosing the right markets, channels, products, customers, and value propositions to increase growth and profits. This approach is supported by scores of examples. The examples are of real companies with real problems, not the usual "In Search Of Excellence" best practice stories that are happy-face fairy tales for the most part. The whole book was well informed from cover to cover. The most important chapters were the Ten Commandments Of Going To Market, and Targeting The Right Markets, which is the soundest and best description of market evaluation and selection techniques anyplace. That chapter must be why the book got such a strong endorsement from Kotler, the Marketing Guru. If there is a weakness in this book, it is the chapter on products. While the discussion of product development as part of a market strategy overhaul is OK, the author's strength is in marketing and channels, not product development. On the other hand, he does have a few provocative things to say about product design. The author's reputation preceeding this book is as a channel strategist, and for the large parts of the book that concerns sales and marketing channels, he does not disappoint. It is brutally evident here that he knows more about channels and partner distribution than anyone else today, period. Go To Market Strategy is an Internet Mania Free Zone, with a sane and balanced view point on the role of the Internet in an overall marketing strategy. You will enjoy his description of the Pets.com debacle. I almost fell out of my chair laughing at his irreverent(and dead-accurate) analysis of why Pets.com failed. He also has an irreverent and cynical view point about marketing consultants, a group he acknowledges belonging to. You get the impression that the author has a sense of humor about the whole thing. That is very refreshing and reason in itself to buy this book. Also, make sure you read every footnote. They're like the bonus materials on a DVD movie. A few are standard references, but many have extra information and insight, and they are kind of a running commentary on the main body of the text.

Excellent book on marketing strategy - a must read!!!

I just purchased a copy of this book, and read it cover to cover in one sitting (although it is about 300 pages). This appears to be the "follow up" book to author Lawrence Friedman's last book The Channel Advantage (a copy of which is dog-eared and worn to the binding in my personal library). This book has some similarities to The Channel Advantages, but some big differences too. Like The Channel Advantage, it is witty and interesting with a sense of humor lacking in most business books, I really enjoy this author's books. Also, it shows a street wise, very practical understanding of the sales and marketing issues faced by both large and small companies. It has dozens of case studies and interesting (and clever) examples of companies in many different markets. Where Go To Market Strategy differs from the author's last book is the content. Go To Market Strategy is a much more strategic and all-inclusive book -something like, every sales and marketing issue you face in taking your products to customers. At first you think, the author bites off so much content, can he (and you) chew it, but it is all digestible and a few hundred pages later, you "get it". The book's theme or argument is twofold. First, to "go to market" with a product or service successfully, you must execute five very interrelated activities: selection of the right market(s), identification of customers' core needs, the right channels mix, the best product design, and development of a strong (compelling) sales message. Second, everything you do in going to market must be organized around the needs and desires of customers. While not exactly a new idea, the author does a very nice job of providing helpful tools and practical ideas to get aligned with customers and meet them on their own terms. In fact, this book is one of the few to say something useful and new, and non-cliche'd, about focusing on the customer and the role that customers must play in your go to market efforts.For ...Minimally, it will give you a plethora of tools, concepts and ways to think about increasing sales at a lower cost. But you may get a lot more than that out of the book - a total systematic approach to use when launching new products and sales campaigns.