About the Book

In business, nothing happens until somebody buys something. And so, if – as Peter Drucker has stated – the purpose of a company is to create a customer, then How Customers Buy…and Why They Don’t, by Martyn R. Lewis, should be mandatory reading for anyone whose livelihood depends on somebody buying something. The overarching principle of this revelatory book is nothing less than a thorough and logical redefinition of business strategy and is firmly founded on the author’s groundbreaking concept of Outside-In Revenue Generation.

Drawing on his decades of experience and research, Mr. Lewis essentially blows away the notion of “better mousetraps” winning the day, along with the time-worn sales processes abetting those endeavors. He clearly shows that the very foundation upon which most companies go to market is perilously outdated for today’s business environment.  The author makes the compelling argument that selling entities must look beyond their own internal view of how something is sold, to the external reality of how customers actually buy. He asserts that no one buys anything because of a sales process; customers only buy because of their own buying journey.

It is the author’s well-founded belief that the simple failure of mousetrap logic is at the heart of most revenue generation challenges today. He will show that vendors are too often trying to solve the wrong problem, because time and time again their customers actually do “get it”. They understand the offering, they truly believe in the value they would gain as a result of acquiring and adopting it, and yet they hesitate and/or fail to buy. Why then do buyers not take advantage of an offering of undeniable quality supported by a seemingly guaranteed ROI? The author will show that the answer to this conundrum lies not in how vendors sell, but in deeply understanding exactly how customers buy, and more importantly why they don’t. And so to those who must survive and prosper in today’s marketplace, the only rational course of action is to positively influence and effectively manage the end-to-end Customer Buying Journey.

Based on over fifteen years of research that included looking at over 1,200 organizations and in-depth interviews with more than 2,000 individuals, How Customers Buy…and Why They Don’t uncovers the significant and expensive gap between how companies try to sell, and how customers actually buy. Over this time, Mr. Lewis initiated and fine-tuned his methodology of mapping the end-to-end buying process; in effect decoding the “DNA” of the Customer Buying Journey. Using these methods, the author went on to map scores of buying journeys for a wide variety of clients.

Which led to the second major finding; that although customers don’t behave in what would seem to be a logical manner, they do behave in a predictable one. He found that organizations within a specific market, when faced with buying a particular offering, behave in a remarkably similar way. They share a common buying journey with a common buying DNA. This led to the revelations that are fully shared and detailed in this book.

Destination CRM nominates How Customers Buy… & Why They Don’t as Required Reading and Fupping declares it one of the 31 Books Every Content Marketing Beginner Should Read