Your customers typically spend less than five percent of their time engaged in the buying of products and services from you. This is according to Dave Stein and Steve Anderson in their new book Beyond the Sales Process – 12 Proven Strategies for a Customer-driven World, Amacom, 2016. The authors present 12 strategies for engaging the would-be buyer during the 95 percent of the time they are not engaged in buying. The book is organized into three sections;• Engage: Driving success before the sale• Win: Driving success during the sale• Grow: Driving success after the saleWhat is new here is the emphasis placed on sales activities before and after the sale. The authors advocate extensive research on your customer before the sale, then offer to share your insights, ideas and best practices with your customer, without any immediate expectation of selling them anything. Discover your customer’s personal drivers, personal objectives and plans and the personal challenges that can prevent them from meeting their goals. And ask the right questions of the right people.I like their approach to that much-discussed but elusive “value creation”. We create value for our customers when we show how our resources, capabilities, expertise, products and services facilitate our customer achieving their personal goals. Not just responding to their requirements stated in their Request for Proposal (RFP).I also like Strategy six, which is to align your team with your customer’s, developing customer sponsors and supporters. Learn how each contact defines success. Alignment is building relationships based on trust, credibility and value creation. The authors offer advice on how to achieve this and pitfalls to avoid.In the final chapters of the book they offer questions and tips to help evaluate the impact of your solution on the customer and the relationship. In fact throughout the book they provide questions to evaluate your success with each of the 12 strategies. Finally there are rich case studies that illustrate the application of the strategies.There are many nuggets to mine in this book. However there are also some omissions. The book downplays the Go/NoGo decision, an important step in selling. Sales teams must decide consciously whether or not to pursue an opportunity. Too often the decision is made by default, resulting in proposals that do not win.The authors also neglect to address the important effect of behavioral style on the customer relationship. If the customer is not comfortable with you personally, building trust is difficult. The best strategies in the world will not succeed if the customer does not trust you. The best reps adapt their style to match their customer’s.