The Quadrant Solution: A Business Novel That Solves the Mystery of Sales Success

A sales and marketing manual thinly veined as fiction, this fast-paced ``business novel'' brings to life the market quadrant concept developed by the H. R. Chally Group, a sales and customer assessment firm of which coauthor Stevens is chairman. Matching a salesperson's selling style, personality and knowledge to customers' needs is the gist of the quadrant theory, a tool applied by idealistic, upright hero David Kepler, the acting marketing chief at a Chicago electronics/computer firm where sales are sluggish despite superior product. Two plot devices--a potential romantic interest with a regional sales manager, and a conflict between Kepler and his glib, lunkheaded boss, who goes on medical leave but later returns--leaven the didactic story. Sales personnel will readily identify with the situations and characters presented. This savvy handbook affords readers the sensation of eavesdropping on high-level decision-making and infighting in the same vein as Cox's previous business novels, Zapp and The Goal. (Nov.)