Fueling Your Brain, Business and Life with the Written Word  

By Julie Escobar, Director of Corporate Marketing, ProspectsPLUS!

While it is indeed the age of information and words, MP3s, Kindles, e-books, streaming video and more are at our fingertips and downloadable 24/7 via that incredible internet, there is to me, still something to be said for curling up for a half-hour, hour or every once in a while a day with a good old fashioned book. I know, I know – lives are busy, going warp speed in a thousand directions and mine is no different. Believe me, there is tremendous merit to books on CD that we can listen to on the go, but there is great satisfaction in building a library of your own that you can tap into and reference whenever possible for strengthening your skills, improving your mind or igniting your spirit.

We used to have a segment in our monthly Master Marketing Newsletter^TM where we would include a “book of the month” alongside the tips, inspiration, tools and skill builders we offer.  I was wondering what you — our readers thought about returning to this practice? 

As we head into the new year, I wanted to take the time to share with you just some of the book treasures we’ve found over the years and challenge you to start or add to a library all your own!

§ Good to Great by Jim Collins – Great for mastering the premise “Be the Best in the world at ONE thing.”

§ Little Red Book of Selling by Jeffrey Gitomer – Terrific for short snippets, great ideas and reference-his e-zine Sales Caffeine is pretty good for daily jolt as well.

§ How to Become a Rainmaker by Jeffrey J. Fox – Learning to dollarize is a vital tool in our industry – Jeffrey Fox teaches it well.

§ Purple Cow by Seth Godin – You’ll find valuable Lessons in effective marketing.

§ Shut Up, Stop Whining and Get a Life by Larry Winget – We all loved this book. It’s as edgy as its title but drives home some must-learn points.

§ Be Our Guest by the Disney Institute – You have to hand it to those folks at Disney – when it comes to customer service – they have it down. Lots to learn here!

§ Swim With the Sharks Without Getting Eaten Alive by Harvey Mackay – An oldie but a goodie when it comes to classic life and business lessons.

§ Never Eat Alone by Keith Ferrazzi – Some great ideas on the power of social and business networking.

§ The Power of an Hour by Dave Lakhani – Time management guru Lakhani explains how to put some muscle into your time management and make those minutes count!

§ Hug Your Customers by Jack Mitchell – We liked this book so much, it became the theme for one of our corporate meetings! Spotlights the power of extraordinary customer service in any industry.

§ The Greatest Salesman in the World by Og Mandino – Truly one of my favorite all-time books. I re-read it often and what’s funny is that I have asked countless industry “icons” to name a favorite book throughout the years – almost all of them count this at the top of their list.

§ Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill – Another classic, must-read for anyone who wants to live abundantly and build a better life and business.

§ How to Become a Marketing Superstar by Jeffrey J. Fox – You have to love Fox’s books for their quick read and great references.

§ Better Than Good by Zig Zigler – Zig’s insight is always a welcome gift as he shares the power of a positive attitude in this game of life.

§ Winning by Jack and Suzy Welch – Delivers a solid career’s worth of this legendary leader’s management wisdom.

§ Wooden on Leadership by John Wooden – Extraordinary Coach John Wooden shares tremendously valuable insight on what it means to win with integrity in ANY game.

§ Built to Last by Jim Collins – Much like Good to Great, Collins shares the successful habits and visions of some of the greatest companies of all time.

§ The Millionaire Real Estate Agent by Gary Keller – Keller shares what it takes to not just be a successful real estate agent, but how to truly treat your business as a business and effectively grow it without limitations.

§ Satisfaction by Chris Denove and James D. Power IV – A true spotlight on how listening to the voice of the customer can make – or break a company and career.

§ The Spellbinder’s Gift by Og Mandino – This well crafted contemporary parable by Mandino offers tremendous inspiration and wonderful reminders on how to live a better (happier) life.

§ The Age of Speed by Vince Poscente – This offers lessons on how to thrive in a world that runs at lightning speed.

§ Juggling Elephants by Jones Loflin and Todd Musig – A great read for all of us who sometimes feel we need to get our “act” together in the three-ring circus we call life.

§ The Fred Factor by Mark Sanborn – Sanborn teaches us through the true story of Fred – the mail carrier – how going the extra mile and taking the extra steps for our customers can turn an ordinary career into an extraordinary one.

§ Blink by Malcolm Gladwell – Fascinating book that illuminates how we can re-train our minds to instantly pull vital information from life’s moments.

§ The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey - definitely not the easiest book you’ll ever read, but if you can work your way through each of the “habits” and make them a part of your life and career, you’ll far exceed any goals in front of you!

I do hope you will enjoy the lessons, laughter and genuine knowledge builders found within the pages of these book recommendations. It has been a fun journey to discover new books, new authors and new additions to my growing library of books for business. I do make sure there is room on the shelves for recreational reading as well, so you’ll find James Patterson, Sue Grafton and Patricia Cornwell books all tucked on the shelves next to the books above! After all, “work hard, play hard” can be a good motto for this aspect of life too!

So go and read your mind and expand your personal library for success. I would love your recommendations for our Book of the Month club! Feel free to email me at any time and share your thoughts, titles and reading experience! Happy reading everyone!

E-mail me your book recommendations at julie.escobar@prospectsplus.com or here in the comments section!

Put a classically trained actor, an award winning director, and a clinical psychologist together and what do you get?  Why a book that should be on every seller’s bookshelf, of course.

David Booth, Deborah Shames, and Peter Desberg, the authors of Own the Room: Business Presentations that Persuade, Engage, & Get Results (McGraw Hill: 2010), are not the typical authors you’ll run across when looking for a book that can help you increase your sales and income.  I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that none of the authors can define the Puppy Dog Close, write a top notch cold calling script, or coach you through the negotiation process with a tough customer. 

They don’t know sales; they know people, they know presentation, they know how to connect with others.  They know how to use words, body language, voice, props, and silence—all the things that we sellers use every day, usually with little grace and less control—to gain and keep someone’s attention.  More importantly, they know how to turn attention into genuine interest. 

Own the Room isn’t going to close deals for you, but it is going to give you the opportunity to close deals by showing you how to really engage your prospects and make presentations that will bring the prospect along with you; and frankly, you can’t sell if your prospect has turned you off and is daydreaming about what they’re going to have for lunch—or the relief they’d feel if they could throw you and your damned PowerPoint presentation out the window.

From your opening sentence—you’ve got 30 to 60 seconds to grab (or lose) your audience’s attention—to your closing remarks, Own the Room gives solid, tested and proven guidance.  Guidance is what you  get in Own the Room, not just tips and tricks, and because the authors are giving guidance and I’m dense, I sometimes wished they’d been more concrete and said “Thou shalt do this in exactly this way” instead of giving an example of the concept and leaving the rest up to me.   

Booth, Shames, and Desberg take on all aspects of the presentation from preparation to dealing with stage fright to using PowerPoint to using physical movement to make your point to how to make effective team presentations.  The book seeks to be comprehensive in scope without smothering you with needless detail.

Whether your make presentations to a single potential buyer or to a room of thousands at a formal dinner, you’ll walk away from Own the Room with some very practical guidance that will make your presentations more effective—or very likely, transform them altogether.  Either way, you’ll sell more of whatever you’re selling.

The holidays are upon us and many of you sales leaders may be wondering what you might get for your team members.  Certainly there’s the typical take ‘em out for lunch or maybe a drink a day or two before Christmas.  Maybe you plan on doing what most team leaders do—nothing other than wish them a Merry Christmas.

Well, I have an immodest proposal for you.  Why not get them something that is inexpensive but that will significantly increase their production next year?  That’s a win/win situation since it will increase both your and their income, make you both look good, your sales reports will shine, and you just might get that promotion you’ve been wanting—all for about $15 per team member.

So what’s going to do all of this for only $15?

I suggest you purchase each of your team members a copy of my book, Creating a Million Dollar a Year Sales Income: Sales Success through Client Referrals. (Wiley, 2007)

No, the title doesn’t claim that every one of your team members will be making a million dollars a year after reading it.  The title comes from how the book’s referral process was developed.  I interviewed 47 sellers across the US and Canada who each make a minimum of a million dollars a year and who generate the majority of business from referrals from their clients.  I wanted to know what they were doing to be so successful with referrals while most sellers were struggling to get even a few great referrals a year.

What I found, not surprisingly, is they don’t ask for referrals like most of have been taught, but instead generate referrals by working closely with their clients to earn the right to get referrals and then to identify highly qualified prospects for the client to refer them to.

That’s the crux of the book—the disciplined process they use to generate a large number of high quality referrals from each of their clients.

Best of all, it’s a process you and your team members can learn and implement to greatly increase the number and quality of referrals you and your team members get.

A Few Book Endorsements and Reviews:

David Straker, ChangingMinds.com

“In the end, the joy that earns this book a rare five stars is the practical, thorough and innovative treatment of referrals that can have literally massive benefit to anyone, not just in sales, who wants to connect with valued other people.

Quite simply the best book on gaining and using referrals.”

From Dave Stein’s Review of Creating a Million Dollar a Year Sales Income

“Here is my recommendation for sales leaders. (A full-fledged plan will contain considerably more detail—this is just a starting point….) 

1. If your sales team hasn’t been effectively leveraging existing customers for referrals, determine why. 
2. Benchmark the level at which referrals business is being converted to sales.
3. If the reason is that (you and) your salespeople don’t know how, invest in this book.
4. Take the time to study Paul’s referral process and his recommendations.
5. Set an objective.  For example, referrals will be the source of 10% of our business next year.
6. Devise a plan for adopting his process across your team.
7. Build appropriate coursework, tools, coaching mechanisms.  (This is a difficult proposition for a busy sales manager.  You probably don’t have either the time or the skills. I’m sure Paul would be delighted to engage with you on this…)
8. Train your team or get them trained.
9. Deploy the process, measure results against your benchmark and objective and refine.”

CRM Magazine

“required reading.”

Rolf Dobelli, get abstract

“You can keep working hard all alone clearing stumps and moving rocks with your current approach, or move to more fertile ground where your best clients can make your life easier by helping you find new clients just like them. getAbstract recommends this book to any professional who needs to sell . . . .”

Frank Rumbauskas, NY Times best-selling author of Never Cold Call

“Having spent over ten years as a top-producing sales rep, and now having spent over four years teaching and training salespeople – and having read hundreds of sales books in that time – I can tell you that Paul McCord’s book is hands-down THE BEST book on referral selling ever written!”

AllBooks Reviews

“Salespeople from every industry will find this a useful and comprehensive sales referral guide. Chapter after chapter of excellent advice that dispels myth and rumor related to referral selling.”

Dave Lakani, best-selling author and coach

“This book lays out in systematic detail the most effective selling and referral system I’ve seen. It doesn’t make getting referrals easy but it does make getting them predictable.

Even though I consider myself a good referral sales generator, I cringed more than a little at the mistakes I identified while reading this book and how much money I left on the table through missed sales and missed opportunities.

I also like this book because it is a quick read with plenty of great examples, the author doesn’t belabor points to fill space, he just gets right to the point . . . so you can implement and earn.

Excellent book, I highly recommend it.”

Selling Power Magazine, Sales Management Newsletter

“Referrals are a tricky business if you don’t know what you’re doing – and many reps don’t. Many say they don’t want to ask for referrals because they don’t want to irritate a customer with whom they have good rapport. Or, in an effort to be casual about it, they ask in such an oh-by-the-way manner that the customer quickly dismisses it. Or they ask once and drop it. And none of these approaches will result in good, solid referrals.

So what’s the answer? Referrals must be an integral part of your sales approach, from first contact through post-sale. (McCord’s) PWWR system addresses the issues that keep most sales people from generating large numbers of quality referrals.”

Forbes Book Club

Creating a Million Dollar a Year Sales Income: Sales Success through Client Referrals was, I’m proud to say, selected as an offering of the prestegious Forbes Book Club.  Unfortunately within months of my book’s selection the book club closed  I’m hopeful–and fairely sure–that selecting my book wasn’t the cause of them going out of business.

You can find Creating a Million Dollar a Year Sales Income: Sales Success through Client Referrals at all find booksellers, including:

Amazon

Barnes and Noble

My website

Want the audio book instead?  It’s Here

This week I was talking with one of my personal sales coaching clients.  She was expressing how frustrating it is being in the same industry for over 20 years and feeling complacent.  Over the past 5 years her business has reached a plateau and a lot of her colleagues have seen a decrease in business.

She was enthusiastically expressing her excitement about being in our professional sales coaching program.  She said that having me help hold her accountable to doing her daily activity (Critical Success Factors); as well as adding a new element of training, every other week, is exactly what she needs in today’s market to help her take her business to the next level!

Check out this video!  For more information email me at dhillis@ssnseminars.com

Our Sales Director gave each of us at work the other day Brian Tracy’s Psychology of Selling audio CD’s for us to listen in our cars in between and on the way to sales calls.  I figured I’d offer a brief review of the material and how it affected me. 

Brian Tracy

Let me start off by prefacing that I’ve listened to or read a lot of Sales & Management books.  They all seem very redundant; going over the same points over and over and over again.  If I read another chapter on listening to the customer’s needs I’m going to shoot myself, for example.  Although this audio CD did go over some very fundamental points of selling I think it was able to seperate itself in a lot of ways from other sales CD’s. 

One should know that this is basically a recording of a sales forum Brian Tracy had spoken at.  I felt this is much more affective and interesting than listening to a narrator read a sales book outloud or simply reading a sales book.  You pick up a lot and you learn a lot actually listening to the voice of a premier sales teacher.  He’s motivating, he’s sharp, he’s interesting.

Overall, I definitely recommend this if you’re looking to learn a little something in your car and help get you motivated.  His approach is very mental and psychological.  Tracy focuses much of the presentation on you, the salesperson, and how you perceive yourself.  While he does go into the pre-call, call, post-call stuff he probably spends 50% of the CD on you:  your motivators, your confidence, your time management, your goals, etc.   I think this is extremely important in this occupation and some of the points he brings up are exceptional.  Couple things I thought were interesting or I liked:

• Section titled why 20% of the top salespeople out-earn the other 80% by 16x over their lifetimes.  Also goes into why you want to be in the top 20% of all sales people and how your goal should be to be in that 20%.  If you do the math right… that’s the top 4% and it’s a fact that all of these people are millionaires and are living very comfortable lives!
• Top 10 Characteristics of Superior Salespeople
• Time management:  call reluctance, wasted time activities, how you need to be constantly talking to people about your product are service.  Disecting your day-to-day…  are you?  How can you improve this?
• How do you perceive yourself?  And also how this effects your sales career in front of customers.
• Real life examples of salespeople he’s coached.  I found these to be the most motivating. 
• Closing tactics.  Although I’ve heard most of these before, again, it’s much better listening to it in a presentation format. 
• Do you always have professional development audio CD’s in your car?  That’s work time.  Fuel your mind. 

I recommend this to anyone looking for a good motivator and who’s looking to learn an extra thing or two.  Brian Tracy is a very smart guy and I learned a lot from it.  I plan on re-listening to it again I liked it so much, possibly skipping out on some of the redundant topics I mentioned before.  I also recommend searching Brian Tracy on YouTube and watching some of his videos.

Please email me at saleshub.com@gmail.com if you have a good book you’ve read.  I will try to read it and review as well.

Today Sales can be one of the most fulfilling, exciting and lucrative careers you can choose. But let’s face it—sales can also be very frustrating—financially, emotionally, and intellectually. If you are a professional seeking unlimited success and financial freedom–or if you aspire to be– you want to minimize your learning curve.

Especially during a tough economy. How? By learning from someone who has been through the exact challenges you are facing—and succeeded superbly.

Introducing Paula Pagano, 30 year top producer, sales trainer and author of Secrets of a Top Salesperson – How Emotions Make or Break the Sale. Paula writes with raw honesty and heartfelt humor about the emotional journey of succeeding in sales. That’s right – the part most people gloss over when they leap straight to the end of their success story.

Secrets of a Top Salesperson is where Eat, Pray, Love meets The Art of the Deal. This new book has sparked much praise within the business and literary communities:

• Barbara Corcoran, NBC’s Today Show Current Real Estate Guru says, “Secrets of a Top Salesperson is a powerhouse of ideas for entrepreneurs and anyone who has been hit by the mortgage/ real estate crisis.”
• Ray Brown, best selling author of ‘Home Buying for Dummies’ and 15 Year KNBR radio host recommends Secrets to all real estate agents.
• Mike Larsen, well-known literary agent claims, “Secrets of a Top Salesperson is truly inspirational!”

SPECIAL OFFER – today only buy one copy of Paula’s book during our special promotion, and you will instantly receive several hundred dollars of bonus gifts from experts—workbooks, audio materials, and coaching by these pro’s—including free sales coaching by Paula.

You can even enter a drawing for a 3 day/2 night cruise! Discover all the bonus gifts here: http://topsecretsofasalesperson.com/?id=0022. Paula knows that life is about more than making money. It is about the journey of personal transformation that you absolutely must experience in order to become highly successful.

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The economy has effected everyone. Today there is greater effort to maximize sales, increase revenue and protect margins. The ten calls that once generated two customers have increased to twenty. Farmers must now become hunters.

When business or the economy is slow, sales agents needs to capitalize on a higher percentage of the opportunities that are available and they need to consistently gain commitment without reducing price. This takes a planned and precise approach to selling; an approach that can be customized for the organization and adopted by the entire sales force. Here is where the Action Selling Sales Process can help. Have you read the Action Selling Sales Training Books? (http://www.actionselling.com/sales-books.asp?cpgn=829) If not, it will be one of the best investments you can make in your company.

Not only do company’s resort to new software to maximize sales, (Connect Realty Inc.) but they also must teach their agents to sell differently. We like to say, “It’s not what you sell that matters. It’s how you sell it.”

Action Selling teaches how to approach every sales situation with a commitment objective, how to ask the best questions, how and when to utilize the five critical selling skills, how to protect margins, and how to consistently gain greater commitment. Action Selling is a Sales Process that outlines the entire sales cycle giving real estate agents, manufacturing reps, insurance agents, and virtually all sales professionals a proven procedure that works.

Selling the Way People Like to Buy

My first sales experience came while I was studying psychology at the University of Tennessee. I had to work my way through school, and I knew the best way was to work hard all summer so that I could focus on my classes the rest of the year. That meant I needed a job that would pay well for three months of hard work. That is when I found The Southwestern Company (http://southwestern.com). They train college students to sell books door-to- door on straight commission. I had very little selling experience, and up until then, playing football was all that I knew. Because I have a competitive nature and a passion for learning new things, I ended up selling books door-to-door for four summers. It was an extraordinary experience. I was working more than eighty hours a week and must have knocked on some twenty-five hundred doors per summer. The training at Southwestern is unmatched. After one week of intensive training they took me, an inexperienced college football player, and turned me into a selling machine! After my first summer, I finished number one out of twenty-five hundred other first-year dealers. At the end of my second summer, I earned a commission check for $46,000—not a bad summer’s earnings for a sophomore in college. On one of the last days of that second summer, an experienced dealer shadowed me. He told me, “If you ever figure out what you are doing, you will break the company record.” That comment dumbfounded me. I was already a top producer for the company, and I’m essentially being told that I don’t know what I am doing!

That was also the first time the thought entered my mind that maybe I could break Southwestern’s 154-year-old sales record. So the following year I studied the psychology of sales: unconditional confidence, social pressure, neurolinguistic programming, and the four different buying behavior styles. I was so intrigued by all of the topics that I started to convert the principles we were being taught at the University of Tennessee and funneling them through a sales-minded filter.

My first mission was to figure out my own behavior style. I took DISC, Myers-Briggs, and all the other personality profile tests I could find. They were all awesome tests that taught me a lot about myself and my personality, but something was still missing. In order to sell to other personalities, I needed to be able to make the transition from “who I was” to “how I was” selling.

Then in the spring of 2004, I attended a class in Nashville, Tennessee, at Southwestern’s headquarters, called Selling Like a Chameleon, (a class offered by Southwestern that taught the importance of adapting to different personalities to maximize sales) and my sales career was changed forever. The program not only identified different buying behavior styles, but it taught me how to adapt my selling style to best match the customer’s buying behavior style.

The next year I went out with the goal of breaking the company record. That meant more than doubling my production from the prior year. The way to reach my goal was by following the principles learned in the Selling Like a Chameleon class and the principles found in this book. My slight edge for that summer was in my initial contact, the way I approached the buyer. Unlike the previous summers, during my third summer at Southwestern, I tailored my selling style to best match the buyer’s behavior styles. During the previous two summers my sales approach had appealed only to people who were like me, so I was connecting with only one-quarter of my prospects. My first two summers, I treated everyone I approached as if he or she were an extroverted entertainer, which is my selling behavior style. I was successful those first two summers in large part because “birds of a feather flock together.” The prospects who let me in were extroverts; and they referred me to their friends, who were extroverts; and they referred me to their friends, who were extroverts. You get the picture. However, there are only so many of one type of behavior style in a city. I frequently would run into someone of a different behavior style, and, in those instances, my standard selling M.O. (modus operandi) would not work.

When I ran into people with aggressive behavior styles and used the same words I was using with the extroverted people, they were slamming the door in my face! At first I thought it was a problem with them, but after studying the psychology of behavior styles and going through the Selling Like a Chameleon course, I came to realize it was a problem with me. After adopting the Selling Like a Chameleon approach, my production doubled! As a junior in college, I earned more than $100,000 in fourteen weeks!

In my new book, you will learn the method and application of the Navigate system, how it has affected other people’s personal production, and how it has made a huge difference in the way they communicate and ask for business. There are four basic buying behavior styles that you need to know in order to be more effective at closing the deal. This book outlines those four buying behavior styles and shows you how to identify the buying styles in you, others, and how to adapt your selling style to best fit the buying style of your customer. Being aware of the different buying behavior styles and knowing how to identify and adapt to the different kinds of decision-makers is key to getting a person to like you and trust you. Whether you are attempting to set up an appointment, close a deal, or just want someone to hear what you have to say, the Navigate system will help you communicate better and connect with people for the rest of your life!

CLICK HERE TO BUY OR FOR MORE DETAILS ABOUT NAVIGATE!

Selling the Way People Like to Buy

If you love old school manipulative selling techniques (you know the ones, those that have given salespeople a reputation on par with thieves, ambulance chasers, and snakes), you’ll love The One Minute Closer: Time-Tested, No-Fail Strategies for Clinching Every Sale (Business Plus:  2008), by James W Pickens and Joseph L Matheny.

Seldom do I post a review of a book that I don’t find to be at least somewhat helpful, but The One Minute Closer is so bad, so destructive to the selling profession, and such a waste of money, that I believe I would be doing a disservice not letting readers know why they should avoid wasting their money and their time on this dreadful piece of trash.

According to the authors, The One Minute Closer is designed to relate the wisdom of over 50 ‘master closers’ from around the world that will teach salespeople the closing techniques that will turn them into master closers also. 

In fact, what Pickens and Matheny have done is write a small book on how to be as unethical in sales as possible.  This is a master course in deception, manipulation, lying, and impersonating sincerity.  Despite the author’s claims, it is doubtful that many of the supposed ‘master closes’ presented would do anything more than alienate prospects at best and get you thrown out on your ear at worse. 

The One Minute Closer is chock-full of wisdom such as

• “when the master closer asks his customer to purchase, he will intentionally lower his head slightly and get a few degrees below the eye level of his customer.  Then as the customer considers his response, the closer will slowly bring his head up, almost unnoticeably, so his eyes are on the same level as the customer’s.  Then, right at the exact second  when the customer starts to make a sound, the closer will move his eye level up a few degrees above the customer’s eye level.  At that point, he will keep his head and eyes steady.  This very slight head and eye movement is magic.  What it does to the customer is surprising.  The customer, completely unaware of what the closer is doing, will automatically raise his head and eyes to meet the closer’s.  This upward physical movement actually encourages the customer to give a positive response.  This secret closing technique works, but the master closer has to be very subtle and deliberate in his movement.  There can’t be any sudden movement that might alert the customer.”
• The “one dollar vs. one-hundred dollar close.  In this close when your customer says they can’t make a decision, take out a one dollar bill and a one-hundred dollar bill and ask which one the customer would like to have.  Of course, they’ll say the one-hundred dollar bill.  You then say to your customer, “Mr Customer, don’t ever tell me again that you can’t make a decision, because you just did.”
• The “what would Jesus do” close.  You use this close when your customer “is a Sunday go to meeting” type (throughout the book this level of respect for customers is demonstrated).  You acknowledge that you know he is a fine Christian and state that you understand that he wants to be like Jesus, just as every good Christian does.  You then tell the customer that you’ll give him your product or service free if he can show you anywhere in the Bible where Jesus said, “let me first ask my friend,” or “let me first ask my accountant,” or “I have to think about it.”  You point out that Jesus never had to hesitate to make a decision on his own.  According to the authors, after delivering this close, “The customer is stunned.  The master closer has made such a strong and truthful point, the customer doesn’t know what to say.”

The above is just a small taste of the book’s BS.  Sometimes when reading the book it is difficult to tell whether the authors are serious or are having a good laugh at how gullible some salespeople might be.  If it weren’t so serious, this book would be hilarious. 

This isn’t to say, however, that the book doesn’t have a small bit of useful information.  It does.  It’s just that the majority of the useful information is so basic and so intuitively obvious that it would be classified as common knowledge, such as ‘treat evey customer like a millionaire’ and ‘it’s difficult to dislike people who like you.’

Whatever you do, save your money, don’t buy this one.

The key to success in sales is, according to Mahan Khalsa and Randy Illig, authors of Let’s Get Real or Let’s Not Play: Transforming the Buyer/Seller Relationship (Portfolio: 2008), helping the client reach their goals, that is, putting the client’s success first.

Nice, but hardly a novel sentiment.

We’ve all read dozens upon dozens of books telling us that we must put the client first.  Nothing new here. 

The problem with all those other books is they haven’t given us a workable way to deal with the unspoken but paramount issue separating clients and sellers and preventing us from truly putting our client first—fear.  The client’s fear of being taken advantage of and our fear of losing a sale. 

Creating a way, a path, for us to work with our clients in a format that eliminates the ingrained fears of our clients and ourselves is the primary contribution of Let’s Get Real or Let’s Not Play.

The authors begin their journey in creating a process that will allow us as sellers to really seek our client’s success first and foremost by outlining their 5 key beliefs:

1. Consultants (sellers) and Clients Want the Same Thing.
2. Intent Counts More than Technique
3. Solutions Have No Inherent Value
4. Methodology Matters
5. World-class Inquiry Precedes World-class Advocacy

The authors argue that these five key beliefs set the groundwork for a process that will allow sellers to deal with prospects and clients in an honest, straightforward manner where we can work with them to really discover their issues and needs, gather the hard information we need to create a solution that puts our client’s success above all else, and we can do these without the fear of wasting our time and resources pursuing non-business.

Khalsa and Illig devote almost half of the book to discussing how to qualify an opportunity because the qualification process sets the stage for remainder of the process.  As sellers, we must make sure that we a pursuing a legitimate business opportunity.  We cannot afford to waste our time and energy pursuing non-business.  Consequently, we have to qualify based on Opportunity (is it worth pursuing); Time (reasonable and adequate); People (who does what and is it the right mix); Money (can the client afford it); and Decision Process (who, what, when, and how decisions are made).

Exploring each of these areas reveals whether or not we should go forward.  Naturally, getting a green light in each area means we go forward.  A red light in any area means there isn’t a viable business opportunity now.  The real key is looking out for and understanding how to handle yellow lights—situations, questions, and issues that must be fully and honestly investigated to determine whether they are actually red lights or can be clarified into green lights.

The last half of the book is dedicated primarily to discussing how, when and where to present the solution proposal.  At the crux of the proposal is its purpose—to enable a decision.  Everything has lead up to this, the decision enabling meeting.  The authors walk us through the process of creating a meeting plan that leads naturally to making the purchase commitment.  Although useful and well laid out, I found this part of the book to be less compelling than the first half that dealt with qualifying.

The process Khalsa and Illig layout is thorough and workable if not seeming a bit cumbersome at times (the “Quick Reference Guide” in the appendix 16 pages long, hardly ‘quick’).  It does, however, address the fear issues that keep sellers and clients from working together to clarify and address core issues with which the client is struggling. 

Designed for and well worth the read of any salesperson or sales leader engaged in the complex sale, the book is also worthwhile for salespeople and managers engaged in any relationship driven sale, even for those engaged in consumer sales as many of the observations are applicable in numerous sales environments.

I wanted to give a few more books the thumbs up for all the sales people out there. I am not going to review each of these as I normally do, but I do give them my whole hearted recommendation. Each of these is less motivationally based, and instead dwells in the realm of technique and principle. Here they go, in no particular order:

The Sales Bible: The Ultimate Sales Resource, New Edition

Cold Calling Techniques: That Really Work

Secrets of Question Based Selling: How the Most Powerful Tool in Business Can Double Your Sales Results

If you aren’t reading and expanding your skill set constantly, is your competition getting ahead? Probably, so make a change! I’ve done most of the leg work for you.
Until next time…

All right sales people, author Jeffrey Gitomer says it’s time to listen up, and evaluate yourself against his 12.5 principles of sales greatness. Throughout this book, Gitomer uses a .5 listing style to make things stand out, and makes no effort to spare your feelings along the way. His in-your-face style will be a welcomed one to anyone trying to succeed in the business of sales. Let’s face it, nice guys don’t always finish first in selling.

But that is not to say that Gitomer is training scheisters. He emphasizes integrity, a friendly attitude, building relationships, and giving value to the customer. He advocates a “Yes” attitude(which happens to be the title of another of his books), and references the work of Napoleon Hill, Earl Nightingale, Dale Carnegie and others, to drive his point home.

The best points made in this book are those that revolve around Gitomer’s idea that the “work day starts the night before.” He is a strong proponent of working hard, turning off your TV(maybe that’s why I like him), and always continuing your own education through books, seminars, and audio courses. If you are in sales, you need this book, and you need it now. It is a fun read, it is a small book, and it is worth your time. I suggest you click below and get it.

Little Red Book of Selling: 12.5 Principles of Sales Greatness

Until next time…

Question:
How do you deal with the influence and power shift to purchasing agents? Even though you demonstrate bottomline impacts. Some companies have purchasing drive the decision progress.

Answer:
Very good question. When you are calling on any decision level, it is always important to determine that buyer’s personal needs. It may be that a purchasing agent is not as interested in “bottom line impacts” as another decision maker who is responsible for the bottom line. I have had experience with purchasing agents who value things like the flow of order processing over almost any other criteria. Why is this? Because you make their job easier and you make them look good because orders and delivery flow smoothly.

In addition, it is difficult (or nearly impossible) to sell value to buyers that cannot make decisions based on value. The mistake many sellers make is that they attempt to justify their price based on “bottom line impacts” when the buyer doesn’t have the authority to buy based on value. Assuming that your product cannot be sold at the lowest price, it is imperative to find areas where the buyer will perceive value. In your sales call, you need to ask questions and earn the right to ask more questions in order to have a shot at finding the value proposition that will be meaningful to this type of buyer.

Have you read my sales books? They all are intended to help sales people deal with this type of issue. You may access them at http://www.actionselling.com/sales-books.asp.

Thanks for your question and Good Action Selling!

Question:
I was top salesperson at CITI bank and an Architecure company. Now I’m doing a job in multinational. How can I improve my sales and communication skills?

Answer:
Sales Communication begins with being a good listener. You can become a better listener when you ask the best questions. So I’d suggest that working on your questioning skills would be the right place to start. When you ask great questions and listen carefully to the answers, the customer becomes more sold on you as a salesperson. I think you’ll agree that this is important.

The second thing that I’d suggest you work on is being better at using what you hear to present your product or service solution. In Action Selling terms, we call this TFBRs. They tie back to a need that the customer described when you asked questions and allow you to present a solution in a very organized method.

Have you read the Action Selling Book Series? These short sales books describe what you need to do in order to improve your communication skills.

More Sales Training Information.

Good Action Selling!

Ben Bernanke, Chairman of the Fed, voiced his opinion this morning that the current recession should ease up within the next 12 months and give way to some solid growth. Does this mean we’re out of the woods?

Well, maybe and maybe not. I certainly don’t have Bernanke’s background and resume, but if there’s one thing I do know about economics, it’s that it’s an uncertain science. In other words, spending and confidence might be back to normal tomorrow, but they also might not. What’s more, I know that it’s his job to help instill that confidence, so I’m going to take his statement with a grain of salt.

I mention all of this today because there are lots of salespeople out there who are taking a ‘wait it out’ approach to the recession. Hold on long enough, they figure, and things will get better. In the long run,  of course, they’re absolutely right. But burying our heads in the sand, or waiting for better economic weather, entirely misses the point: a recession is a great time to grow your business!

So while the rest of the world is hanging on every word that the big name economists utter, take a more proactive approach and get busy selling. There are a lot of small buyers, bargain hunters, and underserved clients out there. Now is the perfect time to add them all into your client list. Certainly, the recession will end, sooner or later, but the question you should be asking yourself isn’t what month or year it will be over – but how much money are you going to make in the meantime, and how many new customers you’ll have when it is.

…but I want to take a moment to thank everyone who took the time to preview my book prior to its release. Here’s what a few of the experts had to say:

“Matt has uncovered the secrets to selling in this tough economy. If you haven’t read Selling in a Recession, then you’re probably losing business to someone who has.”
-Jim Pancero, Author of You Can Always Sell More

“The single best resource available for a salesperson facing a stiff economy.”
-Carl Henry, author, sales coach and creator of The MODERN Sales System

“…spot on with its recommendations and tips.”
-Jim Cathcart, author of Relationship Selling

“This book is an immediate must-read. This economy is a challenge for anyone who has to sell. Matt doesn’t just help us understand the situation, but also what to do about it now.”
-Thomas J. Winninger, Best-Selling Author of Price Wars

“This book is a real life-saver for any salesperson working in this tough market.”
-Brian Tracy, Author of The Psychology of Selling

“If EVER there was a right message at the right time, surely it’s Selling in a Recession. This book can help you!”
-Joe Calloway, author of Becoming a Category of One

“If you’re in sales, then stop worrying about the economy and pick up a copy of this book NOW.”
-Debbie Allen, author of Confessions of Shameless Promoters

“Recessions always produce the sweet smell of success for salespeople who are paying attention. Read Matt’s book and become one of the survivors.”
-Ed Brodow, author of Negotiation Boot Camp

Making the Number. How to Use Sales Benchmarking to Drive Performance. By Greg Alexander, Arron Batels &  Mike Drapeau; Portfolio, 2008

Greg Alexander, Aaron Batels, and Mike Drapeau have written a very serious book for very serious sales leaders.  The authors have tackled one of sales great issues-tracking ROI on sales investment, and packed a great deal of wisdom and challenge in a relatively modest 288 pages.

Although many still view sales as far more art than science, leaving little room for serious number crunching of performance and production factors, Making the Number sets out a detailed process for establishing and analyzing sales metrics-and more importantly, the real world impact and change such a process can bring to a company and a sales team.

One of the few but growing number of sources that seeks to address the process of benchmarking sales in depth, Making the Number should be required reading for any sales leader who is seriously interested in full accountability for and development of the sales department.

The authors try to bring their theory down to the real world by illustrating their concepts through case studies of Discover Financial Services and FranklinCovey, as well as several other companies.  This is a theory book-but also a very practical application book.

By far the most irritating aspect of the book for me (although one that has become the norm in the business sector of publishing) is the repeated reference to–and by inference promoting of–the author’s company, Sales Benchmark Index.

No matter what level of sales leader you are, I would encourage you to get a copy and work your way through it.  It isn’t a weekend read by any means.  As I said, it’s a serious book for serious sales leaders with serious results for those who implement what they learn.

Inside the Tornado

This is a book that follows the success of Crossing the Chasm, Geoffrey A.Moore.

I never did read Crossing the Chasm but maybe I should have. Anyway in this book, during the intro, the author recaps the entire premise of Crossing the Chasm to provide a starting point for Inside the Tornado.

I really wish that I had read Crossing the Chasm, especially in my line of work. My only possible consolation is that Crossing the Chasm is a critical read for marketing folks and a fantastic background book for salespersons. Which brings me to interesting point. I like most salespeople have a fair number of books etc on their bookshelf which we have read, reread, dog-eared etc.

Some of these same books are directly related to our sales function some not as closely related. So here is what I am going to do, I am going to develop a rating system:

1. Sales Techniques

2. Sales Background Tools

3. Other Interests

1. Sales How To Book

Books geared to sales and the techniques around sales for example: how to track quota, how to close business, how to solution sell etc. Specific book examples in this category:

The New Solution Selling: The Revolutionary Sales Process That is Changing the Way People Sell by Keith Eades

2. Sales Background Tools

Books geared to sales tools and not as directly related to making the sale such the psychology of people, the economy etc. for example:

Crossing the Chasm, Wikinomics, The Tipping Point etc.

3. Other Interests

These are books that are not necessarily related to sales but books I find interesting. This may included documentaries, autobiographies, works of fiction, books on wine etc., for example:

The Reagan Diaries

I plan on rating a fair number of books but before I do that I want to try it on for size if you will! Happy Sales!