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11/03/2009 10:29:30
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Diamond
Posts 7
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I got the "selling for dummies" book, are there better ones to read?
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11/03/2009 17:26:18
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NeilWarren
Posts 645
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I haven't read it Diamond - and actually, given that I am totally swamped with sales related reading matter in and around ModernSelling.com here, I don't read "books" in the old-fashioned, printed material, hold it in your hand, take it to bed with you kind of way you're inferring (although I do still read lots of other books).
Anyway, I digress, and think the best answer I can give you at the moment is to ask you what it is you want to learn about "selling"? It starts at the basics (what is it) and works through to elite corporate and sales team management.
Give us a clue, and I reckon some other readers will be able to point you in the right direction.
edited by NeilWarren on 11/03/2009
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11/03/2009 20:55:43
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Diamond
Posts 7
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that's very good question. It not really a easy question for me to answer. You see, I was doing door to door sales job recently and I not too sure why I didn't do well so I'm hoping to find some answer by reading books on selling. I was doing fundraising btw. Lot of times, I don't know if its because I haven't found the right person to talk or because I don't have a sales strategy. I don't think my attitude its that bad. I enjoy selling and I want to start another sales job but same time I need to figure it out what went wrong. I might start another topic.
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12/03/2009 12:50:56
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NeilWarren
Posts 645
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You might still pick up some good guidance via a "book" question, there must be some out there.
My h'apence worth would be to suggest that you first of all have a think about what it is you would really enjoy selling, rather than just the selling process and skills. For example, if the answer comes back as "fundraising" still, in that you are a passionate charity supporter and believe absolutely in a cause like Oxfam or Cancer Research or something, then the initial steps I'd suggest would be to become something of an expert in what that's all about. How, where and why do such organisations raise funds, what do they do with the money, etc. etc.. Then you should be able to see the most effective way you think you could fit in with that, like door-to-door, on the phones, by visiting and presenting to corporate donors, online networking or whatever. And then you'll have a better idea about what skills gap you want to address.
But if the answer comes back "motor cars" or "travel" or "property" or "financial services" or "pharmaceuticals" or "IT" - you get the idea, then the entry point into selling in each of those industries might well be very different, and require you to start learning different selling skills.
But most of all, I don't think you'll have any kind of enjoyable or rewarding career in "selling" unless you have a real, genuine passion about the product or service you do sell.
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15/03/2009 12:21:03
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SAQQARA
Posts 13
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This is going to be a biased post!
My name is Gary May and i was the lead author of a sales book published late 2007 that went to Number 1 on Amazon.com 'Business Best Seller List' called: SELLING: Powerful New Strategies for Sales Success
2 of my co-authors were the world authorites in Persuasion & Influence: Kevin Hogan (www.kevinhogan.com) and Dave Lakhani (www.boldapproach.com)
Here are some comments made about the book by readers on amazon: Hope they help?
“…This book is packed with practical ideas on how to revolutionise sales forever. However, Gary May really stands out. His practical interpretation and development of theoretical ideas and research is simply astounding; why, because his strategies work in practice.”
Steve Mills – Managing Director of RT Media
“…I saw Gary May do a presentation on selling in Las Vegas. It was clever, stunning in its creativity, and humbling in its in-the-trenches effectiveness. His chapters here show the same quality of detailed expertise.”
Bob Beverley - Author
“…If you can't use the first section of this book (written by genius Gary May) to double your income in 2008, then it probably can't be done! I had the pleasure of meeting Gary in Las Vegas last year and must say, I didn't expect anything less than the spectacular contribution he has made to the field of sales and influence.”
Vince Harris – President of Harris Research International
“…Gary May, dude... you are a ball of energy to buy back sales like you describe. Okay, I feel wussy for not even knowing half of the ways you discuss making, closing and keeping a sale.”
Ben Mack – Author of ‘Think Two Products Ahead’
“…Gary May, one of the authors, is a powerful example of someone who learned new strategies, immediately used them, and refined them from his personal success and experience. You will benefit from his expertise!”
Gail Hurt – CEO of Living Authentically
“…Gary May is nothing less than brilliant!”
Lisa McLellen – Author / Hypnotheripist
“…Please DON'T tell my competition about Gary May's ideas - Buying Back the Sale. DON'T tell anyone else about this book.”
April Braswell – Mentor / Coach
edited by SAQQARA on 15/03/2009
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15/03/2009 14:41:26
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NeilWarren
Posts 645
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There you go Diamond - straight from the horse's mouth!
And here's the link....
Selling - Powerful New Strategies for Success - Gary May & Others - Amazon.com.
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16/03/2009 16:53:16
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NeilWarren
Posts 645
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Oh dear! You might have really started something now Diamond.
Might just be a coincidence, of course, but on eof our main sponsors just dropped me a line (email) saying....
Hi Neil - Just had a thought, under your ‘Books and Publishers’ section (Business Directory), could you list CIM Bookshop as they sell a number of sales titles.
Details are:
The Chartered Institute of Marketing bookshop
Tel: 01628 427427
Fax: 01628 427499
Email: cimdirect@cim.co.uk
www.cim.co.uk/shop
and the link for that translates as The Chartered Institute of Marketing - Bookshop.
So I did include it in our Directory of Sales Team Suppliers - Training & Education - Books & Publishers section, where you find a few more "good sales books".
Happy reading then - Neil
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17/03/2009 23:18:38
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SandlerTrainingLondon
Posts 1
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The 2nd new book by Dave Mattson from Sandler Training(SM) just hit the best seller list and demand apparently crashed Amazon's servers. The 47 Rules book is based on David Sandler's principles that have helped me close 50% of last year's turnover in annual contracts in just 8 weeks. The previous book by Mattson and Tony Parinello, 5 Minutes with VITO helped me secure a 12 month contract worth £2000 an hour with a banking client. The original book by David Sandler "You Can't Teach a Kid to Ride a Bike at a Seminar" is difficult to get hold of and I've seen on eBay for £197 for a used copy.
Now I admit I'm a London-based Sandler trainer and over the last 5 years my clients continue to take my breath away. A 3 month old company closed a £600,000 order with a German bank on a ONE CALL CLOSE. She failed to meet every compliance, procurement, preferred supplier list criteria. She's only had 4 training sessions by that point but she did what I taught her to do using the principles outlined in David Sandler's book. Another has just overachieved target by 1750% in January in recession. A printer (they've been in recession for 2+ years) used these principles and has generated 500% growth over 4 years. An investment bank has 39/40 salespeople hit annual threshold 2 months into their financial year ... this year after the crunch and there's no money and investors are in hiding ... apparently.
I am biased. Why? Because I'm just average but this stuff works every time you stick to the system and the principles Sandler teaches us.
Marcus
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25/03/2009 15:46:47
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Malcolm
Posts 1
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Try and get a hold of a copy of Dale Carnegies How to win friends and influence people,
A good read to start before you start selling.
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31/03/2009 13:46:48
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mike86
Posts 2
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Hi Neil and everyone,
I work in a business that sells online recruitment advertising. The business is a start up so initially my role really was to hunt for advertisers. As we become more established my role is changing slightly and there is more of an emphasis on account management. Can anyone recommend me a good book on the subject? I am looking to treat our clients as well as possible as we value them highly and would also like to maximise the amount of repeat business we get.
Thanks for your help.
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31/03/2009 17:55:23
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NeilWarren
Posts 645
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Hello Mike (and welcome)
Ashamed to say I'm not very well read on the sales/selling books side of things, but am sure somebody will help.
I do tend to make up for my lack of reading on the print side though, with copious amounts of online reading matter (as you might imagine!) and this question brought to mind a very good interview/profile we ran last year with Darryn Welsh of Vodafone who was, at the time, a double awards winner as Sales Professional of the Year and Account Manager of the Year. So never mind the theory, what about taking a look at how the best key account manager was doing it in practice!? (And I say "was" 'cos I know he's been promoted since).
You need to be logged in, but the link is here: - ModernSelling.com - Profile Sales Leaders - Darryn Welsh - Vodafone.
Kind regards - Neil
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01/04/2009 14:52:29
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mike86
Posts 2
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Hi Neil,
Thank you very much for pointing me in the direction of that article. I found in really useful and it was certainly interesting to understand the lengths that Darryn went to in order to understand his clients business so he could understand their needs and offer solutions.
You also made an interesting point when you said that you read copius amounts of online reading matter. I find it really difficult to find good quality sales related stuff on the net. I regularly trawl through modern selling and I also find Frank Atkinson's sales training website very useful. However, I do seem to encounter a lot of rubbish. The sort of sites that say they can help you close every deal in exchange for a small fee! Or american sites where people make ridiculous claims. Are there many sites that offer genuinly useful advice?
Mike
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02/04/2009 12:00:27
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NeilWarren
Posts 645
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Thanks Mike for both your comments and your continuing contributions.
I think you're going to have to swear that "we haven't met before have we" (a bit like the other Derren bloke on the telly before he performs some act of mind-bending wizardry) because otherwise this might look like a "put-up job"! But no, you're right, there isn't much for sales people, is there? And, actually, you've tapped right into the main “moral” crusade that Editor Nick de Cent and I have been pursuing since 1986, when we launched the UK's first ever print magazine, specifically for UK sales management – called Sales Direction (RIP 1992 recession – apart from my database). In fact there was already Sales & Marketing Management from the ISMM, but that was members only and with the “marketing” confusion still, where marketing folk already had a good half-dozen magazines, accountants/finance had about 40, personnel/HR had a similar half-dozen, MD/CEO had at least 3 big titles (and taxi-drivers had a choice of 2!) but sales/sales management – zippo. (We got 25,000 top sales managers/directors registered in 3 years).
Pretty well still the case today. Sales is by far the biggest profession, not to say the most vital activity, and what do we get to provide all the information about how to keep up with skills, techniques and technology, or improve ourselves and maybe get some meaningful qualifications, or perhaps expand our range overseas with a bit of exporting? How many publications are devoted to the complex business of managing a sales team, with all of the recruitment, selection, assessment, training, motivation, reward, technology, communication and such like issues to resolve? Does anyone even bother to look at the cars we might best drive, hotels we should stay in, restaurants that are best to use, hard-wearing suits we might all find a best-buy, advertising/business gifts that go down best, presentation tools and techniques that work? Nope, afraid not. We’re still, in my opinion, almost the silent majority of the business world, that just keeps plugging away, bringing home the bacon, and seemingly just “tolerated” by the rest of the community.
continued......
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02/04/2009 12:01:03
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NeilWarren
Posts 645
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.....continued
Have we even got as far as suggesting yet that our children might usefully start to take GCSE’s or A Levels with a hint of “selling” skills in them? No problem studying how to watch the telly, or get into social work, of course, but try telling your teacher you want to be a sales person. And even the new apprenticeship schemes seem to struggle to mention it Apprenticeships.org – Types of Apprenticeships, where you’ll find the “S” word tucked into the small print behind Customer Service & Retail! (Even though Sir Alan always seems to select a sales person as a winner). One or two notable exceptions like an MA in Sales Management at Portsmouth University now available but otherwise Mike – afraid not, it’s still just you and me versus the world.
OK, OK, I’m getting carried away (d’you think you might have hit a raw nerve there!) – because, of course, there is now ModernSelling.com. And part of our job is exactly to go scouring around the world looking for all the information and product and service suppliers who are here to make our jobs easier and give us a helping hand. So, for example, if you go to our ModernSelling.com - Directory of Sales Team Suppliers, you’ll find over 1,000 companies listed who provide all sorts of things to help sales/selling (and yes, I have visited every single site to check that out), so you’ll find at least some part of each of those sites that will help with what you might want to know.
But the main body of the website/magazine that Nick has so lovingly compiled is now also an amazing resource, running to many thousands of pages. If you’re registered and logged-in, you can use the search facility you’ll find on every page and that will pull up the full archive of all the articles covering everything from A (advertising) to Z (swamp donkey – it’s a type of Zebra). If we haven’t written all about it ourselves, you’ll similarly find lots of links out to the pages and sites that have. And it’s a fundamental part of Nick’s job to separate the wheat from the chaff so that you are getting genuinely useful information – and I can tell you that he’s not a big fan of over-inflated claims for successful selling formulae!
So is that a long-winded way of saying it’s all here Mike!? (and thanks again for noticing/asking).
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02/04/2009 15:46:16
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NeilWarren
Posts 645
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And, actually, coming right back to Diamond's opening post (known as an "OP" elsewhere, I note) and the fact that he then went on to ask about MLM as another possible route to getting into selling, I think this quick little video reminder from our friends/network out there in CanDoGo land - featuring a quote from IBM Founder Thomas Watson Sr, is worth a minute of most people's planning time about "getting a career in selling".....
How Committed Are You? - Chris Lytle - CanDoGo.com (51 secs)
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06/06/2009 21:07:31
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NeilWarren
Posts 645
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I’m coming back to this conversation because I’m seeing several other threads about sales books around on the networks and would like to point us all back towards a consensus.
For instance on the LinkedIn – ModernSelling.com Group there’s one at present, with nice and helpful links like this one from Colly Graham Salesxcellence.co.uk – Selling & Sales Management Book Reviews. And an offer on there from Editor Nick de Cent that if you’d like to be a book reviewer just drop him a line (the.editor@modernselling.com). You get to keep the book and get 15 minutes of fame, if not exactly a fortune (although obviously if you pick the right books and learn what you need to know to sell or manage sales better – that’ll pay off nicely in the longer term).
But actually, both on our LinkedIn Group, and on another called Sales 2.0 Best Practice, and here, the questions get asked like…
ModernSelling.com - “A good sales book to read?”...or…
LI – ModernSelling.com Group - “Best Books on Sales?” (“…what would be your top 3 list of best books on sales?....great reads to enhance sales processes?”)…or…
LI – Sales 2.0 Best Practice – "Book Reviews" (If you have a book review that is relevant, please post if under this featured discussion.)
And then we get a random scattering of books, some old, some new and dealing with lots of different aspects of selling and sales management. There’s also a heartfelt plea from Tracy Paige-Malm, Sales Manager with NYAutoguide.com, on our LI Group to “…keep it basic. Very basic. I find that most books don't cover the simple art of being a sales person.” OK Tracy, I love a challenge, so I have (just now) written and published(!) a “very basic” book on selling – which is here The Best Ever Book on Selling (Access password: joker)
I hope that, with the password being “joker”, you’ll understand that that is not entirely serious but should make the point that we all need to ask the right questions, if we want to be “sold” the right solutions. And, vice versa, if we want our books or any other version of the written word to actually solve people’s problems, then it pays us to find the people who have those problems.
Failure to do this means that we haven’t even all recognised that step 1 in any selling situation will be an ability to get on with people, as in most people, most of the time, given that I still encounter plenty of sales people who think of their prospects as “targets” (to be “shot” almost) accompanied with an overbearing swagger and arrogance that would put off Mother Theresa. And Dale Carnegie’s 1930’s guide is still only absorbed, as a ideology, (Wikipedia - How to Win Friends and Influence People) by perhaps 1% of the population at large, and maybe 3%-5% of those choosing to take up selling (and no, I haven’t read it).
continued...
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06/06/2009 21:09:30
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NeilWarren
Posts 645
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...continued
Ditto then if The New Strategic Selling on Colly’s list really did mean that “This non-manipulative approach to selling was adopted worldwide”, how come we’re still having so many conversations about the best way to “close” an unwilling prospect? And if any of our friends from the Sales 2.0 Group are still with us (hello) then I’d have thought that “relevant” titles would not be very likely in the suggested list, like The First 100 Days of Selling, to be looking at problems involved in using Web 2.0 or these social media spaces and tools.
And in fact, on exactly this last issue, I’ve also seen today an article being submitted for publication with ModernSelling.com, provisionally titled…
How To Make Sales Appointments In 2009 and Beyond - Is Cold Calling Dead?
…which refers to a situation with a clearly experienced and comparatively successful sales person, live, real and at work today. Let me give you a teaser excerpt…
“Recently, I was working with a large IT company. One of their sales team has 300 named accounts from which he is targeted to make around £10 million in sales. When we first spoke, he was down to his ‘tough nuts’. These were the last 42 contacts that he could not get in touch with. When I listened to his approach it was an exact replica of the ‘canned’ spiel popularized by Stephen Schifman in the 1970’s. He was stalled at the ‘Gatekeeper’ who he had given the same spiel to at least 3 times previously. With no success. When we discussed where he would go from here it was plain that the next step was to diarise a call back in a few weeks.”
The rest of the article is great, and very informative, and exactly the kind of stuff that would make a great book as recommended reading for those with a focus on developing Sales 2.0 Best Practice. But the example sales person used is probably in the top 5% of the sales profession and therefore “better” than most of the rest of us – so unlikely to be quite as needy of basic selling skills. He/she clearly could get even better though, with some of these new and developing skills and techniques, but as could many of us at whatever more modest level we operate. Because the 21st Century way of making appointments or cold calling is a problem common to most sales people – whereas leading a start-up sales effort to build a sales team and small multi-national company, is not.
My advice? Step forward all you budding authors, and reviewers. Let’s write, let’s read, let’s share and let’s learn. But for any of us to benefit to the maximum, I think we’d benefit from trying to get a better understanding of how the entire profession is shaped, and who most needs what.
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10/06/2009 13:30:48
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Nick de Cent
Posts 175
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Thanks very much to all of you who have contacted me about reviewing books. I will be in touch very shortly to distribute a selection of the titles we have at ModernSelling.com HQ at the moment.
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20/11/2009 06:53:13
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TomBird
Posts 2
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Can't help but mention our book - Brilliant Selling. It was published in Oct 09 and is doing well in both Amazon and WH Smiths (where it is in their top 10 business books at the time of writing). CHeck out the Amazon reviews.
Regards,
Tom
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15/12/2009 12:06:38
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andrewsmith128
Posts 1
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I dont think that a book can give us enough knowledge as compare to the onsite selling or marketing experience. I am doing internet marketing for christmas gifts but i cannot read any book before.
http://www.blueunplugged.com/c.aspx?c=55661
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