Sales & Selling Books - Page 12

Maximizing Your Sales With Salesforce.com

Edward Kachinske, Stacy Roach, Carol Gilliland, Timothy Kachinske

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 5 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Good 3 out of 5 stars.
1 of 2 people found this review helpful.

Product was not what I was expecting. Not helpful if you are srttingup salesforce but very helpful if you are utilizing the program.

Editorial Review:

With more than 1,000,000 active users, Salesforce.com is the most widely used online CRM application worldwide. Targeted to busy sales professionals, Salesforce.com can be used to manage sales, accounts, contacts, correspondence, activities, and more. If you’re one of these busy sales professionals, you need an easy reference tool to maximize your use of Salesforce.com’s complex feature set. “Maximizing Your Sales with Salesforce.com” is that tool. This book explains, in concise, easy-to-understand language, how to get the most out of this revolutionary software. Topics like creating contacts and accounts, adding opportunities, managing schedules, writing letters, sending e-mails, and more are explored in-depth. This book also covers some administrative tasks geared toward IT professionals looking to set up and configure preferences for their Salesforce.com users. With this quick, to-the-point resource, you won’t just be “up and running” in Salesforce.com; you’ll be an expert!

Mastering the Complex Sale: How to Compete and Win When the Stakes are High!

Jeff Thull

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 28 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Helpful to Any Leader in Government, UN, or Anywhere Else 5 out of 5 stars.
5 of 5 people found this review helpful.

I found this gem in a West Coast airport. I bought it partly because I have spent 20 years "selling" governments on the idea of doing more with unclassified sources and less with expensive secrets that capture only 4% of the relevant information, and partly because when I role play the well-intentioned but largely hand-cuffed Director of National Intelligence (DNI), I see a real inability to make real change when allowing "business as usual" practices to continue.

This book is tremendous. It is coherent, well-presented, with great illustrations, and a superb "reality check" section that the DNI or any other Cabinet leader or non-governmental or corporate or state executive would do well to adopt.

The bottom line: any "sale," whether from an external or internal source, is ultimately about making change; about changing what has been done and how it has been done since time immemorial.

Second bottom line: virtually every customer lacks the high-quality internal decision-process for diagnostics, surveying of what the options are, or evaluating tradeoffs, and once chosen, the customer needs help in implementing any complex solution because this will require internal change that the entire customer's enterprise will resist.

The book opens with a brief summary of the three Eras of sales:

Era 1: follow a sales script, be persuasive, sell and move on

Era 2: listen, develop a relationship, be a problem solver, win-win

Era 3: serve as source of business advantage, be a strategist, nurture the missing decision process and cast of characters within the customer's enterprise, and be ready to implement, measure, and report results

I like the author's emphasis on the fact that win-win is not about selling a product, but rather about helping the customer create a process that leads to greater performance and hence greater profit or impact. In this context, I see real value for any vendor that is willing to step back from their "single point technology solution" and actually offer up a range of best in class offerings that can be integrated seamlessly and do not require "one contractor per laptop" to be effective.

The author stresses that in complex environments, implementing innovation that produces new value is the winning combination.

He points out that complex sales involve:

1) Large financial investments

2) Long sales cycles

3) Multiple decisions at multiple levels in the client organization

As I noted the last point I recollected my participation in the CIA's Mid-Career Course (Class 101, 1986) and the attempts then to create a "one agency culture." These attempts failed, and the current DNI is also failing, in part because we hire, train, and promote according to over 100 different systems--we do not train together, we do not work together, and who we promote has little to do with performance in part because there are no metrics for *outcomes*.

I like the author's illustration and discussion of how to build a bridge to change with diagnostics, which includes the following:

Customer's Business Objectives
Critical Success Factors
Job Responsibilities
Worry List
Indicators
Causes
Consequences
Expectations
Solutions

Wow. Imagine if the US Government saw itself working in this manner!

The author stresses that in complex decisions commoditization is not helpful because one size does not fit all, but at the same time, the customers simply do not have the foundation, process, or insights needed to get it right. I certainly found this to be true in government, where Contracting Officer's Technical Representatives (COTR), with a handful of exceptions, have not been able to do functional requirements surveys nor write Statements of Work (SOW) since the 1980's.

The author recommends a focus on customers in pain, because pain drives the willingness to change, and that, combined with the diagnosis, drives the sale and the willingness to implement change. As I write this I think to myself that the worst thing we could have done for intelligence reform was to increase the budget from $30 billion a year to $60 billion a year--not only is the secret world not feeling any pain, they are not being asked to account for *outcomes* that are all too meaningless--for example, no one is being held accountable for the fact that we still do not have a consolidated terrorism watch list, and the one we do have has over 750,000 names, at least half of which are false positives.

The author warns against providing unpaid consulting (stop at diagnostics--the client has to pay for devising solutions); for creeping elegance (the perennial lure of adding bells and whistles that are both unaffordable, and that will not be used to full effect--one estimate says that employees use less than 20% of existing desktop software capabilities); and of growing resistance inside the customer's enterprise if the needed changes are not explained step by step from day one.

From page 176 forward the author asks and discusses 12 questions. Here
1. What is our company all about?
2. Who are the customers we serve?
3. How do we develop new business?
4. What is our diagnostic engagement protocol?
5. What is our personal business plan?
6. What are our solutions?
7. Can we develop new business?
8. Can you diagnose the customer's situation?
9. Can you determine the cost of the problem?
10: Are you perceived as a creative problem solver by your customers?
11: Can you propose an effective solution?
12. Can you effectively present a proposal?

This is a great book, helpful to those who both sell and buy in a complex environment. The Earth is the most complex environment we have, and this book helped me think about how to help the United Nations, the Foundations, and the non-violent side of the Pentagon (the folks that now understand we must Wage Peace) come together.

A few other books that complement this one:
The Innovator's Solution: Creating and Sustaining Successful Growth
Get Back in the Box: How Being Great at What You Do Is Great for Business
Corporate Creativity: How Innovation & Improvement Actually Happen
The Change Handbook: The Definitive Resource on Today's Best Methods for Engaging Whole Systems
Investing in Innovation: Creating a Research and Innovation Policy That Works
Wellsprings of Knowledge: Building and Sustaining the Sources of Innovation
Transformational Change
Path of Least Resistance: Learning to Become the Creative Force in Your Own Life
Innovation Happens Elsewhere: Open Source as Business Strategy
Orbiting the Giant Hairball: A Corporate Fool's Guide to Surviving with Grace

Editorial Review:

If you specialize in complex sales, the business-to-business transactions that involve multiple decisions made by multiple people from multiple perspectives, this is the book for you! It presents The Prime Process—a diagnostic, customer-centered approach that clearly sets you apart from your competition and positions you with respect and credibility as a valued and trusted advisor. If the stakes are high and you’re expected to win, this book will give you the edge you’ve been looking for.

Buy your copy today!

Get More Referrals Now!

Bill Cates, Bill Cates

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 22 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Let somebody else do the selling for you 5 out of 5 stars.
6 of 6 people found this review helpful.

Referrals now is an excellent book that explains how to obtain more business by asking for referrals. Most friends and existing clients are more than willing to recommend your product or sevices if you just ask for it. Sales people sometimes view asking for referrals as a sign of weakness or problems in the business. This is not true.

If you want to build up a business very quickly without a lot of overhead, this is the best method. It would be adviseable to first read the book "Masters of Networking" by Ivan R. Misner. Referral business has a lot to do with networking, so you must be ready to do favors for other people who help you out. Forgetting to help somebody else who has helped you will be very detrimental to your business.

Just asking somebody for a referral is not really good enough but asking the person for a personal introduction increases your chances dramatically for closing the deal.

Don't read the book all in one go. Read a chapter, think about how you can apply it, write down what you think is best for you and experiment with it.

Editorial Review:

Get More Referrals Now!

details the most comprehensive system available to build your business through referrals. This enhanced version includes a new chapter on the Do-Not-Call Regulations as well as the 4 cornerstones of a referral-based business:

Enhance Your Referability
Network Strategically
Prospect for Referrals
Target Specific Niche Markets

The 25 Most Common Sales Mistakes ... and How to Avoid Them

Stephan Schiffman

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 10 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Practical-Usable advice 5 out of 5 stars.
7 of 7 people found this review helpful.

This is back to the basics, but these basics will make or break you as in sales. A very good guide to keep on your shelf to re-read yearly and to pass on to sales personnel who seem to be floundering.

Great for learning or a little reminder 5 out of 5 stars.
6 of 6 people found this review helpful.

This book offers great little tidbits of information about common sales mistakes. It has truly improved my closing ratio. This is a great book to pull out every once in awhile when you need a boost. Sometimes it is hard to break a habit and easy to slip into an old routine.

Useful book for the working salesperson 3 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

This is a cheaply made book. It's not very long
either.

It's okay. Maybe it's better than ok. The same
information is covered in a more long-winded fashion
in other books about selling.

Some books that are meant to be sold at seminars are
really fluffy stuff. This one isn't. It's practical
advice. It's organized in short chapters you can
read really fast.

Editorial Review:

Many salespeople are losing sales because of fundamental mistakes that are often easy to correct, but difficult to identify. Schiffman carefully outlines the 25 most common of these mistakes and explains concisely how to address and resolve them.

Inside the Tornado: Strategies for Developing, Leveraging, and Surviving Hypergrowth Markets (Collins Business Essentials)

Geoffrey A. Moore

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 37 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

WOW! 5 out of 5 stars.
5 of 5 people found this review helpful.

Granted I haven't yet read the predecessor to this book, Crossing the Chasm, but this is the best business book I have read focusing on the external aspects of business. Most business books focus internally - what you and/or your company needs to do. This book takes the approach that what one does has a dependency on what's going on with the market.

The market, as defined in Crossing the Chasm, and repeated here, is divided into five sections/phases - Innovators (techies), Early Adopters (visionaries), Early Majority (pragmatists), Late Majority (conservatives), and Laggards (skeptics). Each of these groups has it's own needs that must be addressed. The predecessor deals with the "chasm" between the Early Adopters and the Early Majority. This book focuses on the tornado that occurs when a company/product gains traction with the Early Majority.

This book also borrows the concepts of "value disciplines" from "The Discipline of Market Leaders" and applies it to the various sections. There are three, somewhat mutually exclusive, disciplines - product leadership, operational excellence, and customer intimacy. It shows how initially the keys to success are focusing on product leadership and customer intimacy. Then, in the tornado, product leadership and operational excellence are key. Then, on main street, operational excellence and customer intimacy are critical.

The big challenge for people and for companies is, as with a manual transmission, shifting gears. This book does a fantastic job of explaining the changes needed at the different times, as well as how to determine when one reaches those times.

Editorial Review:

This is Moore's second book expounding his high-tech marketing theories, focusing on what to do when you've followed his advice in Crossing the Chasm so well that customers are beating down your door and crawling in the windows, putting your business into a new lifecycle stage: the mass market.

DigiMarketing: The Essential Guide to New Media and Digital Marketing

Kent Wertime, Ian Fenwick

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 6 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

"We are all DigiMarketers now" - or we should be. The authors have for the first time provided a lucid, hype-free, business-based and practical guide to the new age of marketing: it is a kind of digital Baedeker, which should be on every businessman's book-shelf. --Miles Young, Chairman, Ogilvy & Mather Asia Pacific

The digital frontier is now the center of our universe. As Kent Wertime and Ian Fenwick show, marketers must seize this digital opportunity to accelerate their market growth. --John A. Quelch, Senior Associate Dean and Lincoln Filene Professor of Business Administration, Harvard Business School

Too many advertisers are stuck in the primordial soup when it comes to their digital marketing strategy. However, they need to evolve fast if they are to survive in a multi-channel landscape. This timely book acts like an Origin of the Species, steering hesitant brand owners through the complexities of the digital ecosystem. An impressive blend of academic theory, professional insight and practical advice. --Paul Kemp-Robertson, Co-founder & Editorial Director, Contagious www.contagiousmagazine.com

DigiMarketing: The Essential Guide to New Marketing & Digital Media is a clear call for companies to evolve their marketing practice. This book is essential reading for anyone seeking a roadmap to the future of business.--Dipak C. Jain, Dean, Kellogg School of Management

The rise of conversational media new forms of distribution - from blogs to mobile platforms - challenge traditional approaches to marketing, and require every business to have a transition plan. Kent Wertime and Ian Fenwick have written a book that is required reading for any marketers interested in successfully making that transition. --John Battelle, CEO and Founder, Federated Media Publishing and Author, The Search

Kent Wertime and Ian Fenwick have written the definitive guide to marketing in the digital age. But Digimarketing does more than educate marketing professionals. It describes the new media landscape brilliantly, making it an essential read for anyone who hopes to understand the most important technological revolution of the past fifty years. I wore out three yellow highlighters before realizing that every sentence and every paragraph is worth committing to memory. --Norman Pearlstine, Former Editor-in-Chief, Time Inc. and Managing Editor, The Wall Street Journal, Senior Advisor, Telecommunications & Media, The Carlyle Group

Power Position Your Agency: A Guide to Insurance Agency Success

Troy Korsgaden

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 13 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Are you working too many hours for too few clients? Does it seem that you do more paperwork than peoplework? Will you spend more hours on the road than in front of people this year?

Whether your agency is big or small, if you answered yes to any of those quesitons, you need more than an andrenaline boost! You need a shot of strategies to wake things up and put you on the path to success fast.

How to get appointments with 10 clients every day

How to find qualified clients and get them to come to you

How to get clients in and out of your office in 30 minutes-or less

You'll also discover how to ramp up for success with something you already have, but probably overlook, why some clients don't make sense for your agency, and what you need for an effective sales pitch.

Get the help you need by putting Troy Korsgaden on your side. His strategies have made a difference for the thousands of agents who have attended his seminars across the country. They can make a difference fo you, too.

Sales Closing for Dummies

Tom Hopkins

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 6 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Without the close, there is no sale. Pretty obvious, right? Yet, for many salespeople, closing is the most baffling and elusive part of the selling process. All too often, salespeople meet qualified clients and charm them with an eloquent presentation, only to see the sale mysteriously slip from between their fingers in the end. Which is sad when you consider all the hard work – the prospecting, preparation, planning, and practice – done for the sake of a moment of truth that never arrives. Fortunately, closing is an art that can be mastered, and now Sales Closing For Dummies shows you how.

Packed with powerful principles that can help you become a top-producing salesperson, Sales Closing For Dummies is the ultimate guide to mastering that most mysterious part of the selling equation. Tom Hopkins, the legendary sales genius who, by age 30 was the nation’s leading real-estate trainer, demystifies closing and shows what it takes to be a champion closer, including how to:

• Lead a sale without being pushy
• Read the signs of an interested potential buyer
• Use questioning methods that close sales, time and again
• Help clients feel good about their buying decisions
• Keep your clients’ business and build their loyalty
• Build long-term relationships and watch your sales grow

With the help of dozens of real-life examples from a wide cross section of industries, Tom shows why professional selling is about communication, not coercion. And he shares his considerable insight and experience on:

• Verbal and visual buying cues and how to recognize them
• Choosing the best location for closing
• Addressing concerns and creating a sense of urgency
• Time-tested tactics and strategies for ending customer procrastination, overcoming their fear, closing from a distance, and more
• The ten biggest closing mistakes and how to avoid them
• Add-on selling and other ways of getting your clients to help you to build your business

Featuring Tom’s Hopkins’ trademark “Red Flag” key points and situation scripts, this fun, easy-to-understand guide arms you with the hands-on tools and techniques you’ll need to become a world-class closer.

A Practical Guide to Affiliate Marketing: Quick Reference for Affiliate Managers & Merchants

Evgenii Prussakov

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 20 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

A very informative and helpful read 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

I bought this book to help me learn the role of my job better as a manager for a web based business and had no idea where to start. This book was very helpful by answering questions that I had as well as giving me ideas. I would almost take it as an Affiliate Marketing for Dummies course!!
The best thing about this book in my opinion was that the context and verbiage is very easy to understand and follow, no super artsy intllectual sentances to break down. It is a straight forward read and the author does his best to explain everything in a mannerism that anybody can follow. Though not the most exciting of subjects I hardly found this book to be dry or boaring, The author does his best to make it exciting and as fresh as possible. I would recommend this book to anyone just starting out in this business.

Editorial Review:

A Practical Guide to Affiliate Marketing was written to be an indispensable handbook for all affiliate managers and merchants, alike. In addition to providing concrete, practical answers to common (as well as not-so-common) questions, the book gives usable ideas on promoting affiliate programs, along with ways to keep affiliates motivated. This guide presents the author's information in a logical, convenient format.

How to Break Into Pharmaceutical Sales: A Headhunter's Strategy

Tom Ruff

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 21 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

A must read for the pharmaceutical newbie 5 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

Pharmaceutical sales can be an intimidating industry. Tom Ruff's knowledge will point you in the right direction towards success.

BUY THIS BOOK!!! 5 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

If you are even remotely thinking of breaking into the pharmaceutical or medical sales industry - BUY THIS BOOK!! Because of this book I just got hired with Johnson & Johnson as a pharmaceutical sales rep. I had no prior experience in this industry and I beat out 3 other qualified candidates because I followed Tom's advice to a T. I highly recommend this book if you are seeking a job in the pharma or medical sales industry. It is an extremely difficult task to get hired in this industry but once you do you will be so proud of yourself and on your way to a fulfilling life-long career.

Editorial Review:

Today, more and more candidates are competing for positions in the rewarding field of pharmaceutical sales. With Tom Ruff on your side, you can become one of the breakthrough stories. In his down-to-earth and deeply practical style, the President and CEO of Tom Ruff Company shares the secrets he's gathered over his 18 years of grooming and placing top talent. Widely regarded for his commitment to ethics and excellence, Tom has built a company that is a preferred recruiter for more than 100 of the country's top pharmaceutical and medical device companies, including Abbott Laboratories, Johnson & Johnson and Pfizer. Specializing in the placement of pharmaceutical sales and medical device sales professionals, Tom Ruff Company is headquartered in Manhattan Beach, California, with offices in San Francisco, Phoenix, Dallas, and New York City.