Priceless. The myth of fair value (and how to take advantage of it). William Poundstone. 2010 ISBN 9780809094691.  A fascinating, useful and well written book.  This author is an expert in this area.   If you have ever bought a car, negotiated with your child or been to an auction, the author is talking directly to you.  The field is called psycophysics and Poundstone brings it to life.  After you read this you will understand how anchoring your sell with a very high price is better for getting the highest price, why he who sets his price first has the advantage, how web pages are using background images to prime readers to make decisions and where union negotiators have a winning plan regardless of the outcome.  Ever wonder how the Sierra Club negotiates and will always come out ahead of the resource companies?   He tells you why you ignore what clients say they want and watch what they do.  This is a must read for the CEO, CFO, CMO  and every consumer.

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Selling to the C-suite : what every executive wants you to know about successfully selling to the top. Nicholas A.C. Read and Stephen J. Bistritz. 2010. ISBN 9780071628914.  This is the next read in your growth as a super sales person  titled  listen to the words of the client.   The authors did exhaustive interviews with executives as to what they wanted from a vendor, what they got and what was important to them.  This should open most of your eyes folks.  It is really good material. For example, most executives are closely involved long before the sales person learns about an opportunity, and by then it is likely  the worst time to approach the C Suite.  The book has terrific ideas for doing the homework that is necessary and how this changes from culture to culture.  The sectiopn on China is worth the price of the book.  Simple down to earth advice, easy to read but do not whip through this book, it is too valuable a read.  Their blog http://www.sellingtothec-suite.com.

more articles about the book http://www.salesandmarketing.com/msg/search/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1004001881
http://www.salesandmarketing.com/msg/content_display/publications/e3id519a27d3f06495af655298805bdaeb2

Other sources on this topic http://www.closebiz.org/images/Selling_to_the_C-Suite.pdf

If the rest of the books I look at in 2010 are as good as this I am really looking forward to them

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• Soar Despite Your Dodo Sales Manager. Lee B. Salz (regnordman.com)

I hope every salesman finds this a joke and no longer the truth.

A man dies and finds himself at the Pearly Gates with both St. Peter and the devil. St. Peter says, “You’re not supposed to die for another ten years. We’ll have to send you back.” The man is thrilled, but on his way out he sees one door to Heaven and another to Hell.
He hears a raging party behind the door to Hell and asks the evil standing guard if he can take a peek. The devil says, “Only for a minute.” So he goes through the door to Hell and finds an incredible party, with endless food, champagne, music, and every rock star from history beckoning him to join them. He says, “If this is Hell, I want in‘
When he returns to Earth, he spends the next decade coming every sin he knows, and a few he had to look up on the Internet. Ten years to the day, he dies and meets the devil in front of the door to Hell. As the door opens, he hears no music and sees no party; only brimstone, fire, and the wailing of a thousand damned souls.
He cries, “Wait Where’s the party?‘ The devil smiles and xplains, “Oh, ten years ago you were a prospect. Now you’re a customer.”

From Selling to the C-suite : what every executive wants you tc know about successfully selling to the top / by Nicholas A.C. Read and Stephen J. Bistritz.

Repositioning. Markeitng in an era of competition, change and crisis. Jack Trout and Steve Rivkin.  2009. ISBN 9780071635592. This is an update after 30 years.   With “Repositioning,” you can conquer the “3 Cs” of business: Competition, Change, and Crisis . . .

• BEAT THE COMPETITION: Challenge your rivals, differentiate your product, increase your value, and stand out in the crowd.
• CHANGE WITH THE TIMES: Use the latest technologies, communications, and multimedia resources to connect with your consumers.
• MANAGE A CRISIS: Cope with everything from profi t losses and rising costs to bad press and PR nightmares.

I really like Trouts writing style.  He always tries to simplify marketing for all of us. This is the mark (to me)  of someone who really understands what he is talking about.

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Soar Despite Your Dodo Sales Manager. Lee B. Salz. 2007. ISBN 9780832950094.   I previously posted Salz’s ideas for sales people looking for work (Time to look for a new sales job? New and seasoned sales guys???? )   The rest of the book is as brilliant.  This is a book which truly architects a salesman’ s success, despite their manager or lack of a manager and little help from marketing.   Much useful and familiar content such as :

• How do you really differentiate your product/service?
• Look at the buyers process, not a selling process.
• What are you doing for personal growth?

What is your ideal client?

• Size?
• Circumstances (new vs takeaway?)
• Process?
• Budget?
• Buying habits?

Who are the personalities in a client?

• Beneficiaries?
• Saboteurs?
• Mentors?
• Wizards (he who pays)?

His chapters on territory management and responding to RFPs are better than anything I have seen in a long time.

If there is something missing it would be the extensive work of Sharon Drew  Morgen on the the early identification of stuff that will get in the way of the sale. Her material is unbeaten at the qualifying stage, to make you more efficient as well as more effective.  Plus you really do need to get marketing to help you with some of this stuff, if you can.

See lots of Lees content belowhttp://changingminds.org/articles/lee_salz_articles.htm

Well written, clear and a great guide, this is a book for every salesperson to have in his library, I would keep in your bag, as the tips and examples are of great immediate use.

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Time to look for a new sales job?.

I am devouring a book called Soar Despite Your Dodo Sales Manager. (www.wbusiness.biz) by Lee B. Salz. (Maybe a theme developing?) This is a good book (Review will follow)  His second chapter is all about finding the right sales job and I loved it.  He talks about interviewing  the company while they interview you  since you have as much to lose as the company by signing up for the wrong job.

Its usually the wrong job if:

• The company has no proven plan in place to help salesmen succeed
• The company hires  hunters but you see they need farmers
• They want strong salespeople with no idea what strong really means
• The manager is stuck in ABC thinking
• There is no demand for the product, yet no plans to develop it.
• Or there is no name recognition, no brand, few marketing dollars, no prospects calling in

Sound familiar? It rang my bell a few times. we have seen all this and more in helpin gtech companies through the year.  Here’[s a clue, if you do not see why this is a costly problem for you, do not worry, your company will not make it anyway.

Points about finidng the ideal company (like finding the ideal client right? ) :

1. Define what is the ideal company for you
2. Where and what are the opportunities for you?
3. What do they expect of a sales person? What do you expect of them?
4. What skills are they willing to teach? What do you want to learn?
5. What is their commitment to training and development? What is your commitment?
6. What won’t they teach?What don’t you want to be taught?
7. What do they feel can’t be taught?
8. Services sellers need to know how to customize, configure and create based on customer requirements. Are you that type?
9. Product sellers are limited by what the box does. Is that your success type?
10. Did you thrive on short cycle or long cycle sales?
11. Same with single buyers or multiple enterprise buyers?
12. What type of hunter are you? Do you generate your own leads or answer in-bounds?
13. Are you able to straddle the likable/driven divide of the farmer?
14. How do you adapt to change? How flexible are you? Is the comp plan overly  changable?
15. What is the size of your financial risk? Will your cheques clear?
16. Where do they stand with the competition; leaders. followers. laggards, off the radar?  Which do you prefer?
17. Are they boutique or low price?  Where do they win or lose sales?
18. What is the offering breadth? All of it, or just part of the puzzle?
19. How do they differentiate themselves? Do you believe it?
20. How is sales managed? Your preferance?
21. What sales support is there?  Proof materials?
22. The money; salary, recoverable/nonrecoverable draws, commission how does it all work together?  What defines revenue? What about chargebacks?
23. Any deal breakers such as ; pay is too low to survive on , commute too long, location?

Told you it was thorough. This is just Chapter 2!

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socialnomics. how social media transforms the way we live and do business. erik qualman. 2009. ISBN  9780470477236.  I confess my first thought  was  not another fluffy book on social media.  This is anything but that. I consider this the sober second wave type of book that helps us determine where a technology change will really make a business difference. Examples:

The impact of having your profile available to the many and how that impacts your social behavior (What foes on in Vegas stays on Facebook)

LinkedIn is a defacto monopoly on business social networking. Once you have collected a set of references on LinkedIn why would you ever go to another site?

It is no good railing against the walled garden approach of Facebook, companies need to embrace it as another venue to meet and communicate with its target market.

Google is right to be scared of Facebook, people care less what Google thinks and more what their ‘friends” think about products etc. I just bought two items from Facebook marketplace that a few years ago I woudl have looked to ebay for. Facebook was easier, much faster and now I know the seller.

Books are being written as a crowd sourcing experiment – ask your followers a question on Twitter and write down what comes back.

Robert Murdock wanting to get his stuff not as easily searched by Google is another example of “Its my ball and I will play with it my way” thinking.  Did not work for AOL, Hasbro and Scrabulous won’t work for him

I advise you to pick this book up, it will help us dinosaurs come to grips with why the youth are embracing this media. You will enjoy his easy reading style and thoughtful analysis.

Dirty Little Secret: Why sellers can’t sell and buyers can’t buy, and what you can do about it. Sharon Drew Morgen. I am a Sharon Drew fan. She has taken up the gauntlet this time of showing the gap between what sellers are trying to do and what buyers are trying to achieve. Just let buyers be smart about what they want to do! She leads the field in giving you,the vendor, insights into what really goes on inside the prospect company and what you need to do up front to dramatically improve your chances of selling more successfully, regardless of what the marketplace is doing. She clearly points out that the present increased difficulties in selling are just a manifestation of all that sales has been doing wrong for years.
This is not a business as usual with a few tweaks book. She is asking sales folks to make a dramatic change in how they approach clients and how they think about selling. If you are not a very secure salesperson, you will balk at this approach. Once again, unless you read this, you won’t know what you do not know. Yet all the research on sales and marketing we have done confirms out that Sharon Drew is in the forefront, pointing out what really must be done to move selling from its dismal yet commonly accepted closing rates. Someday we will all sell like Sharon Drew, our clients will force us. check out the website for more http://sharondrewmorgen.com/.  Available Oct 15.

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Perspectives on Increasing Sales. Marvin N. Miletsky & James A. Calander. 2009. ISBN 9781598638745.    This is a very useful book. The two authors, one a seasoned salesman and one a veteran buyer were given the same 97 questions on selling. They penned their answers without consulting each other.  The learning enshrined in these answers is priceless.  You get firsthand the duality of the buy- sell process and the  hidden buyers side. The insights into what is really important to the buyer vs what the seller believes is unique.  If you buy or sell things , are a rookie or a pro, there is a lot here for everyone.  This book is timely and a definite add to my sales library shelf.  It is an easy read that I could not put down.

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The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Selling. Jonathan London. 2009. ISBN 9780313359187.  This is a very concise book.  It is literally a 144 pp  bible for selling, with little not covered. The author ( a top rate sales trainer)  is really on top of his subject with this one.  But, for you to to get the value from the book, you need to read it all. The sum is greater than the parts.  Plenty  of real life examples are used to bring the lessons home.  I enjoyed the host of templates and checklists that covered the gamut of the sales game.  the book is logically organized and very clearly written.  From  rookie to seasoned pro, this book has utility for all people who need to know about selling.  Good library addition.