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Selling with Integrity. Sharon Drew Morgen. 1997. ISBN 1576750159. This a New York Times bestseller that is the basis of SDM’s Buying Facilitation method. Like her other books this one is clear, concise with good examples and testimonials sprinkled throughout. Revolutionary when she wrote this, the material is still very much leading edge in sales.  As is, the books stated approach is exactly fitted for any type of “commodity’ (In the view of the buyer) sale. For the specialized B2B market, one needs to put in place a smart pre-qualified lead gen marketing program, before using this very powerful method, since all resources are constrained.  Then your sales guys will then show an improvement in their qualification abilities and a resulting dramatic increase in sales. I believe her statement that her method shortens sales cycles. I question her “marketing free ” approach as today we see a much bigger sales landscape with an huge dependence on great marketing.  The method releases the salesperson from any form of old style sales manipulation/techniques and allows them to be very true to a more service oriented sales role, which follows much of the recent books I have reviewed this year. This is the only pure sales book that I would say improves sales efficiency and sales effectiveness

Over the past three weeks I have read all books she has published and listened to some of her training seminars. To practice my learning I have increasingly used her published approaches in my client interactions so I could improve.  These are early days, but I am seeing that her questions structure and ordered thoughtful approach allows the client to open up more and bring forward information that sometimes could hurt the sale further on if it was not dealt with early. Every thoughtful sales guy should have a copy of this one on his shelf - and he should read it annually.  (Her earlier book on telephone skills is still useful to our new style of sales guy, but the ‘assumptions” may appear dated.) At least the prices today are quite right!

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• Buying Facilitation. The new way to sell that influences & expands decisions. Sharon Drew Morgen.

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Strategic Alliances. Three ways to make them work. Steve Steinhilber. 2008 (November) ISBN 9781422125885. Harvard Press has a good one here in the Memo to the CEO series. The author is Cisco’s head of Alliances and he has greated the desktop workbook on the subject.  There is utility for the smallest to largest company here - especially when the pundits tell us that ina down economy you need more alliances in order to weather the storm. I found the section on the attributes of the alliance executive valuable as I am often called to help clients select such a person. Stenhilbers ideas aligned with my own, but I also found his lead item that this person should have cross functional experience (even as far as being  a CEO of a smaller firm) to be very insightful . Many times companies will select as strong salesperson for the role and they all too often are found lacking.  This is tough on all parties.  A very easy and quick (112pp) read. Watch for it.

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Buying Facilitation. The new way to sell that influences & expands decisions. Sharon Drew Morgen.2003. ISBN 0964355302.  This New York Times best selling author was a recent discovery,  via Steve Flashman.

This  is an insightful look at sales qualification, as we’ve known it. She believes that there are actually two aspects to sales - first the product placement end, and then the buying decision end; We’ve always assumed that buyers understood their needs, were ready to buy, and we the sales team only needed to understand pain and solution issues. i.e. the buying decision end. Up to now we may have ignored the product placement front end.

In this simple book, Sharon Drew Morgen breaks down those things that buyers go through before they are ready/willing to buy or fix their problem.  This book tells you where they go and what they are doing, while you are waiting for their response . She describes where buyers go when they say ‘I’ll call you back’ and what is taking so long, and gives insights into ways to greatly diminish the sales cycle (hint:it’s about their internal decision making issues),

This book explains Morgen Buying Facilitation Method(R) that is a decision facilitation approach to teach buyers how to line up all of the internal decisions they need to make, before introducing the product and solution.   Sales has up to now not had the tools to help manage the very front end of the sales equation.  If you want to become one of the top 5% sales people , while  serving the customer better than you are today,  buy this easy to read book.

Because she does not agree with the main stream “this is just the way sales is ” mindset , her writings have not been picked up as much as they could be.  This is not a cookie cutter process she describes and it still requires a strong dedication to your learning process. This lady has shown us a better way to gain an early understanding of the buyers process.   This is another big step on the way  to prevent much of the waste we see in selling.

You can pick up a copy here.

She has lots of content on her website www.newsalesparadigm.com

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Subliminal Persuasion Influence & Marketing Secrets They Don’t Want You to Know. Dave Lakhani. 2008. ISBN 9780470243367.  Also Persuasion. the art of getting what you want. Dave Lakhani. 2005. ISBN0471730440. Taken together these are two of the bets books on persuasion I have come across . The author uses his well researched techniques throughout the book so you can experience how persuasion is not manipulation, its selling, marketing, seduction. all rolled up.  Lakhani is the guru in this space and his research is extensive and documented for the discerning reader.

You need to read these books to

1. recognize and be forewarned when techniques are being used and
2. learn how to apply them.

You will recognize the impact of these techniques through stories about Volvo (safe and boxy), The Sierra Club, the Organic Food movement (pay more for the same thing)  as well as the Natural movement.  Read about the most influential (and unknown) American ever, Edward Bernays who made it fashionable for women to smoke, promoted bacon and eggs until it was the American breakfast, stoked the fear of communism to “rally the population”,  and participated in the United Fruit Co /Guatemala/CIA led government toppling.  Bernays believed that the conformity of the masses made for a smoother “democratic” society.   Amazing yet serious stuff.

The authors take on Positioning:

• Positioning and packaging is creating a legendary message that meets the expectation of your target audience and gains persuasive compliance.
• We are leveraging storytelling.
• We are focusing on creating complementary models
• We are creating a persona that is easily identifiable with you, your company, and your product or your service you are leveraging.

Taken with Chip Bells work on customer loyalty, these persuasive techniques create a one two punch that would help you beat most opposition.  I believe that todays sales and marekting leaders need to become more familiar with Lakhanis work. They are easy concise reads, well worth the little effort to learn.

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Close Like the Pros. Replace worn-out tactics with the powerful strategy of Interactive Selling. Steve Marx. 2007. ISBN 9781564149541.  If you are a seasoned sales person/manager who knows the pain of too many Nos or no answer proposals, this is your book.  This is a fitting up to date replacement for the New Solution Selling.  Marx has been there, dione that and got all the T-shirts,. It is a pure sales book which happily ignores completely the need for nurturing etc.  But for pure in the trenches, gut feel selling this is the book.  I took a while to read it as the title put me off. But boy was I was mistaken. Marx could have been listening in on many Rocket Builders consults wrto sales and the buyer’s journey. He is so bang on.   Some insights:

• The salesperson gains power by empowering the buyer.
• Selling is tough but so is buying today.
• Your prospects want to buy, why would you be invited.
• Contracting is essential to set and maintain buyer expectations.
• What is the buyer doing to move the sale forward?
• Use half baked/straw man ideas before you present the maximum idea
• Use progress reports to show how far you have come
• A critical path details where you are going.
• There is no correlation between a rapid turnaround of a proposal and a good sale. None.

This is a salesman’s/manager’s must buy book

• .

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Topgrading for Sales. World-class methods to Interview, Hire, and Coach Top Sales Representatives.  Bradford D. Smart &  Greg Alexander. 2008. ISBN 9781591842064.  Stats from this book:  In the USA the national failure rate in the sales profession is 40% which is also the annual turnover/ termination rate.  The life of a sales manager is 19 months.  The cost of a sales mis hire is easily $600 000, which translates into a mis hires annually in the US of about 8  million people annually ( or 8million  * $600k = ?) . Alexander teamed up with Smart to bring top grading to Sales.  While at GE, Alexander did wonders with this approach. He strive to only hire the top 5 % of the sales guys. This book contains everything you want to know on how to do this.  Lots of very very useful advice here.  My only  concern is for those of us in small regional markets like Canada etc, how big is that 5% pool?  Not very, so what is a smaller co to do?  I think there are great ideas here on how to hire better people which will make your management  tasks that much easier. If you have to take folks as they come, you will know out of the gate that some of them are going to take lots of your resources in order to be successful   The gem for me was the idea of having a virtual bench, ie knowing who in your market you woudl like ot have working for you that are not, nurturing reltionships so that when you need fresh faces in the filed you have a connectors/prospects  bench to go to. Lots of work, but it is a valid idea.  Every Sales manager should have this one on their shelf.