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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.