Shift!: Harness The Trigger Events That Turn Prospects Into Customers. Craig Elias & Tibor Shanto. 2010.  978-1450240079. I received a review copy of this book as a pdf.  I have a lot of trouble reading anything like a pdf. When I read like to make notes , flip back and forth, reread etc.  All becomes harder . So this book languished in my Download folder.  If  I had not loaded it onto my kindle (which I only tolerate)  , I would have never got to it.   It is a very useful book for increasing sales effectiveness.  Taking to the right people at the right time ( just after a trigger event ) when they are in a window of dissatisfaction  dramatically improves your win rate.  I know this is true because one of our most successful initiatives for clients revolves around using key trigger events.  I would have noted stuff all over this book, if I could.  There is lots of resources for you on the website . TriggerEventBook.com. Hint to authors -my trigger event is a real book!

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Achieve Sales Excellence. The 7 customer rules for becoming the new sales professional.  Howard Stevens & Theodore Kinni. 2007. ISBN 9781593376512.  (Thanks to David Moulton for passing this book onto me.)  Not since Neil Rakham did his in-depth interviews/research that resulted in SPIN Selling, has there been a  comparable professional study done of what customers want from salespeople.  The HR Chally Group ( Stevens is CEO)  interviewed 210 000 salespeople and 80 000 companies as well as interacted with hundreds of companies through their proprietary sales assessment tool.   This is based on their observations that:

• Two-thirds of college graduates now take sales jobs upon completion of their formal education and
• 0.8% of colleges and universities prepare them for those jobs.

This is a very valuable book.  It is easily the best foundational book on sales success in the market today. It aligns what we find over and over, companies are often blissfully unaware of how little they know about their customers.  If you really want to make the change to be a top performing sales professional or customer driven company here is how you start.

Stage One:  A customer wants you to know that (this is the lion’s share of your work)

• You must be personally accountable for our desired results
• You must understand our business
• You must be on our side.

Stage two (after you have become on of the better performing sales types) they you want to know that:

• You must bring us applications
• You must be easily accessible
• You must solve our problem
• You must be innovative in responding to our need.

Customers see the salesperson as the most influential component in a sale.

If you want to make the serious sales coin,  this is the book for you to start your journey with.

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