The New Science of Selling and Persuasion

Every successful business person is a sales person.   If you are in business, and you want to build more success, read this book.

I’ve attended several sales training sessions with the author of this book, Bill Brooks.  He is outrageous, caring, funny, direct, smart, silly and full of amazing statistics, stories, insights and practical knowledge.

This is more than a sales training book.  It is a book for business leaders who want additional insights as to how to diagnose and correct organizational problems that inhibit sales growth.

He exposes 21 Myths in Business in the Twentieth-Century.  Also, he includes the 12 Most Fundamental Sales Management Truths, how to hire and retain great salespeople, how to build a sales culture and organization, as well as sales force audit worksheets.

The 12 Most Fundamental Sales Management Truths are expanded upon throughout the book and are essential for success in every business.  He is right on target.  (Replace the word sales force or salesperson with workforce and these truths still apply.)

1. A sales organization will never be any stronger than the salespeople who are recruited, selected and hired to be a part of it.
2. Invest your time where it counts; with the best performing salespeople and with those who hold the greatest potential for superior performance.
3. A sales organization cannot be led from behind a desk.
4. The best sales executives and sales managers are the most skilled at judging talent and placing the right people in the right place.
5. You can’t lead where you won’t go any more than you are able to teach the things you don’t know.
6. Salespeople must be hired with caution, launched with clarity, and the underperforming ones replaced with dispatch.
7. Pay plans are essential to sales performance and should, ultimately, determine how much of what gets sold.
8. Turnover in a sales force is normal and to be expected. Zero turn over is bad, but too high a turnover is even worse.
9. Sales executives must never allow digital solutions to dominate a sales force’s life, stifle creativity, or curtail proactivity.
10. You cannot motivate salespeople; you can only create an environment that rewards the things they are most motivated by in the first place.
11. No salesperson will ever reach any meaningful level of performance if expectations are not clearly established, communicated and verified for their acceptance and total understanding.
12. Performance counts in sales, but it is accountability that really pays.

Brooks’ company is certified to deliver the same position benchmarking and development tool (TriMetrix™) that we offer.  The book offers great detail about how the TriMetrix can be used to drive performance success.

A must-read for serious business executives who want to improve organizational performance, business growth and expansion.

May, 2005

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