Post: #1

A quick summary of my situation: I have virtually no experience in sales and have not read anything on the matter. I am looking at this for selling services for private English lessons/a language school within a series of small, close-knit communities where everyone seems to know everyone else's business.

As per the title, I have looked at other threads and found different suggestions for books about sales.

Here are the books that seem to be highly regarded (in no particular order):

To Sell is Human
How to Master the Art of Selling
Pitch Anything
Secrets of Closing the Sale

There was another (I forget which), but it seemed more applicable to big, complex or high volume deals than what I'm looking at. I have also followed links/recommendations on Amazon and found these two books to be highly regarded:

The Art of Persuasion
Endless Referrals

I'd like to purchase one, perhaps two, books. Can anyone give some feedback (pros and cons) of the above books?

Here are the results of my rudimentary research so far, based upon looking at the most recent (print) editions of each book.

Firstly, I did a quantitative analysis (flawed as that is), based upon customer ratings at Amazon, and got the following (out of a maximum of five):

Endless Referrals – 4.73
Pitch Anything – 4.70
The Art of Persuasion – 4.67
How to Master the Art of Selling – 4.63
Secrets of Closing the Sale – 4.60
To Sell is Human – 4.53

Basically, there's not a massive amount separating them. So, then I looked at the distribution of those rankings, specifically looking at the percentage of ratings that were one or two stars. My rationale for this is that there are always going to be lots of people who sing a book's praises, but I wanted to see how many people disliked a book (and later, why).

The Art of Persuasion – 0% (low number of customers though)
Endless Referrals – 1%, no 1 stars
Pitch Anything – 3%
Secrets of Closing the Sale – 4%
To Sell is Human – 5%
How to Master the Art of Selling – 6% (low number of customers though)

I then did a qualitative analysis based upon those negative reviews, and here are thoughts on each book:

Bob Burg's books (The Art of Persuasion and Endless Referrals) both rate really well and don't seem to really have strong detractors, though a couple of people reviewed them as having too much padding with the stories (which seems to be a common theme in the genre).

Pitch Anything has been described as "The Game for sales" and "high testosterone power games" and appears to be confrontational/adversarial. I have reservations about this for two reasons. The first is that I want to build relationships/customers in a fairly small community (as an outsider), so I don't want to antagonise anyone. The second is cultural. Westerners are already considered too direct and confrontational in Taiwanese society, and I am concerned that this style of sales could be a little over the top for the environment here.

Secrets of Closing the Sale seems to be outdated in a lot of its advice.

To Sell is Human gets a bad rap for having a lot of filler and not being particularly practical.

How to Master the Art of Selling has a few negative reviews, but they're not particularly scathing. One suggests that the most recent edition hasn't really been updated and that the material is still a little outdated with regard to the use of technology. That's not such an issue for me as mostly I do face to face anyway.

So, I am leaning towards The Art of Persuasion, but am unsure about the others (since Endless Referrals is by the same author, it might be putting all of my eggs in one basket). I'd very much appreciate any feedback (or suggestions for other books).

Post: #2

Why don't you just read them all?

Post: #3

I just finished my sales course at Chicago Booth.
check out what is your story? By Craig wortmann. One of the best sales books ever.
also check his blog at salesengine.com

Post: #4

Winning Through Intimidation.

Very good book.

Post: #5

Thanks for the replies so far.

bamaboy and Saladin: Could you please explain why you recommend the books? (I'll check them out now.)

Biz: I might eventually, but I'm just looking to get my feet wet at this point. I'd like to start with one or two and then go from there.

Post: #6

currently i'm watching Jordan Belfort's 'Straight Line Persuasion System' which is pretty good.

Post: #7

I remember blogger Michael Ellsberg saying that 'SPIN-Selling' was the best fook he'd ever found on learning to sell.

Post: #8

Spin spelling is awesome. It's the most different book I've ever read on the topic. But you need to read one basic book on selling to get why Spin Selling is different.

Primarily the assumptions about human nature and that of the nature of an organization are different. Selling a washing machine to a home owner is different than selling a waste management system to a rural county.

WIA

Post: #9

Well, he teaches at Chicago booth.
what I like is his sales strategy is around telling stories to build sales. He touches on the topic of closing and closing early. Pretty good.

Post: #10

(03-27-2014 02:24 AM)Pinocchio Wrote:  currently i'm watching Jordan Belfort's 'Straight Line Persuasion System' which is pretty good.

This right here.

I saw the whole thing and it's very powerful. Especially the part about tonality and looping which ties directly into game. Even Jordan says this has usage on women in the first module.

You can get the whole thing for free on piratebay.

I also bought The Ultimate Book Of Phone Scripts by Mike Brookes, but I'm currently waiting for it to arrive tomorrow. I saw many people recommending it. People on the warrior forums were saying it's well worth the price. Plus, it has great reviews on Amazon. If you plan on buying the book though, buy it from barnes and noble since that's the cheapest price there is currently in the market. I've looked everywhere for a pdf but no avail.

EDIT:
I almost forgot to mention there's a lot of material by Stan Billue (big time, telemarketing sales legend) that's free on the internet. Just google his name like this, "Stan Billue pdf."

Post: #11

Anything by Tom Hopkins is really good.