Insight Selling: Surprising Research on What Sales Winners Do Differently

Foreword

A mixed blessing of my job is that I get to review a lot of sales books. Roughly once a week I receive a manuscript from a hopeful author or publisher, asking me for comments and feedback. Of course, what they are really asking for is a rave review that will help the book sell. Reading all these expectant winners, looking for good things to say, can be a challenging task. I’m often tempted to reply with the comment often, but wrongly, attributed to Samuel Johnson: “Your work is both good and original. Unfortunately the parts that are good are not original, and the parts that are original are not good.” On the plus side, it does mean that I see a lot of ideas before they become public and I get a good sense of current trends in sales thinking. On the downside, for every book that I can honestly endorse, I kiss a whole pondfull of literary frogs.

I ask you to forgive me a moment’s bitching if I pick out a particularly unhelpful trend in many of these about-to-become-best-selling business books, especially those in sales, that use what I call the Armageddon selling formula. The approach goes something like this: “Everything you’ve ever learned about sales is wrong and, unless you stop doing it instantly, your sales efforts will shortly die in agony. There is, however, one simple cure that I have discovered. It is . . .” and here the author puts in a pitch for the appropriate magic bullet, such as “my prospecting method,” “my selection system,” “our funnel management process,” ...