An insightful commentary on the work of a salesman that conveys homespun wisdom in colorful prose.
The art of selling—and much else in life—is all about relationships, according to this soulful business self-helper.
Steck, a former partner at Goldman Sachs investment bank, looks back on his career selling securities to extract lessons on cultivating long-term personal relationships with customers. These include the importance of face-to-face meetings, which convey far more engagement, rapport, and nuance than screen-mediated, emoji-strewn texts (or even Zoom calls). Empathy is a must for understanding a prospect’s perspective, the author asserts, and requires attentive listening. (Steck recommends taking careful notes with pen and notebook rather than laptop or smartphone so customers can see you are listening to them and not fiddling with an app.) Salespeople must be willing to take calculated risks and show some vulnerability, the author argues, starting with the ordeal of cold-calling and the agonizing likelihood of demoralizing rejection. (On the epic end of the risk-taking spectrum, one Goldman Sachs executive managed to pitch an aloof prospect by somehow booking the seat right next to him on a trans-Pacific flight.) Assiduous following-up with contacts is crucial to building the relationship and closing a sale, Steck contends; 80 percent of sales require an average of five follow-ups, yet 44 percent of salespeople give up after just one follow-up, he reports. Keeping an account requires persistent study of the client’s industry and needs—this enables salespeople to make creative suggestions on improving the business. Most of all, selling requires dogged commitment to the relationship; Steck spent time chatting and spit-balling ideas with one client with nothing to show for it…until, out of the blue, he decided to buy $200 million worth of securities.
This brief for business humanism stresses virtuous salesmanship that strives to understand people and treat them well. The author illustrates his argument with winsome anecdotes about passionate restaurateurs, inn-keepers, and other entrepreneurs, as well as his own adventures training quarter horses at his ranch. (Winning over clients, he suggests, is a lot like getting a skittish colt to accept a saddle blanket on his back for the first time.) Steck distills his pointers on building sales relationships into pithy aphorisms: “The goal of the first meeting should simply be to introduce yourself, learn more about the person in front of you, and get a second meeting.” There is, at times, a lyrical, almost spiritual quality to Steck’s writing when it pays homage to the sacredness of the ordinary: “I find a greater return, both in sales and my personal life, when I remember to be present and available to what is at hand—at a red light, in conversation with my server over the wine list, talking to a loved one, chatting with the man operating the garbage truck on my street, or checking out at the grocery store. These moments all have gifts to give, when I extend myself to give and receive them.” Contrary to the stock image of desperate men sweating bullets and cutting throats for a sale, Steck offers the reassuring possibility that salesmanship can be a path to human connectedness and fulfillment.
An insightful commentary on the work of a salesman that conveys homespun wisdom in colorful prose.Pub Date: Oct. 28, 2025
ISBN: 9781639081578
Page Count: 168
Publisher: Fast Company Press
Review Posted Online: Oct. 23, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our...
A psychologist and Nobel Prize winner summarizes and synthesizes the recent decades of research on intuition and systematic thinking.
The author of several scholarly texts, Kahneman (Emeritus Psychology and Public Affairs/Princeton Univ.) now offers general readers not just the findings of psychological research but also a better understanding of how research questions arise and how scholars systematically frame and answer them. He begins with the distinction between System 1 and System 2 mental operations, the former referring to quick, automatic thought, the latter to more effortful, overt thinking. We rely heavily, writes, on System 1, resorting to the higher-energy System 2 only when we need or want to. Kahneman continually refers to System 2 as “lazy”: We don’t want to think rigorously about something. The author then explores the nuances of our two-system minds, showing how they perform in various situations. Psychological experiments have repeatedly revealed that our intuitions are generally wrong, that our assessments are based on biases and that our System 1 hates doubt and despises ambiguity. Kahneman largely avoids jargon; when he does use some (“heuristics,” for example), he argues that such terms really ought to join our everyday vocabulary. He reviews many fundamental concepts in psychology and statistics (regression to the mean, the narrative fallacy, the optimistic bias), showing how they relate to his overall concerns about how we think and why we make the decisions that we do. Some of the later chapters (dealing with risk-taking and statistics and probabilities) are denser than others (some readers may resent such demands on System 2!), but the passages that deal with the economic and political implications of the research are gripping.
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our minds.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-374-27563-1
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
IN THE NEWS
IN THE NEWS
Cogent, well-timed ideas for meeting today’s biggest challenges.
Helping liberals get out of their own way.
Klein, a New York Times columnist, and Thompson, an Atlantic staffer, lean to the left, but they aren’t interrogating the usual suspects. Aware that many conservatives have no interest in their opinions, the authors target their own side’s “pathologies.” Why do red states greenlight the kind of renewable energy projects that often languish in blue states? Why does liberal California have the nation’s most severe homelessness and housing affordability crises? One big reason: Liberal leadership has ensnared itself in a web of well-intentioned yet often onerous “goals, standards, and rules.” This “procedural kludge,” partially shaped by lawyers who pioneered a “democracy by lawsuit” strategy in the 1960s, threatens to stymie key breakthroughs. Consider the anti-pollution laws passed after World War II. In the decades since, homeowners’ groups in liberal locales have cited such statutes in lawsuits meant to stop new affordable housing. Today, these laws “block the clean energy projects” required to tackle climate change. Nuclear energy is “inarguably safer” than the fossil fuel variety, but because Washington doesn’t always “properly weigh risk,” it almost never builds new reactors. Meanwhile, technologies that may cure disease or slash the carbon footprint of cement production benefit from government support, but too often the grant process “rewards caution and punishes outsider thinking.” The authors call this style of governing “everything-bagel liberalism,” so named because of its many government mandates. Instead, they envision “a politics of abundance” that would remake travel, work, and health. This won’t happen without “changing the processes that make building and inventing so hard.” It’s time, then, to scrutinize everything from municipal zoning regulations to the paperwork requirements for scientists getting federal funding. The authors’ debut as a duo is very smart and eminently useful.
Cogent, well-timed ideas for meeting today’s biggest challenges.Pub Date: March 18, 2025
ISBN: 9781668023488
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Avid Reader Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
SEEN & HEARD
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