A radical reconsideration of sales training that moves away from one-size-fits-all models.
Debut author Reid observes that American businesses spend about $20 billion annually on sales training, but that there’s little reason to believe that it’s very effective. Salesmanship, he says, always combines elements of art and science, but a heavy-handed emphasis on the latter has undermined appreciation of the former. Sales-training firms typically push a general model of sales success, he says, but they’re motivated more by a commitment to their own intellectual property than they are by measurable results. Reid contends that such models are too rigid, and they fatally deprioritize sensitivity to social context. To illustrate this, he begins by discussing how to build a proper relationship with a customer—by establishing rapport and trust, and listening deeply to their needs. “Out-understanding your competition means knowing anything and everything about your customers—their business objectives, their personal objectives in the business, and even their personal objectives in life,” he writes. Reid draws from elements of contemporary neuroscience as he presents his own training strategy—one that focuses less on inelastic pedagogical content and more on participatory exercises. He also offers strategies for overcoming cognitive biases, with an eye toward establishing realistic goals. The author is the founder of his own sales-training firm, JMReid Group, and in this guide, he deftly converts his own experience and research into an empirical, pragmatic approach. His prose style is lucid, anecdotal, and relentlessly commonsensical. Along the way, he provides a running commentary of other literature on his topic, and he bluntly debunks some fashionable theoretical trends. However, by the end of the book, it remains unclear how a training program can teach genuine curiosity, humility, and authenticity, instead of merely an artful pantomime of them. Still, this guide should be a powerful instrument for its intended audience of “medium to high” sales performers.
An accessible and often insightful approach to sales instruction.Pub Date: Nov. 27, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5445-1273-0
Page Count: 152
Publisher: Lioncrest Publishing
Review Posted Online: Dec. 23, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Categories: GENERAL NONFICTION
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BOOK REVIEW
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
Categories: GENERAL NONFICTION
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Noted jazz and pop record producer Thiele offers a chatty autobiography. Aided by record-business colleague Golden, Thiele traces his career from his start as a ``pubescent, novice jazz record producer'' in the 1940s through the '50s, when he headed Coral, Dot, and Roulette Records, and the '60s, when he worked for ABC and ran the famous Impulse! jazz label. At Coral, Thiele championed the work of ``hillbilly'' singer Buddy Holly, although the only sessions he produced with Holly were marred by saccharine strings. The producer specialized in more mainstream popsters like the irrepressibly perky Teresa Brewer (who later became his fourth wife) and the bubble-machine muzak-meister Lawrence Welk. At Dot, Thiele was instrumental in recording Jack Kerouac's famous beat- generation ramblings to jazz accompaniment (recordings that Dot's president found ``pornographic''), while also overseeing a steady stream of pop hits. He then moved to the Mafia-controlled Roulette label, where he observed the ``silk-suited, pinky-ringed'' entourage who frequented the label's offices. Incredibly, however, Thiele remembers the famously hard-nosed Morris Levy, who ran the label and was eventually convicted of extortion, as ``one of the kindest, most warm-hearted, and classiest music men I have ever known.'' At ABC/Impulse!, Thiele oversaw the classic recordings of John Coltrane, although he is the first to admit that Coltrane essentially produced his own sessions. Like many producers of the day, Thiele participated in the ownership of publishing rights to some of the songs he recorded; he makes no apology for this practice, which he calls ``entirely appropriate and without any ethical conflicts.'' A pleasant, if not exactly riveting, memoir that will be of most interest to those with a thirst for cocktail-hour stories of the record biz. (25 halftones, not seen)
Pub Date: May 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-19-508629-4
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Oxford Univ.
Review Posted Online: May 20, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1995
Categories: GENERAL NONFICTION
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