An outstanding sales leadership manual that counters conventional wisdom.
A business professional lobbies for a different kind of sales management.
In his previous book, The Transparency Sale (2018), Caponi made a case for selling that had an element of unexpected honesty, or, as he called it, “transparency.” Here, Caponi essentially extends that argument into the realm of sales leadership. Citing research to validate his claim early in the book, Caponi writes: “Transparent leadership, when done correctly, has the most significant correlation to building, maintaining, and growing a team.” His suggestion that leaders be more transparent—which can require showing vulnerability—may be a hard sell to ego-driven sales pros who have risen up the ranks and have the battle scars to prove it. But Caponi is equal to the task as he leads the reader through three well-constructed parts of the book. He first defines transparency and presents a comprehensive five-part framework for it, goes on to show how “the behavioral science of intrinsic inspiration” can help, and closes by debunking sales-motivation myths and suggesting how to keep moving up the sales career ladder.
Caponi convincingly suggests that a new sales leader must build “trust through transparency, then use that same transparency to set proper expectations.” He wisely leaves nothing to chance, proposing an alliterative “Five F’s framework” that is easy to understand and meaningful (“Focus, Field, Fundamentals, Forecast, Fun”). Caponi first summarizes his five key elements and then devotes a chapter to each. Every chapter is richly detailed with clear explanations, expert guidance, and pertinent examples. A few highlights from these chapters include: useful definitions of ideal customer profile, firmographics, and demographics; 10 on-target questions Caponi asks when interviewing people for sales positions; a handy chart for assessing five sales fundamentals; and a refreshingly sensible redefinition of sales forecasting with insight into how best to create “a forecast with incredible 90-day visibility and accuracy.” Part 2 of the book, which focuses on intrinsic inspiration, may hold the most interest for sales managers. In this part, Caponi constructs the acronym PRAISE to represent six “primary categories of feelings that drive us intrinsically”: Predictability, Recognition, Aim, Independence, Security, and Equitability. These elements are summarized and then eloquently described in separate chapters. In an especially strong section, Caponi identifies some aspirational elements of sales leadership rarely addressed with such insight and precision. In each chapter, Caponi offers advice and illustrations well attuned to the salesperson’s psyche. All chapters draw on Caponi’s considerable knowledge of the sales process; his ability to understand what every salesperson experiences is invaluable. In Part 3, Caponi argues that it’s a mistake for sales leaders to try to motivate their teams with purely “coin-operated” financial incentives or other extrinsic rewards. He then offers an excellent template for creating a “30/60/90-day plan” for your first (and second and third) month as a sales leader. Caponi ends by evaluating the impact of the “Great Resignation” and why hanging out on Zoom “can never replace the feeling of security” that workers get from being physically together.
An outstanding sales leadership manual that counters conventional wisdom.Pub Date: Sept. 14, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-64687-064-6
Page Count: 179
Publisher: Ideapress Publishing
Review Posted Online: June 30, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2022
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
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IN THE NEWS
A passionate and accessible guide to humanizing the workplace.
Helbig and Norman present a game plan for making leadership more responsively human.
In this expanded update to The Psychological Safety Playbook: Lead More Powerfully by Being More Human (2023), the authors provide “practical strategies for responding to resistance, sparking change, embodying the change we want to see, and moving forward deliberately,” specifically in a business setting. They suggest ways to encourage what they call “changemakers” through the use of five key “plays” from their playbook: Communicate Courageously, Master the Art of Listening, Manage Your Reactions (“shift from automatic reaction to conscious response to stay better connected to yourself and others”), Embrace Risk and Failure, and Design Inclusive Rituals. The goal is to ensure that organizational cultures promote psychological safety, guided by leaders who “walk the talk” by emphasizing their own humanity at every turn. (“We must be the first to share our own failures with our teams, which will start to make it possible for others to do the same.”) This call for example-setting is sounded throughout the book as Helbig and Norman urge their target audience (leaders and would-be leaders) to go beyond mere instruction and instead embody the qualities they want to see in their subordinates, such as continuous learning, active curiosity, and self-reflection. Each chapter includes a detailed “Recommended Reading” section and text with extensive numbered and bulleted points formatted to make the core concepts more immediately digestible. The authors effectively employ clear and empathetic prose to assure readers that psychological safety is slow to build and quick to break, observing that such safety requires steady attention and delivers outsize payoffs as a result. They refreshingly ground a great deal of the material in psychology and neuroscience, pointing out, for instance, that research has demonstrated that the parasympathetic nervous system responds to honest appreciation, which improves creative thinking. Some wistful readers might consider some of the authors’ suggestions beyond the reach of their own organizations, as when group facilitators are advised to “gently intervene when someone dominates the conversation,” but hope springs eternal.
A passionate and accessible guide to humanizing the workplace.Pub Date: May 19, 2026
ISBN: 9798993550503
Page Count: 170
Publisher: Crazy Idea Press
Review Posted Online: April 23, 2026
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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