Description:
The birth of a salesman (or woman) in 72 pages? That's the goal of this Lilliputian handbook, which offers a concise thumbnail guide to successful selling, from gaining the self-confidence and organizational skills necessary to be a good salesperson to finding customers, communicating your product or service to them effectively, and providing top customer service and satisfaction. A wealth of boxed tips, checklists, flow charts, and other handy visuals show you how to master the sales process--from planning and making your presentation to negotiating the terms and closing the deal. A final section shows you how to manage sales teams effectively, including overseeing sales calls, providing rewards, fixing sales goals, and holding sales meetings. Granted, if you're looking for very specific or in-depth guidance, you may find this book too cursory and general in its approach. But if you're looking for a thumbnail guide to the basics, it'll do you just fine.It's worth mentioning that the book is also part of reference publisher Dorling Kindersley's Essential Managers series--20 itty-bitty li'l books on business and career topics ranging from communication, leadership, and decision making to the management of time, budgets, change, meetings, people, projects, and teams. Combining the For Dummies book series's talent for breaking down a lot of information into bite-size bits and sidebars with Dorling Kindersley's signature design style of crisp, classy graphics on a gleaming white backdrop, they don't represent the cutting edge of business thinking and they don't necessarily reflect any unique individual perspective. Instead, it's as though someone collated the best general thinking on these 20 topics and rolled them out into 72 brightly designed and easy-to-read pages, studded along the way with boxed tips, color shots of a multiracial cast of "coworkers" animatedly hashing through the workplace issues of the day, and a self-test of one's skills in the topic at hand on the last few pages of each volume. Again, they're not for anyone looking for more in-depth or focused help on any of the subjects they cover, but they're perfect as a quickie general-interest reference... and let's face it, they're so cute and look so smart in a neat little stack or row that you'll probably want to buy a whole bunch to give as gifts to your entire staff or department. --Timothy Murphy
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