Vladimir’s Virtual Bookshelf #03
As it turns out, reading at the same pace for several months is pretty challenging. I had planned to read three books a month. That worked fine for my first and second posts, but this third selection took much longer. Instead of the usual one month, this took two times longer.
I’m happy to share my most recent selection of three books with you. The last one wound up becoming my favorite book on sales.
Happy reading!
1. Yes!: 50 Secrets From the Science of Persuasion
Author: Noah Goldstein.
Publication Year: 2010.
Length: 256 pages.
This book is well structured. It’s broken out into 50 parts, each of which is completely independent from the others. This is convenient when you just have a few minutes for reading: you can read one chapter and learn a little something in five minutes.
But when you want to read for, say, an hour straight, then you might get tired from switching topics each time you move from section to section.
On the whole, this book is pretty interesting. The author cites the results of many studies. I particularly liked those related to psychology and sociology.
Three of my favorite quotes:
Researcher Randy Garner sent surveys to perfect strangers by mail. Accompanying the survey was a request to complete and return it made by a person whose name was either similar or dissimilar to the name of the survey recipient. For example, in the similar name condition, a person whose name was Robert Greer might get the survey from someone named Bob Gregar (Cynthia Johnston — Cindy Johanson). Those who received the survey from someone with a similar-sounding name were nearly twice as likely to fill out and return the package as those who received the survey from names that were not similar (56% compared to 30%).
The name Dennis was the 40th most frequent male first name in the US population at the time, with the names Jerry and Walter ranking 39th and 41st respectively. Armed with this information, Brett Pelham examined the number of dentists with one of those three first names. If people’s names have no effect whatsoever on what career path they follow, you’d expect that there should be roughly equal numbers of people with these three names going into the field of dentistry. But that’s not what Pelham found. The nationwide search revealed that 257 dentists were names Walter, 270 were named Jerry and 482 were named Dennis. That means that dentists are about 82% more likely to be named Dennis that you’d expect if name similarity had absolutely no effect on career choice. Similarly, people whose names begin with Geo (e.g. George, Geoffrey) are disproportionately likely to do research in the geosciences (e.g. geology).
Over fifteen year ago Duracell failed to renew its trademark in the United States, which allowed its competitor, Energizer, to swoop in and trademark its own pink, alkaline-powered drumming bunny in an effort to mock the Duracell campaign and claim its products’ superiority. This is why, these days, North American television viewers are accustomed to seeing their bunnies running on Energizer, whereas it’s Duracell for those in the rest of the world.
2. Grow your business with cold emails
Author: Jeremy Chatelaine.
Publication Year: 2015.
Length: 86 pages.
This is a short book about how to write cold emails and how to lower the chances of having your cold emails filtered as spam. Unfortunately (or fortunately) there wasn’t much new information here for me. But this book would definitely be useful for those who are just starting to send their first cold emails. I’m taking only one quote from this book, while I’ll share far more below from the third book.
My favorite quote:
Spam traps are fake email addresses that are set by email providers are aren’t supposed to actually receive any emails. Sending to these emails is a strong indicator that a list has been purchased and therefore a stronger likelihood that the sender is a spammer.
3. The Perfect Close: The Secret To Closing Sales
Author: James Muir.
Publication Year: 2016.
Length: 300 pages.
This book is several times cheaper than most sales books, but it turned out to be the best book on sales that I’ve ever read.
Almost right off the bat the author says that he doesn’t believe in the catch phrase “ABC” (“Always Be Closing”) or that you need to close every deal. Instead, he believes that you need to constantly be asking yourself, “How can I help this particular customer?”
Throughout the course of the book, the author repeatedly makes readers correctly develop questions and ask them to themselves and clients. He points out mistakes frequently made by salespeople. At the end of the book he introduces a wonderful technique that everyone involved in sales should be using. This is the best book about sales, and I recommend it to everyone!
SEVEN of my favorite quotes:
The two main reasons why closing efforts fails: 1. Salespeople and professionals don’t really make an effort — WILL. 2. When an effort is made, the approach used doesn’t work (or is counter-productive) — SKILL.
Remember, that between the balance of warmth and competence, warmth is weighted more heavily than competence because the prospective client is outside of their area of experience. So projecting the right intention is critical.
Your overall sales objective answers the question, “What do I want to happen with this client that isn’t happening now?”. Your answer to that question should be specific and measurable.
As professionals in any field (sales or otherwise) the only true asset we have is our time. How we invest our time determines our happiness and success in relationships, business, and everything we do. Always remember that as professionals (salespeople) we don’t get paid for the actions we take. We only get paid based on the actions our clients take.
The time a prospect spends with a salesperson before the sale is an indicator of their experience after the sale. Each interaction with you is a “sample”. In many cases (with service offerings especially) the experience during the sale is weighted far above the product itself of the methodology used.
All by themselves, simply because they exist, agendas will increase your prospects’ perceived importance of your meeting. One of my C-level executive friends uses the existence of a written agenda to determine whether or not he will attend any given meeting.
True value-adding questions are those to which the client does not already know the answer. They require thought, encourage reflection, advance the conversation into new territory, and the answers add value to the individuals involved.
What about you? What are you reading now? Do you have a favorite book about business or sales?