Leave the Hang-Ups To Us

What We Think is Worth Reading (part 3)

by Mark Horne, Guest Writer

(Continued from Part 1 and Part 2)

We are concluding a series about the books the Initial Call staff has found to be helpful in building their sales and business knowledge and skills. I hope you've found these posts informative. Be sure to leave your comments and let us know what you think about the books we've already reviewed, as well as what books you've found foundational.

Our first book in this post, The One Minute Sales Person by Spencer Johnson and Kenneth H. Blanchard, is from the same pair who wrote the best selling The One Minute Manager, as well as Who Moved My Cheese.  Sadly, unlike The One Minute Manager, as far as I can tell, The One Minute Sales Person is not available free online.

Like The One Minute Manager, The One Minute Sales Person is presented as a story.  An aspiring salesman wants to learn how to do better at his job.  To accomplish this he seeks out others to obtain their advice.  The advice ranges, but centers on caring about the potential customer, focusing on the customer’s needs, and helping the customer feel good about his purchases.  The book is written in a rather simple style, but it succeeds in communicating the basics of not only sales, but also all effective communication.

Another book, Stephan Schiffman’s primer, Cold Calling Techniques (What Really Works), is a great guide to understanding the importance of cold calling and the obstacles a salesman faces in making such calls.  It is noteworthy that this book was recently released as in a twentieth-anniversary edition.  It’s continuing popularity is no accident; Cold Calling Techniques remains a valuable resource.

Schiffman gives excellent guidance for making calls that get returned and that lead to meetings.  In addition to techniques and strategies, Schiffman provides a context for his advice with an explanation of why cold calling is an essential part of sales and business.  Your primary competitor, he writes, is not another business or product.  Rather, your primary competitor is the status quo.  People are happy (they think) with the way they are living and working now.  Otherwise, they would be the ones calling you.

Finally, Jim Collins is the author of Built to Last, a study of corporations that are (or were) indisputably great.  He says that he came up with the idea for From Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap and Others Don’t when a businessman complained to him that focusing on companies that had been great from their inception wasn’t useful to the majority of corporations.  There were many good companies that could use guidance on how to become much better.

Thus, Collins describes Good to Great as a “prequel” to his earlier work.  He and his team of researchers studied eleven companies that made the transition from being good to becoming great.  As a result, Collins and his team developed a road map for companies that is laid out in his book.  While some of this material may seem like commonsense, the fact remains that only a few companies have made the transition.

While these are the nine titles that some of us have found helpful, we'd love to hear of additions (or even subtractions) from you.

Aberdeen's Timely B2B Sales Research

by Catherine Brown, President

Inside Initial Call, we sometimes joke that the most difficult part of our job is telling the future.  Many variables affect success in a sales campaign, so there are no simple answers when estimating project outcomes.  Only after we learn more about the variables can we apply our knowledge and experience to a situation and predict results. 

So, while I don’t have a crystal ball, I wonder if Peter Ostrow of The Aberdeen Group does?  The Group’s recent research on B2B Lead Generation is particularly timely.  Did Peter know when he began his research work last year that the economy would slow and that companies would be watching their dollars more closely than in prior years? 

Being able to look ahead and plan for a range of market scenarios is the key to growth in any economy.  More than in past years (and we’ve been in business since 2002), we see executives wrestling with the question about which is better: to build a department (hire employees and train them) or buy talent (outsource to a lead generation firm).

I had a recent conversation with a Silicon Valley small business executive who professed to have found an excellent full time inside sales person to work for just $50,000 per year. Knowing the going rate for experienced sales professionals in the Bay Area, I question whether this new hire will deliver what he hopes.  This executive will spend both money and time to find out whether or not he made a good deal.

While controlling costs will always be a top business priority, we contend that a bargain resource may cost more in the end.   Retaining part time but superior talent is ultimately a better value than hiring a full time junior employee.  When you need inside sales support, look for resources who define a lead like we do at Initial Call (Download Aberdeens_March_2008_Report.pdf ).  Seek out someone who is able to qualify opportunities and who really understands what it means to build a sales pipeline.  Then you won’t need a seer to know you are getting your money’s worth AND the results you need.