Are you looking for some simple steps to improve your sales techniques and increase your personal profit? Well, if I were working in sales, or training for a career in that field, I would probably tell you: “Yes, sir, that’s exactly what I want!” Especially if I weren’t doing too well up to this point.
A recently published book-with-a-difference kicks off with the above question. And certainly, it’s the kind of opener you would except, seeing that the volume is billed on its front cover as “The Fundamental Guide to Achieving Extraordinary Sales and Sustaining Loyal Customers.”
But that question is immediately followed by a sentence that brings you back to reality: “Sorry we’re not about to let you play that small.”
The title and sub-title already give you a clue why not: The Trusted Advocate: Accelerate Success With Authenticity and Integrity. The books authors, John Mehrmann and Mitchell Simon, insist that the way we are accustomed to define success is entirely illusory. Many of their readers will start off highly skeptical of that thesis, but doubts will be quickly dispelled as the authors’ highly readable analysis of the inseparable relationship between success, on the one hand, and the twin concepts of authenticity and integrity on the other, unfolds.
It’s more than a pity that the authors (or anyone else) didn’t write and publish this book many years ago. Its fresh - almost revolutionary - approach to its topic is decades overdue. One could say with much justification that this is a work ahead of its times.
Mehrmann and Simon make it easy for us to internalize what we have read as we are gently provoked to apply the knowledge to our own individual situations. It seems to me that “individual situations” should encompass whatever we are doing with our time, both in our professional and private lives, for here are workable ideas relevant to a far wider circle than that of sales professionals in the narrow sense alone.
Why? Because, in effect we are all salespeople. At times we need to “sell” the ideas and principles we strongly believe in, or ask our boss for a raise in salary or better working conditions, or even to persuade a friend or fellow worker to desist from a bad habit that’s disturbing us. I would even say that the recipient or beneficiary of a sales transaction, not only the initiator, can be called a sales person. After all, when we need a product or service, we want to negotiate the best deal for ourselves among all the suppliers available.
By conscientiously and consistently working on the concepts presented in this book, we would, in practice, be making our own small contribution towards making this world a better place. Nothing less. I will discuss in more detail some of the authors’ premises and conclusions in upcoming posts.
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