How to Sell Anything to Anybody (Paperback)

I find a lot about this book unsavory. There are some good general tips about prospecting and bird-dogging, but these are available in other selling books that I don't want to take a shower after reading.

I also have to disagree about some things he things are bad habits. It sounds like a good idea to not join the "bull pen" and yak with the other salesmen. However, to a *certain* degree that is not a bad thing to do: it builds camaraderie and steels oneself for the difficult task of selling. Of course you don't want a salesforce that stands by the water cooler all day, but it's not good to spend 110% of your time on nothing but getting new customers either, or you could become a burnout case.

And then there's Joe's teary life story. Personally I picture Leonard DiCapprio playing the role of young, dirt-stained Joe, being beaten by his father, being beaten by his employers, being beaten by his customers, being beaten by random strangers, walking hundreds of miles in snowdrifts to get to his job, uphill both ways. Sorry, I don't buy it. Not that he didn't have a hard life, and surely his father was abusive (all too common back then, unfortunately). But his tone throughout is one of utter innocence to everything going on around him. He reacts to everything, it's all done *to* him. He got fired from his first job for selling too much, because the other salesmen were jealous? Yeah... He glosses over his own failures, and they only amount to slugging a customer when he called Girard an ethnic slur. Compared to his life, Dickens had a Disneyesque childhood. The reader should remember all salesmen sell stories, and he's no exception.

Oh, one more thing: the book is redundant. It's short as it is, but the way he repeats himself, it could be half its present size. --Or maybe a magazine article.

He starts off by giving his own personal history, which is interesting reading, but not really what I am here for. He then goes into selling lessons, and for anyone that has built a sales business (and thinks of their selling as running their own business), he really lays out some good stuff. He talks about how to build a referal network, how to brand yourself in the market place, the importance of taking care of your customers and your coworkers, building and maintaing your contact lists, the importance of high activities and many other lessons.

As I sales manager, I would take out some of his chapters and give them to my sales people to read because I thought they were so good. The chapter on "Don't Join the Club" is worth the purchase price of the book if you are an inside sales person or a manager of them.

Easy read, you will knock it out in a couple hours. Highly recommend.