Sell!

KIRKUS REVIEW A short but intensive overview of sales principles. Why another book on sales? The latest volume credited to Dale Carnegie & Associates (Listen!, 2018, etc.) answers this bedrock question up front: Everything else on the market came after Dale Carnegie, the famed author of the 1936 bestseller How To Win Friends and Influence People, they write, and much of it is derived from his work. Several takeaways from this book, they stress, extend beyond the world of business--such as the importance of becoming a better storyteller, increasing one's confidence, and learning how to handle negative criticism. Indeed, the core of the work is an elaboration on Carnegie's 30 principles, which will be familiar to readers of How To Win Friends, such as begin in a friendly way, let the other person do a great deal of the talking, or if you are wrong, admit it quickly and emphatically. It's an intensely human approach to business and to personal interaction in general. That said, the book also discusses many specific aspects of the sales world, as well, from conferences to networking to cold-calling techniques, but in all cases, the advice focuses on personal connection: Get out and go to where your customers are, the authors say. Wherever your people congregate, go there and talk to them. The book is aware of the latest advances in email and automation, but it steadfastly and repeatedly emphasizes that the sales game is still about conversational skills, offering plenty of clear examples and testimonials to further underscore this point. In the end, much of the advice here may seem obvious to many, but some readers are sure to find it invaluable, as when the book coaches businesspeople on how not to bungle a potentially valuable referral or how to set up an appointment with a prospective customer--and how not to do so. A familiar but wide-ranging guide to applying Carnegie's up-close-and-personal principles to selling.