A familiar but wide-ranging guide to applying Carnegie’s up-close-and-personal principles to selling.
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.Pub Date: Oct. 22, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-72251-010-7
Page Count: 256
Publisher: G&D Media
Review Posted Online: Dec. 11, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our...
A psychologist and Nobel Prize winner summarizes and synthesizes the recent decades of research on intuition and systematic thinking.
The author of several scholarly texts, Kahneman (Emeritus Psychology and Public Affairs/Princeton Univ.) now offers general readers not just the findings of psychological research but also a better understanding of how research questions arise and how scholars systematically frame and answer them. He begins with the distinction between System 1 and System 2 mental operations, the former referring to quick, automatic thought, the latter to more effortful, overt thinking. We rely heavily, writes, on System 1, resorting to the higher-energy System 2 only when we need or want to. Kahneman continually refers to System 2 as “lazy”: We don’t want to think rigorously about something. The author then explores the nuances of our two-system minds, showing how they perform in various situations. Psychological experiments have repeatedly revealed that our intuitions are generally wrong, that our assessments are based on biases and that our System 1 hates doubt and despises ambiguity. Kahneman largely avoids jargon; when he does use some (“heuristics,” for example), he argues that such terms really ought to join our everyday vocabulary. He reviews many fundamental concepts in psychology and statistics (regression to the mean, the narrative fallacy, the optimistic bias), showing how they relate to his overall concerns about how we think and why we make the decisions that we do. Some of the later chapters (dealing with risk-taking and statistics and probabilities) are denser than others (some readers may resent such demands on System 2!), but the passages that deal with the economic and political implications of the research are gripping.
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our minds.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-374-27563-1
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2011
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These are not hard and fast rules, but Meyer delivers important reading for those engaged in international business.
A helpful guide to working effectively with people from other cultures.
“The sad truth is that the vast majority of managers who conduct business internationally have little understanding about how culture is impacting their work,” writes Meyer, a professor at INSEAD, an international business school. Yet they face a wider array of work styles than ever before in dealing with clients, suppliers and colleagues from around the world. When is it best to speak or stay quiet? What is the role of the leader in the room? When working with foreign business people, failing to take cultural differences into account can lead to frustration, misunderstanding or worse. Based on research and her experiences teaching cross-cultural behaviors to executive students, the author examines a handful of key areas. Among others, they include communicating (Anglo-Saxons are explicit; Asians communicate implicitly, requiring listeners to read between the lines), developing a sense of trust (Brazilians do it over long lunches), and decision-making (Germans rely on consensus, Americans on one decider). In each area, the author provides a “culture map scale” that positions behaviors in more than 20 countries along a continuum, allowing readers to anticipate the preferences of individuals from a particular country: Do they like direct or indirect negative feedback? Are they rigid or flexible regarding deadlines? Do they favor verbal or written commitments? And so on. Meyer discusses managers who have faced perplexing situations, such as knowledgeable team members who fail to speak up in meetings or Indians who offer a puzzling half-shake, half-nod of the head. Cultural differences—not personality quirks—are the motivating factors behind many behavioral styles. Depending on our cultures, we understand the world in a particular way, find certain arguments persuasive or lacking merit, and consider some ways of making decisions or measuring time natural and others quite strange.
These are not hard and fast rules, but Meyer delivers important reading for those engaged in international business.Pub Date: May 27, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-61039-250-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: April 15, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2014
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