Conversational, easy to consume and well-packaged, with an infectious passion for selling that makes for an enjoyable,...
A top salesman shares his success strategies in this compact, nicely crafted volume.
Milstein (17 Cents & a Dream, 2013, etc.) is a leading loan officer and CEO of Gold Star Mortgage Financial Group, a national mortgage lending company. He attributes much of his success to his sales ability, and in this breezy book, he lays out his formula for achieving superstar-salesperson status. The book is clearly designed with the busy salesperson in mind; it has short chapters, plenty of bulleted points and clever cartoon illustrations to break up the text. The work is also liberally dosed with “Sales Pro Tips.” For some readers, these snippets of helpful advice may prove to be most valuable. “If no formal measurement for sales success exists for your industry, create your own,” writes Milstein in one tip called “Build Your Yardstick.” In another, he advises a bold idea: “[B]e a proactive mystery shopper by contacting the competition directly. You can ask them how they are different.” The sidebar “25+2 Ways to Enhance Your Sales Performance” could well become an experienced salesperson’s cheat sheet for how to rise above the rest. The tips themselves are probably reason enough for any salesperson, experienced or not, to add Street Smart Selling to a must-read list. The text is no less inviting, although weaving sales-war stories together with how-to advice isn’t new. Once in a while, readers may get the feeling Milstein is shilling for his company. He writes, for instance, about Gold Star’s hiring and training program and, later, about its methods for making new customers feel welcome. Still, the potentially self-congratulatory examples aren’t without their relevance. Given the overabundance of books on selling, it is exceedingly difficult to say something new; while Milstein’s effort does not entirely break through the morass, salespeople will likely appreciate the authentic battle-tested advice offered by such a skilled professional.
Conversational, easy to consume and well-packaged, with an infectious passion for selling that makes for an enjoyable, uplifting read.Pub Date: July 21, 2014
ISBN: 978-0983552772
Page Count: 200
Publisher: Gold Star Publishing
Review Posted Online: Aug. 28, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.
The legendary booze-addled metal rocker turned reality-TV star comes clean in his tell-all autobiography.
Although brought up in the bleak British factory town of Aston, John “Ozzy” Osbourne’s tragicomic rags-to-riches tale is somehow quintessentially American. It’s an epic dream/nightmare that takes him from Winson Green prison in 1966 to a presidential dinner with George W. Bush in 2004. Tracing his adult life from petty thief and slaughterhouse worker to rock star, Osbourne’s first-person slang-and-expletive-driven style comes off like he’s casually relating his story while knocking back pints at the pub. “What you read here,” he writes, “is what dribbled out of the jelly I call my brain when I asked it for my life story.” During the late 1960s his transformation from inept shoplifter to notorious Black Sabbath frontman was unlikely enough. In fact, the band got its first paying gigs by waiting outside concert venues hoping the regularly scheduled act wouldn’t show. After a few years, Osbourne and his bandmates were touring America and becoming millionaires from their riff-heavy doom music. As expected, with success came personal excess and inevitable alienation from the other members of the group. But as a solo performer, Osbourne’s predilection for guns, drink, drugs, near-death experiences, cruelty to animals and relieving himself in public soon became the stuff of legend. His most infamous exploits—biting the head off a bat and accidentally urinating on the Alamo—are addressed, but they seem tame compared to other dark moments of his checkered past: nearly killing his wife Sharon during an alcohol-induced blackout, waking up after a bender in the middle of a busy highway, burning down his backyard, etc. Osbourne is confessional to a fault, jeopardizing his demonic-rocker reputation with glib remarks about his love for Paul McCartney and Robin Williams. The most distinguishing feature of the book is the staggering chapter-by-chapter accumulation of drunken mishaps, bodily dysfunctions and drug-induced mayhem over a 40-plus-year career—a résumé of anti-social atrocities comparable to any of rock ’n’ roll’s most reckless outlaws.
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.Pub Date: Jan. 25, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-446-56989-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2009
IN THE NEWS
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
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