An excellent, persuasive handbook for salespeople.
An experienced salesman provides advice on how to find clients, nurture long-term business relationships and always close the sale.
Milstein’s first job was cleaning toilets at a McDonald’s restaurant at the age of 16. It’s the type of job most teenagers do for spending money, but the author used his free time to read the words of company founder Ray Kroc and make plans to move into management. He soon discovered his love for sales and, after finding a job as a mortgage loan officer, made his first million by his mid-20s. Currently, Milstein devotes himself entirely to sales—100-hour work weeks are typical—and to always putting the interests of his customers first. While giving a speech before 300 loan officers, the author paused to respond to an e-mail he received from a customer on his BlackBerry, and when a few members of the audience commented on this display of rudeness, Milstein advised, “This is what it takes to be the best. You have to be ready to drop everything for your clients.” The author provides dozens of tips and techniques to find clients and close sales, counseling readers on skills such as their “elevator speeches.” Milstein sells home loans for a living, but insists that his techniques would work just as well for all manner of products and services, and offers advice to those who sell menswear, automobiles, seafood and hotdogs. The author devotes the last chapter to the subprime mortgage mess, and boasts that he actually prospered during the meltdown because he refused to sell risky loans to his customers. Milstein’s ideas are easy to grasp; in a chapter about 40 ways to botch a sale, he counsels salespeople to always remember the client’s name, never interrupt the client and always accept the client’s business no matter how small the profit. These appear to be simple rules, but they could easily be forgotten by many salespeople who may be wondering why business has fallen off. Milstein’s enthusiasm is infectious; throughout the book, he counsels readers to brave snowstorms, fix their clients’ flat tires and even paint their clients’ porches if that’s what it takes to make the sale—sound advice for any budding sales superstar. His message is clear: love the product, love the customer and do whatever it takes to close the sale.
An excellent, persuasive handbook for salespeople.Pub Date: July 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0983552703
Page Count: 204
Publisher: Gold Star
Review Posted Online: Aug. 9, 2011
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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
BOOK REVIEW
IN THE NEWS
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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