An outstanding sales leadership manual that counters conventional wisdom.
A business professional lobbies for a different kind of sales management.
In his previous book, The Transparency Sale (2018), Caponi made a case for selling that had an element of unexpected honesty, or, as he called it, “transparency.” Here, Caponi essentially extends that argument into the realm of sales leadership. Citing research to validate his claim early in the book, Caponi writes: “Transparent leadership, when done correctly, has the most significant correlation to building, maintaining, and growing a team.” His suggestion that leaders be more transparent—which can require showing vulnerability—may be a hard sell to ego-driven sales pros who have risen up the ranks and have the battle scars to prove it. But Caponi is equal to the task as he leads the reader through three well-constructed parts of the book. He first defines transparency and presents a comprehensive five-part framework for it, goes on to show how “the behavioral science of intrinsic inspiration” can help, and closes by debunking sales-motivation myths and suggesting how to keep moving up the sales career ladder.
Caponi convincingly suggests that a new sales leader must build “trust through transparency, then use that same transparency to set proper expectations.” He wisely leaves nothing to chance, proposing an alliterative “Five F’s framework” that is easy to understand and meaningful (“Focus, Field, Fundamentals, Forecast, Fun”). Caponi first summarizes his five key elements and then devotes a chapter to each. Every chapter is richly detailed with clear explanations, expert guidance, and pertinent examples. A few highlights from these chapters include: useful definitions of ideal customer profile, firmographics, and demographics; 10 on-target questions Caponi asks when interviewing people for sales positions; a handy chart for assessing five sales fundamentals; and a refreshingly sensible redefinition of sales forecasting with insight into how best to create “a forecast with incredible 90-day visibility and accuracy.” Part 2 of the book, which focuses on intrinsic inspiration, may hold the most interest for sales managers. In this part, Caponi constructs the acronym PRAISE to represent six “primary categories of feelings that drive us intrinsically”: Predictability, Recognition, Aim, Independence, Security, and Equitability. These elements are summarized and then eloquently described in separate chapters. In an especially strong section, Caponi identifies some aspirational elements of sales leadership rarely addressed with such insight and precision. In each chapter, Caponi offers advice and illustrations well attuned to the salesperson’s psyche. All chapters draw on Caponi’s considerable knowledge of the sales process; his ability to understand what every salesperson experiences is invaluable. In Part 3, Caponi argues that it’s a mistake for sales leaders to try to motivate their teams with purely “coin-operated” financial incentives or other extrinsic rewards. He then offers an excellent template for creating a “30/60/90-day plan” for your first (and second and third) month as a sales leader. Caponi ends by evaluating the impact of the “Great Resignation” and why hanging out on Zoom “can never replace the feeling of security” that workers get from being physically together.
An outstanding sales leadership manual that counters conventional wisdom.Pub Date: Sept. 14, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-64687-064-6
Page Count: 179
Publisher: Ideapress Publishing
Review Posted Online: June 30, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Cogent, well-timed ideas for meeting today’s biggest challenges.
Helping liberals get out of their own way.
Klein, a New York Times columnist, and Thompson, an Atlantic staffer, lean to the left, but they aren’t interrogating the usual suspects. Aware that many conservatives have no interest in their opinions, the authors target their own side’s “pathologies.” Why do red states greenlight the kind of renewable energy projects that often languish in blue states? Why does liberal California have the nation’s most severe homelessness and housing affordability crises? One big reason: Liberal leadership has ensnared itself in a web of well-intentioned yet often onerous “goals, standards, and rules.” This “procedural kludge,” partially shaped by lawyers who pioneered a “democracy by lawsuit” strategy in the 1960s, threatens to stymie key breakthroughs. Consider the anti-pollution laws passed after World War II. In the decades since, homeowners’ groups in liberal locales have cited such statutes in lawsuits meant to stop new affordable housing. Today, these laws “block the clean energy projects” required to tackle climate change. Nuclear energy is “inarguably safer” than the fossil fuel variety, but because Washington doesn’t always “properly weigh risk,” it almost never builds new reactors. Meanwhile, technologies that may cure disease or slash the carbon footprint of cement production benefit from government support, but too often the grant process “rewards caution and punishes outsider thinking.” The authors call this style of governing “everything-bagel liberalism,” so named because of its many government mandates. Instead, they envision “a politics of abundance” that would remake travel, work, and health. This won’t happen without “changing the processes that make building and inventing so hard.” It’s time, then, to scrutinize everything from municipal zoning regulations to the paperwork requirements for scientists getting federal funding. The authors’ debut as a duo is very smart and eminently useful.
Cogent, well-timed ideas for meeting today’s biggest challenges.Pub Date: March 18, 2025
ISBN: 9781668023488
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Avid Reader Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
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
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