Little Red Book of Selling -- Short Review

I always feel both a little guilty and odd when discussing books about sales people and selling. While you need money to survive in any business the IT people are normally quite removed from the processes of bringing it in (technical pre-sales is one notable exception). Like most techs I’m not a natural sales person, add to this my intense dislike of pushy sales reps, both in my personal shopping and professionally (cold call me on the phone and I’ll NEVER buy your product) and I’m probably not the ideal audience for this kind of book.

The Little Red Book of Selling is part good advice, part common sense and part pure ego. The author comes across as a very dedicated, driven salesman who focuses more on the long term relationship than the short term sale. Large parts of the (pleasantly small) book cover the essentials such as preparation, why selling based on price is a bad move and other little nuggets of what should be common sense.

Although the text also has (what I’ve always considered) a slightly American slant with more than the occasional paragraph on positive thinking and motivation the author is refreshingly blunt and honest about where the blame sits when you’re unable to sell.

Amusingly the most successful bit of selling advice I picked up from this book was principle 3, “Personal Branding.” I now fully appreciate how important this is, the entire book is an excellent example of shameless self-promotion that actually does work both in raising your opinion of a man you’ve probably never met while still being informative enough to warrant finishing. Summary: 6/10.