The Sales Star: A Real-World Story of Sales Success

by Michael Schell

From the foreword: This book takes it to the next level. It's about applying the techniques discussed in Buyer-Approved Selling. It's about embracing the idea that there's no getting around serious,... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0973167521
• ISBN13: 9780973167528
• Release Date: January 2004
• Publisher: Approved Publications
• Length: 104 Pages
• Weight: 0.46 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.3" x 6.2" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

Will make you EXCITED about selling

This is a must have for anyone beginning a career in sales or interested in the skill set of selling. Mr. Schell creates a story that fuses the successful sales behaviors from a text book with REAL LIFE examples. As a young person excited about a career in sales, this is one of the most practical and useful books I have found on the subject. It gives you an OPTIMISTIC and SUCCESS FOCUSED attitude towards selling.

Join the Galaxy of Peak Performers

This is a companion volume to Schell's Buyer-Approved Selling. How to describe it? The focus is on two fictional characters, Jack and Morena. However, their experiences illustrate core principles of salesmanship previously revealed and validated during rigorous interviews of hundreds of real-world corporate sales trainers, sales reps, sales managers, and especially purchasing professionals. (Many of them agreed to be identified and quoted in Buyer-Approved Selling.) We accompany Jack and Morena as they begin a 90-day probation period at BigCo. They and we soon learn that BigCo has no formal on-going sales training program, once rookie reps complete an intensive four-day orientation on product information and basic sales techniques. Hence the importance of Jack's neighbor, "a retired G.E. executive," who serves as an unofficial but invaluable mentor to Jack throughout the narrative. It is he who provides copies of Buyer-Approved Selling which Jack and Morena immediately read. They then agree to work together, collaborating on a one-year plan based on the principles and techniques recommended in Buyer-Approved Selling. Their three initial goal areas are Cold Calls, Appointments, and Proposals. It would be a disservice to Schell as well as to those who have not as yet read this book to reveal more about Jack and Morena's shared and separate adventures in sales at BigCo. (I do suggest that Buyer-Approved Selling be read first, if possible.) Obviously, they are literary devices by which to dramatize both the "sales secrets from the buyer's side of the desk" and what is described as "The Neighbor's Wisdom" (on pages 99-100). Although fictional characters, their experiences seem wholly authentic. I presume to offer one caveat: Beware of thinking that any one book on sales (or on anything else, for that matter) offers all of the information and advice you need. By all means read and then re-read Buyer-Approved Selling and this book. Absorb and digest the material they provide. (Redundancies re-inforce key points.) And then formulate a cohesive and comprehensive game plan for the next 12 months, setting specific goals and deadlines for each of the four quarters. Meanwhile, keep in mind that in a competitive marketplace, 20% produce 80% of the sales. Why? Because they concentrate on those cultivation and solicitation initiatives which produce 80% of the results they seek. Do you know why some people buy what you sell and others don't? Have you asked them? If and when you do, they will probably validate what the Marketshare Research Institute learned when conducting the research on which Buyer-Approved Selling is based. Now what? The choice is yours.