Books on Sales During the Holiday Season

Turkey Day is now over, which means potential customers are out in droves to take advantage of the holiday sales. AMACOM has decided to address sales professionals across the globe and give them some handy reading material in order to make the most out of this holiday season. We will have guest posts on web selling, pricing during the holidays, sales and customer service relationships during the holidays, and how to build a winning sales force team. So to kick off this weeks theme of “Sales During the Holiday Season” here are some recommended titles to get you going.

Smart Selling on the Phone and Online: Inside Sales That Gets Results by Josiane Chriqui Feigon

The world of selling keeps changing, and inside sales professionals are on the front line. More than ever, they need powerful tools to open stronger, build trust faster, handle objections better, and close more sales. Based on the author’s TeleSmart 10 System for Power Selling, Smart Selling on the Phone and Online pinpoints the ten skills essential to high-efficiency, high-success performance.

Pricing for Profit: How to Command Higher Prices for Your Products and Services by Dale Furtwengler

Many small business owners are trapped by industry pricing and market misconceptions, when they could be compensated for the true value of the product or service being offered. The low price they feel compelled to offer limits their ability to generate profits which, in turn, slows their response to changing customer needs. The good news is that a business can command almost any price it chooses by focusing on the value—not the cost—to the customer. Pricing for Profit shows businesspeople how to break out of the stranglehold of industry pricing and charge more for their wares (regardless of the competition) without alienating their customers.

Who’s Your Gladys?: How to Turn Even the Most Difficult Customer into Your Biggest Fan by Marilyn Suttle and Lori Jo Vest

Every customer-oriented business has its own Gladys—someone who demands more than most companies are able or willing to give, one who pushes front-line service representatives’ buttons, one who requires a higher degree of skill to manage. One who—let’s just say it—can be difficult. Yet how is it that some businesses prove able not only to satisfy their “Gladys”, but turn her into one of their most loyal, utterly pleased customers?

Building a Winning Sales Force: Powerful Strategies for Driving High Performance by Andris A. Zoltners, Ph.D., Prabhakant Sinha, Ph.D, and Sally E. Lorimer

Sales force effectiveness drives every company’s success, but keeping a sales organization at the top of its game is a constant challenge. As experts in the field, Andy Zoltners and Prabha Sinha have helped sales leaders around the world perfect their sales strategy, operations, and execution. Combining strategic insight with pragmatic advice, Building a Winning Sales Force provides current and aspiring sales leaders with innovative yet practical solutions to many of the most common issues faced by today’s sales organi­za­tions.

All Customers are Irrational : Understanding What They Think, What They Feel, and What Keeps Them Coming Backby William J. Cusick

Combining recent research findings with real-world examples from his consulting practice on customer experience, William J. Cusick examines how the sub­con­scious part of the brain drives the decisions and behavior of every customer on a daily basis and introduces the concept of “the irrational customer.” All Customers Are Irrational shows why businesses must change their approach to attracting and retaining customers, and proposes ways they can alter their strategies on everything from customer research, product design and website development to call center management, employee recruitment, and retail store layouts, by focusing on what customers are actually doing instead of what they’re saying.

Web Copy That Sells: The Revolutionary Formula for Creating Killer Copy That Grabs Their Attention and Compels Them to Buy, 2nd Edition by Maria Veloso

When it comes to copy, what works in the brick-and-mortar world does not necessarily grab Web consumers…and with new developments like social networks, blogs, and YouTube, the strategies that worked even a few years ago are unlikely to attract people’s attention. Completely updated for the current online marketplace, Web Copy That Sells gives readers proven methods for achieving phenomenal success with their online sales and marketing efforts.

More ProActive Sales Management: Avoid the Mistakes Even Great Sales Managers Make — And Get Extraordinary Results by William “Skip” Miller

Building on the concrete advice and practical, powerful strategies revealed in its predecessor, More ProActive Sales Management provides harried sales managers with a proven method for managing the sales process and their people. Packed with specific, field-tested techniques, this helpful guide focuses on the five primary areas in which mistakes occur: internal team decisions, upward decisions, sales decisions, infrastructure decisions, and decisions regarding the manager himself.

Buying Styles: Simple Lessons in Selling the Way Your Customers Buys by Michael Wilkinson with Richard Smith, Tierah Chorba and Lynn Sokler

Most sales professionals spend all their time and energy trying to perfect their own style of selling. Yet they fail to recognize that buyers all have their own individual “buying styles”…and when sellers learn how to adapt their own methods to best suit each buying style, they can dramatically increase their success rate. Presented as a “learning adventure,” Buying Styles begins with a fictional situation in which a salesperson has just lost a major sale…and decides to find out why.

Stay tuned for the rest of the week for guest posts by Josiane Chriqui Feigon, Lori Jo Vest, Dale Furtwengler, Andris A. Zoltners, Ph.D., Prabhakant Sinha, Ph.D., and Sally E. Lorimer.

A Letter to Our Reviewers Concerning the FTC

Dear Reviewers,

As you’re probably aware, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has recently passed new guidelines impacting both traditional and online media, including blogs, podcasts, Twitter, and social networking websites, effective December 1, 2009. Under these new guidelines the review copies we send may be considered compensation, and should you choose to review the book, your review may be considered an endorsement. Therefore, you must disclose to your readers that you received a book gratis from us for the purposes of review.

If you have a review or disclosure policy on your website, then your readers are informed of the situation and you should be in accordance with the FTC guidelines.

If you don’t have a review or disclosure policy on your website, please include a short statement with your review. Here is some suggested wording: “A copy of this book was provided free by the publisher for the purposes of review.”

We understand that this is a new development and the FTC is trying to bring order to a space where there has been some abuse—for example, undisclosed pay-per-post advertising or paid celebrity endorsements. Publishers have a long tradition of sending out free books for review with the belief that the reviewers will express a frank evaluation of the work. That is the spirit in which we send free books to large and small magazines, newspapers, television, and radio as well as to websites, bloggers, podcasters, and twitterers. We don’t seek to influence your opinion, but would like an honest appraisal of the work.

If you are interested in becoming active in the discussion of these new guidelines, you can follow the #HeyFTC hashtag on Twitter, and find more information on our blog HERE.

You can download a copy of the endorsement guidelines HERE.

If you would like to share your opinion with the FTC, write to:
Richard Cleland
Federal Trade Commission
Bureau of Consumer Protection
600 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W.
Washington, DC 20580

Thank you and we hope you enjoy our books!

Sincerely,

Irene Majuk and Alice Northover
AMACOM Publicity Department

Dale Furtwengler on Black Friday

The following is a guest post by Dale Furtwengler, author of Pricing For Profit: How to Command Higher Prices for Your Products and Services.

Retail’s Black Friday

Great strategy……or sheer folly.

Retailers have decided to move Black Friday, the day they begin their heavy holiday season discounts, up a month. Typically Black Friday is the day after Thanksgiving. Why would they do this?

Here’s what a major retailer said “We don’t think buyers are going to be spending as much this year so we want first crack at their dollars.” Is this sound strategy or a self-inflicted wound? Let’s take a look.

Let’s assume that you’re a retail buyer (who isn’t?), it’s the holiday season and you have indeed decided to spend less this year. Your child is pining for the latest video game. You see an add for some great discounts on clothing for your child, which do you buy – the clothing or the video game?

If you’re like most parents, unless your child’s clothing is going to subject them to some emotional trauma vis-a-vis teasing by other kids, you’re probably going to buy the video game. Even if their clothes have to be replaced, you’re likely to go to the discount chains and buy only what’s needed in hopes of still being able to get that video game.

If what I’ve outlined is anywhere near accurate, what impact would a heavy discount at Macy’s have on your buying decisions? None that I can see. My experience has been that buyers spend money on what they really want. Don’t trust me on this. Simply recall a time when you drove through a trailer park and saw a dilapidated trailer with a brand new $30,000 pickup truck in the driveway. Or an older subdivision of 900 square foot homes with a $150,000+ RV in the drive.

These folks may have scrimped on their housing, eaten store brand canned goods and shopped at WalMart for clothing, but when it came to what was really important to them – the pickup truck or RV – money was no object. They paid the price.

Let’s take this analysis a step farther. Let’s see what the retailers are really accomplishing. As we’ve already seen, the likelihood of generating additional sales is low because buyers decisions are based on their wants, not on the availability of low prices.

Second, if the retailers predictions are accurate and buyers aren’t going to be spending a freely as in previous years, then it’s going to be even more difficult to attract sufficient buyers to offset the revenues lost through discounts. In other words a 20% discount means that the retailer must now attract six buyers to generate the same revenues they would have gotten from five. Raise that discount to 50% and you’d need 10 buyers instead of five. This at a time when you don’t expect lower traffic in your stores?

Third, discounts alter the timing of sales, not the volume of sales. If I offer a discount to people who would typically buy my offering anyway, I may get them to buy earlier but I’m not going to get them to buy more. By accelerating sales into the current month I’m digging a hole in future months’ sales. If I do this often enough (Black Friday occurs every year), I train my buyers to wait for a deal before buying. Now I’ve shifted from a shovel to a backhoe. I’m digging such a deep hole that I’ll probably never get out – think Chrysler and GM.

If this were baseball, the batter (retailer) would strike out. It’s counter-intuitive, but discounts don’t attract more business. They simply keep you from generating the revenues available to you.

How do you avoid this mistake? Tune in next week when I discuss the appropriate use of discounts. In the meantime, command the price you want – you’re worth it.

For more information on how you can command higher prices for your products and services, please post your questions or comments below, send Dale an email @ dale@furtwengler.com. To see how counter-intuitive thinking can be applied to other business issues, visit Dale’s blog, The Invaluable Leader at www.furtwengler.com/theinvaluableleader/.

DALE FURTWENGLER is President of Furtwengler & Associates, P.C., a consulting firm dedicated to helping small businesses increase profits without adding resources. He is the author of Pricing For Profit, Invaluable, The Uniqueness Myth, Making the Exceptional Normal, and Living Your Dreams.

Webinar Reminder: Difficult Performance Reviews

Our AMA New Media team will be doing a webinar with Paul Falcone, author of 101 Tough Conversations to Have with Employees next week. He will be sharing how to turn painful conversations into positive results.

Difficult Performance Reviews: How To Turn Painful Conversations into Positive Results.

December 03, 2009

1:00 PM-2:30 PM Eastern

Price: $149

REGISTER HERE.

How to Deliver Positive Feedback in Tough Conversations

For most managers, the toughest discussions of the year are coming up soon in the form of annual performance reviews.

Naturally, these sessions can lead many to feel uncomfortable.

The way you handle these conversations is even more difficult when you have to deliver feedback in this environment of economic uncertainty.

However when conducted properly, these sessions provide you with a great opportunity to help your employees focus on their goals and boost their morale—while correcting flaws that can hold them back.

This 90-minute interactive Webinar provides tested methods to help you prepare for and conduct these discussions in a way that invites balanced participation, stays true to your message, focuses on performance, gains acceptance and reduces defensiveness.

Paul Falcone is Vice President of Employee Relations at Time Warner Cable in Los Angeles and was formerly Vice President of Human Resources at Nickelodeon. He is the author of 2600 Phrases for Effective Performance Reviews, 101 Sample Write-Ups for Documenting Employee Performance Problems, 96 Great Interview Questions to Ask Before You Hire, The Hiring and Firing Question and Answer Book, and his latest, 101 Tough Conversations to Have With Employees. In addition to these books, Falcone is a regular contributor to HR Magazine and is a well-known presenter at events for the Society for Human Resource Management.



Riches Among the Ruins included in Strategy + Business’s Best Business Books of 2009

We are proud to announce that Riches Among the Ruins: Adventures in the Dark Corners of the Global Economy by Robert P. Smith with Peter Zheutlin has been selected by Strategy + Business’ as one of the Best Business Books of 2009 in the globalization category.

In the evolution from Smith’s boots-on-the-ground adventures to Bremmer and Keat’s more detached, methodological approach, an interesting mutual appreciation appears: Smith thinks that his adventurous tactics are no longer relevant in a world of real-time, electronic information, yet Bremmer and Keat argue that local political knowledge is still essential to staying ahead of the curve. In other words, paying more attention to data is not enough—good instincts are also essential to figuring out all the unknowns.

For more information on the book click HERE.

For the full written article click HERE.

Thanks Strategy + Business!