Does selling really suck?  Frank Rumbauskas thinks so...

"Selling Sucks" by Frank J. Rumbauskas Jr, 2007

The subtitle of this book is "How to Stop Selling and Start Getting Prospects to Buy!".  I hate to be pedantic, but what's the difference?  The author will carry on about hard sales techniques, but whichever way you cut it, if you are trying to get a prospect to buy then that's what we call selling where I come from.

Anyway, over the 150 pages in this book we are introduced to another "best practices" style of book for sales professionals.  It reminds me a lot of Book Yourself Solid and Ultimate Sales Machine.  The chapter headings for these three books overlap quite a bit too.  Focusing on this book, what you get is a sales primer (despite the title).  The author has a previous book called Never Cold Call Again, which I haven't read, but I am assuming this is an extension taking your from better prospecting to better sales.

Positives?  It's a quick read and, like many of its contemporaries, it's punchy and straight to the point.  Let's see, what else...  It's short - wait, I already said that.

Negatives?  It's really, really basic.  It's the ultimate in style over substance.  Let's take the chapter called "Top Sales Pros Get Hot Referrals". This chapter is six small pages in total presenting two referral ideas.  The first is a referral reward program.  Putting aside that not every industry can use referral rewards, the example provided by the author is the "affiliate marketing" of his own website.  Affiliate marketing is like Avon - you have a bunch of commission-only sales people flogging your product.  These aren't referrals.  They are commission sales.  The second referral idea is to read another book called Creating a Million-Dollar-A-Year Sales Income, written by someone else.  That's all you get for your money?

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