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Welcome to The Power of Selling
Meet the Author, Kim Richmond
Hear Kim share her vision for your learning experience using The Power of Selling.
You’re about to go on a journey that will take you to places you can’t even imagine. Think about being able to get what you want in life. While that may sound far-fetched, it’s not. You really can get what you want, if you learn to use the right skills. That’s what this book is about.
Selling is a skill that everyone uses every day, no matter what they do for a living. Want to be successful? Learn how to sell. “You can have everything in life you want, if you will just help enough other people get what they want,” according to famous sales expert, Zig Ziglar. That means listening and connecting with people, understanding their needs, what they want, what motivates them, and then capturing their imagination with a reason to buy…from you (Ziglar).
This book is different from other textbooks about selling. While it uses the traditional selling tenets as its foundation, it adapts the concepts to the rapidly changing world of business in today’s environment, including the use of Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, blogs, wikis, and other interactive ways of connecting with customers. In addition, this book is filled with many unique approaches to traditional topics. For example, Chapter 10 "The Presentation: The Power of Solving Problems" covers how to create an elevator pitch for your product as well as for your personal brand; Chapter 13 "Follow-Up: The Power of Providing Service That Sells" explains Net Promoter Score, a nontraditional method of measuring of customer satisfaction; and Chapter 15 "Entrepreneurial Selling: The Power of Running Your Own Business" addresses how selling can help you realize your dream of being an entrepreneur and starting your own company.
There are four special features that make this book interesting and interactive:
- Links to videos, Web sites, articles, and podcasts. The focus on real-world experience and sales professionals is carried throughout the book. This book takes full advantage of the Unnamed Publisher platform, including over 150 links to videos, Web sites, articles, podcasts, and interactive resources from YouTube, Blinkx, Selling Power, and many other Web sites that demonstrate the concepts and make them interesting and fun to learn. Not only will you learn from real examples, but you’ll also learn from current events.
- Video ride-alongs. The best way to learn selling is to experience it. And just about every salesperson starts out in sales by going on ride-alongs with an experienced salesperson or manager to learn how selling is done firsthand. In order to provide the experience of a ride-along, each chapter starts with a short video featuring a sales professional who shares personal insights and practical tips about how he uses the key concepts that are covered in the chapter. These videos, which were made exclusively for The Power of Selling, highlight sales professionals who are personally interested in helping you learn and succeed. In fact, you can contact any of these selling professionals directly using the contact information at the end of this preface.
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The Power of Selling LinkedIn group. Selling professionals from across the country are part of a LinkedIn group created expressly for the students and faculty who use The Power of Selling. Simply go to LinkedIn and join The Power of Selling group to network, connect, join or start discussions, or ask questions to the group. The people in the group are looking forward to connecting with you. The sales professionals featured in the video ride-alongs are also members of this group. Feel free to contact them individually or add them to your network. Visit http://www.linkedin.com and create a profile (see Chapter 3 "The Power of Building Relationships: Putting Adaptive Selling to Work" for details), then search “Groups” for “The Power of Selling” and join the group. If you already have a LinkedIn profile, click on the following link and join The Power of Selling group.
http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=2566050&trk=anetsrch_name&goback=%2Egdr_1263094780871_1
- Selling U. The last section of each chapter is called Selling U, which applies the key concepts to selling yourself as a brand to get the job you want. Selling U teaches you how to think about yourself as a brand through every step of your career search. These sections throughout the book include details on key career searching tips such as how to create a cover letter and résumé that sells, how to target prospective employers, how to craft your personal elevator pitch, how to ace interviews, how to follow up, how to negotiate and accept the right job offer, and what to do to prepare for your first day of your new job. Links to videos, Web sites, articles, and other interactive resources make Selling U an excellent complement to the selling material and the ultimate resource for how to build your personal brand in this very competitive twenty-first century.
There are four features that are used throughout the book that reinforce key concepts:
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Power Selling: Lessons in Selling from Successful Brands. These short vignettes highlight examples of how successful companies implemented one of the concepts covered in the chapter.
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Power Player: Lessons in Selling from Successful Salespeople. Real-life advice from sales professionals about how to be successful in sales is showcased in these short accounts.
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Power Point: Lessons in Selling from the Customer’s Point of View. Feedback from customers about sales techniques and what they look for in a salesperson and a brand are brought to life in these short features.
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You’ve Got the Power: Tips for Your Job Search. Helpful tips highlighted in the Selling U section of each chapter are emphasized in these sidebars.
It’s a powerful lineup designed to give you insight and experience into the profession of selling and teach you how to get what you want in life. Over the course of this semester, you’ll learn how to sell products, services, concepts, and ideas. More important, you’ll learn how to sell the most important product…yourself.
Selling is a journey. Your journey starts here.
Meet the Sales Professionals Featured in the Video Ride-Alongs
Sales professionals featured in video ride-alongs (left to right): Lisa Peskin, Paul Blake, Tonya Murphy, Andrew Sykes, Rachel Gordon, Priya Masih, David Fox.
Lisa Peskin, Sales Trainer at Business Development University
Lisa thought she wanted to be a doctor and declared her major as premed at Pennsylvania State University. It was only after she completed all the prerequisite courses, except one, that she decided she didn’t like science. She graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology. After she completed her Master of Business Administration at Temple University, her plan was to pursue a career in marketing and decided to take a job in sales to learn the business. Once she started selling, she never looked back. Lisa now has over twenty years of sales and sales training experience in payroll and human resources services, financial services, and other business-to-business (B2B) industries. She started her selling career in 1989 at Automated Data Processing (ADP) and rose to become the vice president of sales where she was responsible for four district managers and forty salespeople. Then she decided to put her successful selling skills to work as a sales trainer at Bayview Financial and Interbay Funding. Today she is a principal, sales trainer, and coach at Business Development University, a company that conducts sales training with a focus in B2B selling.
Connect with Lisa Peskin on LinkedIn or by e-mail:
Paul Blake, Vice President of Sales at Greater Media Philadelphia
Paul was born to sell. He started his career in sales in 1989 when he graduated from Bloomsburg University of Pennsylvania. He quickly rose to a leadership role as the director of sales at Global Television Sports, then sales manager at Clear Channel Radio, WJJZ-FM, and WMMR-FM. In 2006, Paul was promoted to vice president of sales at Greater Media Philadelphia, responsible for the advertising sales for five radio stations in Philadelphia and managing over forty salespeople.
Connect with Paul Blake on LinkedIn or by e-mail:
Tonya Murphy, General Sales Manager at WBEN-FM
Tonya thought she wanted to be the next Barbara Walters, but soon learned that the newsroom was not the place for her. Thanks to internships at two television stations and a sales-savvy mentor, she found that her that her passion was sales. Tonya graduated from Cabrini College in 1989 with a Bachelor of Arts in English/Communications. She has been in sales for seventeen years and has held sales roles in media including at Greater Media Philadelphia. Last year, Tonya was promoted to general sales manager at WBEN-FM, one of the radio stations owned by Greater Media Philadelphia.
Connect with Tonya Murphy on LinkedIn or by e-mail:
Andrew Sykes, Pharmaceutical Sales Specialist at AstraZeneca
Andrew has always had a focus on selling and the pharmaceutical industry. He graduated from Saint Joseph’s University with a Bachelor of Science in Pharmaceutical Marketing in 2005. After graduation Andrew landed his dream job at AstraZeneca, a major pharmaceutical company, and today he is a pharmaceutical sales specialist on the cardiovascular account team. Andrew’s customers are doctors who prescribe the drugs he represents.
Connect with Andrew Sykes on LinkedIn or by e-mail:
Rachel Gordon, Account Manager at WMGK-FM
When she graduated from Cornell University in 2003 with a Bachelor of Science in Fashion, Business Management, and Human Development, Rachel was certain she wanted to pursue a career in fashion merchandising. But she found she didn’t enjoy it as much as she thought she would. She made a switch to the media industry with a job as the national director of marketing at Westwood One. It was there that she discovered her passion for sales. She is currently an account manager at WMGK, the classic rock station in Philadelphia, and happy that she made the decision to change the direction of her career.
Connect with Rachel Gordon on LinkedIn or by e-mail:
Priya Masih, Sales Representative at Lupin Pharmaceuticals
Since graduating from Saint Joseph’s University in 2004 with a Master of Science in International Marketing and a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration, Priya has proven herself to be an outstanding sales achiever at The Hartford Customer Services Group, Creative Channel Services, and GlaxoSmithKline with recognition such as The Winner’s Circle and the Top Sales Rep Award. She is currently a sales representative at Lupin Pharmaceuticals.
Connect with Priya Masih on LinkedIn or by e-mail:
David Fox, Founder and CEO at Brave Spirits
David gave up the corporate life to start Brave Spirits. His background in marketing, new product development, and sales includes work on major brands from Procter & Gamble, General Mills, and Mars; spirits brands from Diageo; and wine brands from Brown-Foreman. In 2005 he and his business partner conceived the concept for Brave Spirits and launched the company in 2007. Brave Spirits distributes premium vodka, gin, rum, and whiskey and donates $2.00 of every bottle sold to charities that support the men and women of America’s military, police, fire, and emergency medical services (EMS). It is David’s way of creating a toast to the brave.
Learn more about Brave Spirits or connect with David Fox by e-mail:
References
Zig Ziglar, “Zig Ziglar’s Little PDF of Big Quotes,” Ziglar.com, http://www.ziglar.com/_cms/assets/Downloads/TheLittle BookofBigQuotes.pdf (accessed January 9, 2010).