Sales Strategy From The Inside Out By Duane Sparks

by Cindy King on 12 July, 2009   Share      

Book & Product Reviews

Several weeks ago, I received a request to review a sales skills training book on Action Selling. And by some miracle the book arrived about 3 days later by regular mail. Unfortunately I have not had a chance to sit down to read it until now… and I regret that I did not read it earlier.  Reading this book has helped me to improve my sales skills.

Action Selling Process Chart

After reading Marketing With Meaning yesterday, I have to say that this was one of the nicest requests for a book review I have received. The request was natural, not pushy.  It gave me clear insights into why this review would interest my readers. In addition, the book looked interesting.  It was easy to say “yes”.

There were actually 2 books in the mail… I’ll explain later. But what I want to share with you is that I devoured the first book in a short afternoon last weekend. And did not have a chance to read the second book all week.  It has been a long wait.  The funny thing is that I have not looked forward to reading a book since the last Harry Potter came out… and this is a sales book!

Two Sales Books…

Here are the two sales training books I read.  Both are by Duane Sparks:

Action Selling Action Selling: How To Sell Like A Professional, Even If You Think You Are One

This is the first one. It explains:

  • The Action Selling Process
  • The 9 acts to the sales process
  • The 5 buying decisions

Here’s the second book I read:

Sales Strategy from the Inside Out Sales Strategy from the Inside Out: How Complex Selling Really Works

This is the most recent book and it shows you how the Action Selling process works in a complex B2B sales process.

These are both small books, about 70 pages or so and are quick reads.

There Are Five Books In The Series

Action Selling Book Series

These two books are actually part of a sales skills training series. These are the three other books I did not read.

  • Selling Your Price: How to Escape the Race To The Bargain Basement
  • Questions: The Answers to Sales
  • Masters of Loyalty: How To Turn Your Sales Force Into A Loyalty Force

They come between the two books I read.

Why I Like These Books

OK, now let me tell you why I devoured the first one, just could not wait to read the second one, and why I really like both of them.

Easy To Read

These books are stories.  They are not heavy “how to” reading with long explanations.  You learn about the sales process, and understand it because it is told in a real sales story.  The stories are short, they are only about the sales process.  There is no long novel with lengthy character development.   There  are only enough details for you to pick up the Action Selling process quickly and easily.

The first book, Action Selling, explains the process in a simple story.  The second book, Sales Strategy, shows you how Action Selling works in a B2B environment when times are difficult.

Simple Process

I like simple sales strategies.  As I read the two books, I saw parts of the Action Selling Process that I had already used in my own international sales process.  But I felt that reviewing the Action Selling Process could strengthen what I am already doing.

This Action Selling Process is easy to pick up . It gives you a good framework to prepare a sales strategy for your clients.  It’s not a complicated system.  It only takes a couple of hours at most to read the book.  Then you can immediately use the laminated card at the back of the book, and research and plan for your next client call.  The story shows you what to do.

I still have to try this out in cross-cultural selling, but the Action Selling Process appears to be easy to adapt for international sales too.

Solid Sales Best Practices

The Action Selling Process did not come out of Duane Sparks’ imagination.  He based it on proven strategies that have been around since the early 1900’s… and improved ever since.

I don’t know what kind of sales environment you work in, but the mistakes outlined in these books are common ones in international sales:

  • Selling before establishing and agreeing on the client’s needs
  • Selling the product before selling the salesperson

These two mistakes undermine all of efforts to build trust and credibility, which is crucial in cross-cultural selling.

Get A Strong Basic Sales Strategy

In cross-cultural selling you have to adapt to the culture of your client. This is can be overwhelming.  I have often seen colleagues around me get bogged down dealing with cross-cultural differences… and in the process they:

  • Forget their sales strategy
  • Find that their sales strategy is not suitable for this culture, or do not know how to adapt it
  • Fall back to easy networking tactics that lack the sharp sales focus needed in today’s economy

I like starting with a simple, solid sales strategy based on universal business practices… and then adapt tactics to this strategy as needed.

Action Selling has inspired me to review this with my own cross-cultural sales skills…  I will read the 3 other books too.

What Are You Doing To Improve Your Sales Strategies?

Today businesses need to regularly review their sales strategies.  The economy is different.  Competition changes.  There is almost always room for improvement.

Do you have a few hours to read a good story? It might be all you need to start strengthening your sales strategy.

Action Selling provides sales skills training for a simple process for a good sales strategy. It gives you a framework to stay focused on the work you need to do to be competitive in sales.

There is nothing I would change.  Nothing I find missing.

This book reminded me of my resolution when I first started writing book reviews: to only write reviews about things I really like and highly recommend to close friends.

Why?

For things I don’t like – why spend my time giving publicity to things I do not like, even if it’s negative.

For mediocre things – there are more enjoyable ways to spend my time.

Thank you for an inspiring book!

Read more Book Reviews:

Communication For International Sales

Here are reviews of the books I have read recently to help me with communication for international sales:

International Sales

Here are reviews of the books I have read recently to help me with international sales:

International Web Marketing

Here are reviews of the books I have read recently to help me with international web marketing:

Here are some Product Reviews:

All of the book and product reviews here are totally unsolicited… spontaneous …and without affiliate links. These are books I have read recently and only the ones that I share with friends. So all of the reviews you find here are on books and products that I highly recommend.

Also, as these are books and products that I have recently read since, this is not a list of my all-time favorite books. Hopefully I will get around to reviewing my favorite culture and international business books sometime soon.

Tagged as: , , , ,

Cindy KingWant to learn how to avoid cultural blunders? Subscribe to this blog feed.
Need to turbo charge your cultural skills? Get my short cross-cultural communication tips.
Ready for serious international marketing? Skype me or email me & let's grow your business.

Leave a Comment

CommentLuv Enabled

Previous post:

Next post: