Purple Cow, Sales Bible and @JillKonrad

Some members of The Sales Playbook Reading Club have started to criticize some of Jeffrey Gitomer’s thoughts.  I find this discussion blog-worthy, and therefore share my response:

I have reviewed Gitomer’s Social Boom and his Sales Bible and he is not a deep read, so it doesn’t take much of your time to review his main thoughts.  I think you can learn a little from everyone, and I like to note when writers agree.  To me, these are the points you focus on.  For instance, both Gitomer’s and Godin’s main point was to, “stand out or don’t bother.”  I do agree that from Godin, we can learn more, as everyone wants to follow and learn from his blogs.  From Godin we can learn both from his philosophies and his example.

Specific to Gitomer’s Sales Bible, I like the idea of a mission statement.  In this book, Gitomer discussed what customers want from us in general and in questions.  He also shared his own mission statement.  I also found this “Daily Mantra of a Salesperson” years ago, and love it: http://ashrafchaudhryblog.com/daily-mantra-of-a-salesperson/.  I plan to spend a couple hours putting this all together into my own mission statement as guidelines for being the best
Account Manager for Office Depot.

My main thought on reading sales books is to remember to be your own person.  Take what you are comfortable taking and follow those you want to be like the most.  For example, I will never again be a hard closer, so I do not tend to take from books like Selling to Vito that tell you to harass customer’s (hit ‘em with voicemail, email, direct mail, etcetera until they answer).  I tend to take more from Jill Konrad.  She tells you that whenever you do outbound to a customer, respect that they are short on time and make the time they give you of value to them.  A couple years ago, this same philosophy led me to one of my favorite interview
questions.  I now ask potential employers what their favorite books and philosophies are.  I asked them questions around their closing philosophies; if they had told me I would have to offer “end of the month” specials, I would have run far and fast.  I knew Office Depot was a match when they ask about my ethics and said they are creating their quotas around margin. This said to me that they put a huge importance on ethics and wanted us to manage our relationships around higher-end principles versus just cutting costs.