Sales Success Stories
60 Stories from 20 Top 1% Sales Professionals
Relevant and useful information is shared by sales luminaries in Sales Success Stories, a book that will help sales professionals up their games.
Scott Ingram’s Sales Success Stories is a treasure trove of observations and advice from twenty top salespeople.
Scott Ingram, himself an accomplished salesperson who hosts the Sales Success Stories podcast, edited this collection of brief, enjoyable stories, each from a different salesperson. While the material is essentially excerpted from Ingram’s podcasts, it is nicely compiled and divided into specific topics.
The stories cover sales from every angle. Some talk about determination and persistence, competitiveness, and the courage to face rejection; others discuss ways to build rapport, the importance of a personal network, and goal setting. A section on selling as a career includes valuable perspectives from ten of the salespeople about how to love the product you sell, getting promoted, personalizing business relationships, and more.
The format of the book plays to the busy sales professional. The reader can quickly refer to one-page biographies of each salesperson at the beginning of the book and can then scan and select any of the sixty stories, which are organized into four categories: Mindset, Relationships, Sales Career, and Sales Process. The biographies and stories are cross-referenced, with the page numbers of the appropriate stories listed at the end of each entry.
All of these storytellers make it clear that they are always learning from their experiences; some stories even end with bulleted lessons. Candid admissions include: “My greatest lesson is being comfortable with the uncomfortable!” and “If an executive tells you how powerful they are in the company, they aren’t.”
Personal tricks of the trade are also included: a sticky-note inquiry, for example, reads “How will this customer be different as a result of doing business with us?” Another salesperson recognizes the power of keeping quiet at the right time, suggesting, “In a 60 minute meeting try to bite your tongue ELEVEN times.”
The observations, insights, and tips in this book are valuable and battle tested, arising from on-the-ground experience. Every story contains nuggets of wisdom.
Sections come without introductions or summaries, though, and don’t feel wholly cohesive. The concluding chapter is less a summary of the book’s contents than it is a sales pitch for Ingram’s podcast, email list, and sales events.
Relevant and useful information is shared by sales luminaries in Sales Success Stories, a book that will help sales professionals up their games.
Reviewed by
Barry Silverstein
Disclosure: This article is not an endorsement, but a review. The publisher of this book provided free copies of the book and paid a small fee to have their book reviewed by a professional reviewer. Foreword Reviews and Clarion Reviews make no guarantee that the publisher will receive a positive review. Foreword Magazine, Inc. is disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255.
