Philip Delves Broughton is the author of “What they teach you at Harvard business school”. Not to be confused with “What they don’t teach you at Harvard Business School by Mark McCormack. He wrote a book about sales.
Selling
I have been searching for a book like this. Our clients regularly ask us to find them a good book on sales for our Bookbuzz sessions. Most of them are too formulaic. Not this one. The book brings you through a journey of selling. The history, the psychology and the philosophy. The good, the bad and the ugly. Without too much judgement. He does appear to be sceptical about marketing, but then who isn’t?
Legends in sales
The book follows the author across the world meeting legends in sales. He starts with the bazaars in Morocco and finishes with Salesforce. In between, he shares the lessons from his conversations with and research into salespeople.
- From storytelling to recruitment.
- From metrics to NLP.
- From “The secret” to marketing.
- From religion to customer care.
- From ego to authenticity.
- From learned helplessness to energy management.
Did you know
- Did you know that Benjamin Franklin invented newspaper advertising?
- That the more “no’s” as salesperson gets, the more money they make?
- That optimists are 40% more successful at selling?
The secret
That there is a correlation between success and your internal dialogue? This is where the author links selling to “The strangest secret” by Nightingale and tapping into passion, being yourself and loving what you do. Including selling. And for that alone, I love this book.
Sales as a life skill
He is adamant that selling is an essential life skill and applies to a lot of things in life. Selling as a state of mind. He thinks getting a university business degree without sales is like an MBA without studying accounting and that selling should be an integral part of any child’s education. Which is the other reason I love this book.
Nobility
The final reason I love this book is that it brings nobility back into sales. For sales professionals, marketers, HR professionals, CEOs and people interested in self-development. Marketing people might not like it……
