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The Force [Hardcover]

David Dorsey (Author)
4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)


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Book Description

April 26, 1994
"If you want to know how America's business wars are waged in the trenches, The Force is for you. A gripping book."
--Newsday
"SKILLFULLY REPORTED, INSIGHTFUL...Dorsey lights up our vision of the American salesman with his own sharply reported eyewitness account."
--People
In this fascinating book, reporter David Dorsey turns a year on the Xerox sales force into an emotionally charged human drama. The Force tracks Fred Thomas and his sales team from the shiny glass office building where work starts at dawn to the rolling green country clubs where they woo customers, from the smoke-filled bars where they unwind to the plush suburban bedrooms where they try to forget the pressures of the day. And as the year unfolds, we get swept up in the burning question at the center of all of their lives: will they make their quota?
"Meet Fred Thomas. He's a real person, working in a real job in a real company. And he's the hero of The Force, David Dorsey's brilliant chronicle of life in the real world of contemporary business. Dorsey's book draws a picture that is as intimate as a great novel. It is a book that captures in the most essential details and the most sweeping prose the cross-wired paradoxes that lie at the heart of the New Economy. Fred is Us. He's the next-generation Willie Loman working in a world put into hyperdrive...Fred is the salesman as Everyman."
--Harvard Business Review


From the Trade Paperback edition.


Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Written with manic energy and uncanny insight into the guerrilla warfare of salesmanship, this day-by-day, almost novelistic chronicle tracks one Xerox sales team in Cleveland in its efforts to surpass its yearly quota selling photocopier machines. Dorsey, who spent seven years as business editor and reporter covering Xerox for the Rochester, N.Y., Democrat & Chronicle , gets it all down--the cat-and-mouse sales tactics, the relentless pressure, personal crises, family lives stretched to the breaking point. His taut narrative centers on sales manager Fred Thomas, whose disarming amiability conceals an obsession with making the sale and proving himself, and his wife Kathy, a homemaker avidly seeking more meaning in her life. Poor at communicating emotion, Fred fears Kathy's growing independence and her career interests. Based on the year Dorsey spent living with Xerox salespeople, this unusually candid probe reveals more about corporate life as a daily struggle for survival than a stack of how-to business manuals. First serial to Esquire; Fortune Book Club alternate; author tour.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

The result of a year that Dorsey spent living with and talking to members of a Xerox sales team in Cleveland, Ohio, this work reads like "A Year in the Life of a Salesman." Dorsey wanted to show how a "top salesman-along with his team-attains certain goals over the course of a typical sales year, and what impact this effort has on the personal lives of the people involved." Fred Thomas, head of a major accounts team at Xerox, is the central figure in the book. Thomas tirelessly pursues the team's annual sales mark, and he grapples with issues such as how to advance his career without leaving sales and how to achieve a better balance between office and home life. Readers looking for a formula book on successful salesmanship will be disappointed; the book's strength lies in Dorsey's candid portrayal of the sales world. Recommended for public libraries.
--Mark McCullough, Ohio Northern Univ., Lib., Ada
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Product Details

  • Hardcover: 315 pages
  • Publisher: Random House; 1st edition (April 26, 1994)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0679410309
  • ISBN-13: 978-0679410300
  • Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6 x 1.2 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 5.9 pounds
  • Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,723,944 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

7 Reviews
5 star:
 (3)
4 star:
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Average Customer Review
4.0 out of 5 stars (7 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars The Force Hits Too Close to Home, December 9, 1996
By A Customer
This review is from: The Force (Hardcover)
It has been about two years since I first read David Dorsey's book. I was working for a large multi-national computer company and, as I read about Fred Thomas, I felt that I was reading my auto-biography.

No other book has better captured the inner torment of corporate sales. The quotas, the endless tracking of results, the hounding of sales staff to squeeze blood from stone. Parts of the book helped maintain my perspective as I went through similar Kafka-like events since then.

I would make this a must-read for anyone who has to sell to the fortune 500

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4.0 out of 5 stars An insiders view, not much analysis but powerful, August 10, 2009
By 
Richard R. Wilk (Bloomington, IN United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
This review is from: The Force (Paperback)
I used this book in a class I teach on economic anthropology - the idea was to use it as a kind of 'workplace ethnography' to show students what the real life of sales is like. I also wanted to emphasize the point that the daily business of economics is more about social relationships than simply about money and exchange. The students liked the book and found parts of it very engaging, but I am not sure it helped get the message across. This is partially because the author is not very self-reflective - does not put his experience in perspective or make sense out of it, but it content to show how out-of-control a particular corporate culture became, how destructive it was to daily life. A useful lesson - and I will use the book again.
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4.0 out of 5 stars Great book, February 21, 2009
This review is from: The Force (Paperback)
This was a good book overall, however, two pages were missing! They werent ripped out, they just werent printed in the book. Nonetheless, the book got to me on time and in great condition. Overall, good book!
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FRED THOMAS WAS early, but he felt late. Read the first page
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