The Inner Game of Selling: Mastering the Hidden Forces that Determine Your Success [Hardcover]

Ron Willingham (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 29, 2006

Selling is 85% emotional and 15% logical.

Forget everything you've been taught about selling -- forget the hardsell, forget negotiation strategies, forget those closing techniques. In The Inner Game of Selling, Ron Willingham debunks the familiar myths about "sales skills," showing that those tired methods are too shallow and manipulative to do anything but alienate potential customers and drain you of energy and dignity. Today's consumers are wise to the old-fashioned gimmicks, extremely informed about their options, and very particular about what they want. The old tricks simply do not work anymore.

Willingham, author of Integrity Service and CEO of Integrity Systems, opens your eyes to a whole new truth about selling: Your ability to sell is more a question of who you are than of what you know. Accordingly, why you sell is far more important than how you sell.

Salespeople perform according to their inner beliefs about themselves, about what it is possible for them to sell and earn, and about what they deserve to achieve. These beliefs set the boundaries of their self-image and ultimately determine their success or failure. Willingham has synthesized his decades of experience, field-tested research, and a career-long dedication to ethical and passionate salesmanship to arrive at the groundbreaking insight that you will sell at your highest level only when you achieve emotional and spiritual alignment. Your sense of your own self-worth combined with a belief in your product will inspire that crucial ingredient in potential customers: trust. The Inner Game of Selling shows you how to overcome self-limiting beliefs and move on to a new relationship with your customers and, more important, a new relationship with yourself. Your new inner strengths will truly benefit you and your customers in any sales situation.

Willingham is at the leading edge of a values shift in sales culture, from product-focus to personal empowerment. The Inner Game of Selling establishes a groundbreaking new paradigm that will utterly transform the philosophy and practice of selling.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Your ability to sell is much more an issue of who you are than what you know," asserts Willingham, CEO of the sales training organization Integrity Solutions, in this workbook-style manual. Moving beyond the usual sales advice about gimmicks and closings, he focuses on the emotional factors behind effective sales and the hangups that prevent salespeople from achieving their full potential. Willingham synthesizes advice from his successful sales seminars, offering self-assessments and scorecards to aid the reader in applying each chapter's lessons. From an initial chapter on understanding the personal context in which one approaches one's job, through chapters on understanding boundaries, breaking through barriers to success and activating the drive to achievement, the advice is much more psychologically oriented than in most business books. Despite occasionally complicated concepts and more warm-and-fuzzy approaches than the average business reader might be used to, this book is worthwhile for salespeople and readers who may be wondering how to move forward in their work or even their personal lives. (Sept. 6)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

Willingham, founder and CEO of an international training and development company, offers sales advice that centers on the salesperson and not on the gimmicks that are often incorporated into traditional sales programs. In fact, his focus is so personal that it could be a self-help book, with such topics as self-understanding, examining beliefs, blockages to success, and handling the emotional side of selling. Willingham's four core traits for highly successful salespeople are strong goal clarity, high achievement drive, healthy emotional intelligence, and excellent social skills. Using a variety of lists, diagrams, and tests, with a section at the end of each chapter for the reader to keep score on his or her use of material presented (noting that "behavior that gets evaluated, gets improved"), this easy-to-read approach to improving sales skills offers good advice for those in our corporate world, where the demand is enormous for effective salespeople. In presenting an infomercial for his training company, the author also presents a useful road map for sales success. Mary Whaley
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 272 pages
• Publisher: Free Press (August 29, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0743286286
• ISBN-13: 978-0743286282
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.4 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #338,538 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Ron Willingham is founder and CEO of Integrity Systems, Inc., an international training and development company with more than 1.5 million graduates in 80 nations. His organization is the leader in helping organizations succeed with ethical, values-driven people-development strategies. Integrity Systems's client list reads like a Who's Who of business: Johnson & Johnson, American Red Cross, IBM, The Guardian Life Insurance Company, Principal Financial Group, Franklin Templeton, and more than 2,000 others. He is the author of Integrity Service and Integrity Selling for the 21st Century. Willingham lives in Phoenix, Arizona.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars There is an inner game of selling, whether people choose to acknowledge it or not, December 14, 2007

By 

Mike (San Jose, CA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: The Inner Game of Selling: Mastering the Hidden Forces that Determine Your Success (Hardcover)

There's no shortage of "Alpha Male" books on the market that will teach you to memorize pre-fab sales scripts and pummel your prospects into signing on the dotted line. Those books have a loyal following, and the people who read them firmly believe that the secret to sales success lies in getting your "mark" to do what you want them to do, when you want them to do it, with as little interaction as possible. Hit it and quit it and find the next village to terrorize.

This isn't one of those books. And that's a good thing.

Some reviews have painted the book as too "touchy-feely," but I don't agree with that. I believe that people will most certainly rise to the level of success that they have determined, in advance, that they deserve. And the old axiom is true: If you're happy with what you have right now, keep doing exactly what you've been doing, because that's how you got it. That's not pop psychology. That's a certified law of the jungle.

But for people who want more, for people who want to have more clients and make more money and just can't seem to get out of second gear, the choice is simple. Those people can either take a "time-out" and gain a better understanding of their beliefs and value system and self-image and how that relates to their performance, or they can keep wishing instead of fishing.

When reading some of the more negative reviews of this book, I'm reminded of the standard swipe taken at Norman Vincent Peale's The Power of Positive Thinking. "You have to do MORE than think positively," some people say. "You can't just sit around and think positively and expect something to happen!"

And in reality, everyone who's actually taken time to read Dr. Peale's book knows that he never suggested that. Thinking positively is a starting point, a launch pad, just like acknowledging the fact that there IS an "inner game of selling." Napoleon Hill and Clement Stone delivered the same message in Success Through A Positive Mental Attitude. Earl Nightingale built a career and a company that is still thriving today on one simple message: We become what we think about (The Strangest Secret - Book and CD Set (How To Live The Life You Desire)).

If you're not convinced, you can go to Google Books and read some pretty lengthy excerpts from the book. You'll see a "buy from Amazon" link on the page that will bring you back here when you're ready. My suggestion is to give the book a chance, with an open mind. It may not be the book you need at this particular moment in time, but that doesn't mean it's not the right book for others.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Take your selling game to the next level, August 30, 2006

By 

Jason S. Forrest "Sales Strategist, Author, a... (Fort Worth, TX United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Inner Game of Selling: Mastering the Hidden Forces that Determine Your Success (Hardcover)

This is the best book I have ever read on showing you how to increase your sales performance. If you are a rookie and need to start your career off strong or a veteran who wants to sell more then this book is for you!!!

There are a lot of sales books out there that will teach you "how to sell", but this is the only book that will teach you "why you sell". Your success has so much more to do with "why you sell then how you sell!"


Jason Forrest
President
ShoreSelect
www.shoreselect.com
www.jasonforrestspeaker.com

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Book About Living,Not Just For Salesman, July 30, 2007

By 

Tonez323 (Bismarck, ND United States) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Inner Game of Selling: Mastering the Hidden Forces that Determine Your Success (Hardcover)

If you're ready for a change...
If you're ready for successs...
If you want something that finally works...

This is the book you want.If you're willing to do whatever it takes and don't want to waste time on what doesn't work then it's time you get this book and put into practice the information contained within.

This book isn't just about selling.This book is about life.

If you're not ready...Don't bother.