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110 of 128 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Unimpressive Book From An Impressive Salesperson, September 24, 2006
This review is from: Never Cold Call Again: Achieve Sales Greatness Without Cold Calling (Paperback)
Achieving sales greatness without cold calling might be a looked-for goal in sales circles - although greatness is hell of a subjective term - but Never Cold Call Again is ultimately contradictory in content, immaterial to enterprise sales and poorly written and constructed.
Setting aside the author's weak command of the English language, including but not limited to poor grammar, redundant and numerous superlatives and misuse of pronouns, what is more germane to the average reader is how Frank Rumbauskas begins with one premise and quickly proceeds to negate it. Firstly though, it is clear that Rumbauskas is better suited and more experienced at low figure sales. Some of his general advice might just be relevant to selling vacuums, low cost service or sub-$1000 telephone systems, but will not travel beyond to larger enterprise sales. One can cite his advice to include one's telephone number and e-mail address in fax-back forms on page 59 as one example. Who is this book aimed at? Furthermore, miscellaneous advice, like pretending to be in a prospect's area (naturally while calling the person on the phone as described on page 63) dressing up as a form of subterfuge or impersonating one's executive assistant (again on page 63 - the author suggests giving this script to a fellow or a telemarketer: "Good morning. I'm an executive assistant with the office of Frank Rumbauskas. I'm pleased to inform you...") is plain wrong and immoral.
It is prose like this, which disparages the sales profession in the eyes of millions.
At its core, the author's assertion that individual cold calls are a waste of time and his advocacy for the concept of leverage are sane. He advocates a variety of marketing activities as a superior alternative to cold calling. These include e-mail newsletter, direct mail, fax blasts (when was the last time you were persuaded to make a large figure purchase based on a fax - the kind of which piles up on any company's fax machine routinely...) and flyering for executive lunches. Aside from snags like how that last technique again hints at the book's readers' target market (what sort of an executive will attend a roundtable in order to take advantage of a free $5 lunch? - page 93: your flyer should say, "ABC restaurant, compliments of us..." or page 92: "the free lunch was key" and more) some of the practices detailed go against the writer's own advice not to engage in one on one marketing. After all, flyers sent to cars or offices are presumably delivered one at a time as described by the author's `cold walk' technique (page 60 - "I'd walk through the door, hand my flyer..." - imagine getting an enterprise sale that way!!). That is the book's main paradox. Moreover, the author's assumption that all prospects and industries deserve a similar approach is plain asinine - which they do not in the context of sales larger than, say, $100.
Rumbauskas' book deserves kudos for focusing on the concept of leverage and time management, challenging conventional thinking and being forthright. His contradictions and less than honest advice lose him a star as does his digression into actual sales techniques and page after page of redundant and repetitious subject matter. Other reviewers have pointed it out, but it bears repeating that the author consistently contradicts himself and (hopefully) does not even realize it.
Ultimately, Never Cold Call Again: Achieve Sales Greatness Without Cold Calling would have been better as a magazine article which was also supported by some empirical supporting data. Yet, and despite that, Rumbauskas is still a good salesperson. Why? I purchased his book despite all that.
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45 of 55 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Cold Calling is a waste of time....., April 2, 2008
This review is from: Never Cold Call Again: Achieve Sales Greatness Without Cold Calling (Paperback)
Cold Calling IS a waste of time. I couldn't agree more. However, so is reading this book. One of the biggest pet peeves I have with books that make such incredible bold statements, are that they ALWAYS try to upsell you. It seems like Frank's whole mission with this book was to get you to read it with a very clever, catchy title, confuse you, then have you sign up for his FREE newsletter! Which, btw, is nothing more than BOMBARDING you with SPAM. And he has the right to bash "sleazy" sales tactics in this book! The upsell is THE king of sleazy sales tactics! Whet the appetite, confuse the reader, then offer VERY pricey alternatives, so you get the REAL answers! Ridiculous. This guy is the epitome of a snake oil salesman.
There is SOME good advice in this book. I'm not going to bash it completely. But most of his ideas are shaky at best and were already outdated by 5 years before this book even came out, and of course, are SEVERELY lacking in proper application. He goes on and on in various chapters about how NOT to do something, then when it comes to doing it right, he offers incredibly vague advice. I'd say 95% of this book is about how NOT to do something, and 5% is about how to do it right. Once again, sleazy and misleading.
I've tried applying some of the tactics in this book, and have received WORSE results than I'd have gotten from cold calling! Perhaps if this sleazeball went more into detail about how to actually apply his principles (rather than bash the heck out of everything else), I might have gotten something of value from this book.
I don't care for the author, nor do I care for this book. This book should have come with a bucket of wipes, to wipe the slime off of it. One last thought: I also feel like a lot of these 5-star reviews on here are planted. Everyone I know who has ever read this book says the same thing as I do. Doesn't surprise me that this slippery man would plant fake reviews. It's right in line with everything else he does.
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37 of 46 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Best sales book I've ever read, May 31, 2006
This review is from: Never Cold Call Again: Achieve Sales Greatness Without Cold Calling (Paperback)
As a salesperson I always try to improve and have read almost every book out there trying to better my sales. This book is THE best sales book I've read, bar none.
The title is misleading but not in a bad way. It implies that the book will teach you how to generate leads without cold calling, and it does, but that's only one part of this outstanding three-part book. The first part is fantastic eye-opening general sales advice. Alone worth the price. The second part is the nuts & bolts, the step-by-step system of how to drop cold calling and have leads coming to you instead. The third part is all about how to develop, present, and close your proposals, and to be honest it totally blew my mind because the techniques and processes are so amazingly powerful it made me re-think everything I'd been doing up to this point.
I've read some good sales books and plenty of garbage (the publishers seem to crank them out as fast as they can). This is one you don't want to miss - solid, practical advice from a man who obviously walks his talk.
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