The Sales Advantage: How to Get It, Keep It, and Sell More Than Ever [Hardcover]

J. Oliver Crom (Author), Michael Crom (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 31, 2002

Now, for the first time ever, the time-tested, proven techniques perfected by the world-famous Dale Carnegie® sales training program are available in book form.

The two crucial questions most often asked by salespeople are: "How can I close more sales?" and "What can I do to reduce objections?" The answer to both questions is the same: You learn to sell from a buyer's point of view.

Global markets, increased technology, information overload, corporate mergers, and complex products and services have combined to make the buying/selling process more complicated than ever. Salespeople must understand and balance these factors to survive amid a broad spectrum of competition. Moreover, a lot of what the typical old-time salesperson did as recently as ten years ago is now done by e-commerce. The new sales professional has to capture and maintain customers by taking a consultative approach and learning to unearth the four pieces of information critical to buyers, none of which e-commerce alone can yield. The Sales Advantage will enable any salesperson to develop long-term customer relationships and help make those customers more successful -- a key competitive advantage. The book includes specific advice for each stage of the eleven-stage selling process, such as:

How to find prospects from both existing and new accounts

The importance of doing research before approaching potential customers

How to determine customers' needs, such as their primary interest (what they want), buying criteria (requirements of the sale), and dominant buying motive (why they want it)

How to reach the decision makers

How to sell beyond questions of price

The cutting-edge sales techniques in this book are based on interviews accumulated from the sales experiences of professionals in North America, Europe, Latin America, and Asia. This book, containing more than one hundred examples from successful salespeople representing a wide variety of products and services from around the world, provides practical advice in each chapter to turn real-world challenges into new opportunities.

The Sales Advantage is a proven, logical, step-by-step guide from the most recognized name in sales training. It will create mutually beneficial results for salespeople and customers alike.

Dale Carnegie and Associates, Inc, has produced three giant international bestsellers -- How to Win Friends and Influence People, How to Stop Worrying and Start Living, and How to Enjoy Your Life and Your Job -- with more than thirty million copies sold to date. Their most recent bestseller is The Leader in You. More than twenty-five hundred people around the world enroll in Dale Carnegie courses each week, adding to the five million people who have graduated from the world-famous self-improvement and training programs.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

According to the business sages at Dale Carnegie & Associates, Inc., sales make the world go round. That’s a bold statement, but when you consider that a driver for an international freight company may not have a job if a salesperson hasn’t sold the products being delivered, or that an aerospace engineer wouldn’t have anything to do if an account executive hadn’t secured a contract for commercial jets, it makes pretty good sense. In this snappy guide to making winning transactions, the organization behind the colossal bestseller How to Win Friends and Influence People explains the ins and outs of finding prospects, getting their attention, building trust, giving customers what they want, negotiating, handling objections and securing the sale. The suggestions range from the practical (e.g., make sure the audiovisual equipment works before giving a sales presentation) to the psychological (e.g., figure out the customer’s emotional motive for buying something); taken together, they make for a good primer for novices and a perfect refresher for old hands.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

Salespeople are always looking for ways to overcome objections and close more deals, but all good salespeople know there is no magic formula to achieve this. The authors tell us that, like playing an instrument, selling is hard and unpleasant at first, but with practice it can become easy and even enjoyable. This highly readable guide for creating better long-term relationships with customers comes from the same group that produced the best-seller The Leader in You: How to Win Friends, Influence People, and Succeed in a Changing World (1993). They take you through the process step-by-step, from prospecting to preparing for initial contact, getting through the "gatekeepers" to reach the decision makers, using proper etiquette for phone and in-person presentations, to selling beyond questions of price. Tips include avoiding cliche "danger words," such as best, largest, or highest quality, unless you can back them up with facts and evidence. There are sections covering different styles and showmanship, interpreting and using body language to your advantage, knowing when it's time to walk away from a sale, and overcoming objections by validating your customer's concerns. David Siegfried
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 283 pages
• Publisher: The Free Press; First Edition edition (December 31, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0743215915
• ISBN-13: 978-0743215916
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.2 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #355,874 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Dale Breckenridge Carnegie (originally Carnagey until 1922 and possibly somewhat later) (November 24, 1888 ??? November 1, 1955) was an American writer and lecturer and the developer of famous courses in self-improvement, salesmanship, corporate training, public speaking and interpersonal skills. Born in poverty on a farm in Missouri, he was the author of How to Win Friends and Influence People, first published in 1936, a massive bestseller that remains popular today. He also wrote a biography of Abraham Lincoln, titled Lincoln the Unknown, as well as several other books.

Carnegie was an early proponent of what is now called responsibility assumption, although this only appears minutely in his written work.[citation needed] One of the core ideas in his books is that it is possible to change other people's behavior by changing one's reaction to them.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Sales Advantage by Crome, August 28, 2003

By 

Joseph S. Maresca "Dr. Joseph S. Maresca CPA,... (Bronxville, New York USA) - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Sales Advantage: How to Get It, Keep It, and Sell More Than Ever (Hardcover)

This is a good introductory work for a salesperson or
someone opening his/her own business. The author teaches
how to develop credibility, interest, stories, instructional
approaches, needs analysis and a host of other components aimed
at cultivating customer sales. Later on, the work builds
upon a negotiation scheme involving information gathering,
resolution of concerns, conflict resolution, collaboration,
customer needs and multiple solution sets in order to produce
a successful sale through advanced negotiation techniques.
The thrust of the work teaches how to gain and cultivate
customer commitments. The book is a good introductory
rendition for budding salespeople. It will provide reinforcement
for experienced salespeople.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars From Naperville, March 30, 2003

By A Customer

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Sales Advantage: How to Get It, Keep It, and Sell More Than Ever (Hardcover)

There are a ton of different sales books out there, and more written each day. From strategic to rainmaker, each plows into a well-worked strategy to get the sale and be the star. Yet, one must know the basics well, and this book does that in a complete fashion. Great for beginers, but essential for us all to run through so our heads don't get to big. The biggest message in this book is process - setting one and keeping to it. By having a process, one can look for the next target, with the knowledge that the ones in the pipeline are easy to identify as to status and progress. The fact that ACT! chose to use the 11 steps was also interesting. Worth the amazon.com price!

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Insightful!, July 7, 2005

By 

Rolf Dobelli "getAbstract" (Switzerland) - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Sales Advantage: How to Get It, Keep It, and Sell More Than Ever (Hardcover)

J. Oliver Crom and Michael Crom have written a very good book for sales professionals who are on a learning curve, particularly newcomers and those with intermediate sales experience. Although veterans might know most of the new ideas here, the authors present valuable concepts in the excellent prospecting section and in the review of how to close a sale. The book presents a somewhat institutional Dale Carnegie approach to sales, including a strong emphasis on maintaining a positive attitude and a customer-centered approach. The section on overcoming objections could be juiced up a bit and many of the illustrative anecdotes could be developed more richly, but the book supplies significant expertise for newer sales professionals - and that alone, we believe, should make it an easy sell.