Customer Reviews

Samurai Selling: The Ancient Art of Service in Sales

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

It would be very difficult to read more than a couple of pages without being challenged on your sales approach or to be reminded of a proven solution to a problem. Managers of sales and marketing operations will find creative ways to approach their craft as well as those devices and methods that have always worked (and always will). Written in bite-sized chunks, you might find it helpful to simply meditate on one concept per day. They all apply to the successful management of sales and account management. If you apply these principles, you will be successful. It's as simple as that.

Here is a book on sales technique with a different angle. Samurai Selling: The Ancient Art Of Modern Service by Chuck Laughlin, Karen Sage and Marc Bockmon takes lessons learnt from the famed and legendary shogun and the nameless or ordinary samurai of Japan and applies them to the arena of modern selling. The authors are armed with metaphors, quotations, excerpts and parables of the samurai and use them to create analogies between the two worlds. Samurai, the authors tell, translates roughly to 'one who serves' and the writers seek to instill the value, along with other concepts like Ki, balance, integrity, urgency and APE (Account, Problem and Effect) questioning into the reader.
The concept is different and interesting, but the book has as many hits as misses. For one, the authors' analogies are often stretched and forced. For another, the book seems to run out of applicable parables on occasion and just does without. Moreover, to maintain perspective, the samurai sought to serve without looking for gain. The modern salesperson - and his manager - would hardly care for that attitude. Yes, serving brings and facilitates the sale, but the juxtaposition still has merit.
Samurai Selling is a lofty ideal - the authors' use of it to launch, nurture and enrich a corporate training career notwithstanding - but looking around one sees plenty of real-life examples which contradict its application to success.

Using age proven concepts to succeed in the modern world, not just selling.

As a sales professional I've read many books about how to "make more sales". This book is not only entertaining, but it also gets down to the fundementals of being successful at sales. It is short, concise, and straight to the point. Many of the "mistakes" that the 'samurai masters' talks about, I have made. Pay close attention to the first chapter which talks about the history of this profession. A must read for anyone who wishes to improve their professional career. I only wish the two authors would share their vast knowledge more freely. Theya re Professionals and the book hints of his attempt to sell what he actually does; attack. At any rate for ten bucks and change it's not a bad buy.

After implementing just a few of this book's techniques, I went from signing 5-8 clients per month to signing 16-20. When I finally caught my breath, I tried some of the other tips and last month alone added over 10 new clients!

In today's IPO get rich quick world, this book is a must for those that enjoy selling because they are a believer in what they do. If you are a peddler PUSHING a product, go get tactics from another book. If you are a believer in your company, read this book.

The most interesting thing about this book is that the author feels no pressure to legitimize his assertion that there is something special about his analogy. Because his background is in sales and sales leadership, (never to be confused with succeeding), he finds significance in the history of Samurai somehow.. That this book is done for financial reasons, not results, has evaded him completely. This is just another in the endless chain of How To books penned by individuals struggling with delusions of expertise, whose only skill is self-promotion, that package the obvious and resell it to the gullible. Readers who find anything in this slim and overpriced tome even remotely surprising or counter-intuitive are advised to probe deeper into the self-help section of the bookstore for volumes on Shoe-Tying For Beginners, The ABCs Of Writing Your Name, and Gravity - It's Not Just A Good Idea, It's The Law.

This book is great if you are constantly out and about i.e. outside sales. You don't have to worry about falling sales numbers. It is also very comfortable read and full of anecdotes and historical references. I read this book often (currently I am in sales management). The chapters are interesting, so I can read it often. I ended up getting two - I purchased one for me and one for another salesperson.

I've always loved selling, and this book helps me look at the sandy beaches and woods of the Cape that are my goals.

The quibbling over facts will never end as none of us can be quite this good, but this book should be a must-read for all in sales. Wake up, and see the stouter stuff of which salespeople were once made.

The material is this book is an important part of my overall approach to sales. I have shared this material with many of co-workers over the years. It has been one of three key sales books in my collection.