Customer Reviews

Tough Calls: Selling Strategies to Win Over Your Most Difficult Customers

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

 

 

While most books about selling focus on the salesperson's behavior, this book focuses instead on the client's behavior and the sales approaches you should use depending upon just how weird or annoying - excuse us, that should be "challenging" or maybe "eccentric" - the client becomes. Josh Gordon clearly and effectively presents 20 different classic, difficult behaviors, including everything from "The Client Who Lies to You" to "The Client Who Knows It All." Gordon offers useful strategies for dealing with such personalities and situations, strategies that can help you make your sale and then make a clean getaway. The book is written conversationally and includes no filler or fluff, just plenty of well-organized and helpful ideas. We [...] recommend this book to anyone who has to sell a product, service or idea, because sometimes it is nice to know that you aren't the problem.

Found "Tough Calls" to be excellent and filled with street smarts. Unlike most sales books, this one is filled with real world issues faced by today's salesperson. We all have problem clients. This book effectively tells us how to recognize them and deal with them. The sales world is a challenging place today. You need this book to succeed. It has helped me immeasurably.

Tough Calls is the most practical, no nonsense book on selling I have ever seen. Instead of the usual positive attitude stuff that wears off after a day or two this book is stuffed with great ideas that actually helps you make a sale. No jargon. No long useless stories. Just page after page of useful selling ideas.

I manage a sales staff and bought a copy of "Tough Calls" for each of my sales staff. We have all read it and refer to it often. Now, when a problem cleint comes up we start talking about it as a "Chapter 7" or a "Ch apter 11". "Tough Calls" is great stuff and represents new thinking!

This is a bit of an amatuerish book but was fun to read. The book attempts to deal with the 'problem client' which makes up one out of every six customers. The book does well identifying the six most common problems and the five most stressful customers, even if this is based on a short survey of only 1000 hand-picked salesman that weren't asked open-ended questions but given a short checklist. I found the author's answers and solutions to these problems to range from insightful to childish. I liked this book however because it made me think and gave me a few ideas. One idea deals with complainers. Get them to complain about your competitors and their bosses and you may actually get some valuable information.

Four Stars on a Clear Night

Josh Gordon has obviously been in the sales game for a long time. I have no doubt that he knows what he's doing because I've seen a lot of the situations he discusses in this book. I can't figure out how he expects anyone to use this book. Who is it for? Beginners will find it overwhelming and difficult to translate his suggestions and examples into on-the-scene actions, and experienced reps. will likely be aware of a lot of the materal in this book. There are some good tips though. You'll have to dig them out. Sometimes Gordon is talking to the consultative salesperson, sometimes relationship salesperson and sometimes the closer. If you've read SPIN Selling, you know that closers don't do well in corporate sales. In the end, this book doesn't seem to target anybody. While there's lots of good material, you may find that much of it is not of value to you.

I must say, it encouraged me to write my own book. It didn't really have anything new (as usual).Same re-hashed stuf. Bla bla bla.. yada yada yada... When it comes to telephone sales, no one comes near Stan Billue. He is the master.

Mark A. Huntley