Women Make the Best Salesmen: Isn't it Time You Started Using their Secrets? [Paperback]

Marion Luna Brem (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 17, 2005

A thirty-year-old mother of two, Marion Luna Brem had just been given a death sentence: terminal cancer. She had no job. No health insurance. Her marriage would collapse under the stress of her treatment. And her most pressing concern: How do I pay next month’s rent?

Her first major “sale” was landing a job as a car salesman. Within two months she had become salesperson of the month and by the end of her first year, salesperson of the year. Four and a half years after selling her first car, Brem bought her own dealership, and in the next decade went on to open additional dealerships and businesses. She beat her cancer, too.

In Women Make the Best Salesmen, Brem reveals the top sales strategies she discovered, refined, and applied to build hermultimillion dollar enterprise. But, as she points out, we are all "salesmen" – whether we interviewing for a job or operating a register at a department store, trying to get our children into a special program or looking for a lifelong companion. And women, with their natural social skills and acute emotional antennae, have natural advantages both sexes can learn from.

Filled with unconventional wisdom and real-life lessons, Women Make the Best Salesmen is the essential guide to the art of selling yourself.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Everyone is a salesperson, insists car dealership mogul Brem, and women are uniquely expert at selling. This is not just because women—who make most buying decisions today—know what buyers want, but because of so-called "natural" female traits. Brem seeks to galvanize women, especially those with little work experience outside the home, to apply the skills they already use in any relationship—negotiation, communication, intuition, attentiveness—to sales (she also encourages male readers to hone these skills as well). Brem uses her own extraordinary history as the clinching example: after two cancer surgeries, chemotherapy and a divorce, Brem found herself a single mother without medical insurance or a job at age 32. Mustering all her courage and homemaker experience, she made her first sale—she sold her skills to the car dealership manager who reluctantly hired her. Five years later, she founded her own dealership and has since become a sales sensation, and was named one of Hispanic Business magazine’s 100 Most Influential Hispanics in the United States and Inc. magazine’s Entrepreneur of the Year. She chalks up her success, in part, to empathy; in chapters like "You Don’t Have to Like Them, But They Have to Like You" and "Taking Charge of the Sales Process," Brem offers a veritable carload of common sense on approaching customers, determining how to help them and closing the deal. (Rather than viewing closing as an end to the sales relationship, for example, she views it as a beginning.) Time and again, in entertaining and easily digestible prose, she makes her point that good selling is about helping—and that women, the traditional "helpmates," are innately gifted at it.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Booklist

Those who do not believe that life is all about selling should consult Brem, Inc. magazine Entrepreneur of the Year and International Automotive Hall of Fame member. Her unique experience as a female car-dealership owner forms the basis of some simple rules for anyone, regardless of gender, to succeed in sales. From understanding what a customer needs ("help") to identifying and winning over difficult customers (the know-it-alls, Mr. Indecisive, hotheads, and others), Brem uses the principles of common sense and the Golden Rule to underscore her points. "Dress the part," for instance, equates to the art of looking like a professional. "It's about time" refers to keeping, not breaking, appointments. And "you don't have to like them--but they have to like you" involves such easy-to-accomplish activities as laughing, letting your human side show, and accentuating similarities. After reading her words, it will be difficult to claim "I can't sell." Barbara Jacobs
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 240 pages
• Publisher: Crown Business (May 17, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0385511639
• ISBN-13: 978-0385511636
• Product Dimensions: 5.4 x 0.5 x 8.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #827,761 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars No feminine fluff, July 11, 2006

By 

K.M. (Albany, NY USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Women Make the Best Salesmen: Isn’t it Time You Started Using their Secrets? (Hardcover)

This book is not an anti-male diatribe, nor is it sentimental gush. Marion Luna Brem's book provides incredibly practical advice useful to both genders. And yet she does not shy from her own femininity in her writing; she is not afraid to appeal to women's sensibilities or leverage their natural tendencies. Brem provides tips that are helpful in all aspects of life, since she claims that every relationship involves some kind of "sale," if not a literal one. Topics include utilizing the assets of others, first impressions, negotiating (which is all about relationship), and even styles of dress. This is a worthwhile read for women in a position to sell or promote any product, service, or cause. Men would be well advised to pick it up also.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A worthy read by an inspiring author, December 5, 2004

By 

Julie Jordan Scott "Writer, Life Coach - Owne... (Bakersfield, CA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Women Make the Best Salesmen: Isn’t it Time You Started Using their Secrets? (Hardcover)

I am an entrepreneur who picked up this book because I know I am really always selling something..... and naturally I am attracted to a book about how another woman has excelled in selling.

Marion Luna Brem writes in a friendly, advice filled manner which covers many bases in sales from the simple to complex.

Right from the start she is teaching the reader a different way of thinking.

She asks the reader, "What are you selling?"

That single response was worth the price of the book. All sales people, all businesses, all entrepreneurs are selling "H-E-L-P." I sat with that for a while and thought... yes, she is right.

One favorite chapter was "12 Sure Ways to Increase Sales" which includes 3 of Marion's Principles which are simple, strategic and yes, within the chapter refreshingly expanded upon. In a nutshell, they are ask -always work beyond expectation; Get the Word Out; and Stay With It.)

The content is mostly based on selling a physical product, one at a time (like the author sells cars, one at a time to one customer at a time)the lessons could be applicable in other areas as well.

3.0 out of 5 stars Not quite what I expected, September 27, 2011

By 

Stephanie Martin (Savannah GA) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Women Make the Best Salesmen: Isn't it Time You Started Using their Secrets? (Paperback)

I just began a career in auto sales. While Brem is a pretty good motivational writer and certainly innovative in the industry, the "secrets" are really not secrets at all. As a woman, I bought it to learn about auto sales as seen through the eyes of a woman. I know that the book is meant for both men and women, but I didn't get much from it. Maybe for a man, or a woman who was less experienced in sales in general might get more out of it.