Let's Get Real or Let's Not Play: The Demise of Dysfunctional Selling and the Advent of Helping Clients Succeed (Paperback)

~ (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Review

Stephen R. Covey Author of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People This is a marvelous book! Mahan Khalsa masterfully puts the science and art of influence and sales on higher ground. -- Review --This text refers to the Audio CD edition.

Product Description

The new way to transform a sales culture with clarity, authenticity, and emotional intelligence.

Too often, the sales process is all about fear.

Customers are afraid that they will be talked into making a mistake; salespeople dread being unable to close the deal and make their quotas. No one is happy.

Mahan Khalsa and Randy Illig offer a better way. Salespeople, they argue, do best when they focus 100 percent on helping clients succeed. When customers are successful, both buyer and seller win. When they aren’t, both lose. It’s no longer sufficient to get clients to buy—a salesperson must also help the client reduce costs, increase revenues, and improve productivity, quality, and customer satisfaction.

This book shares the unique FranklinCovey Sales Performance Group methodology that will help readers:

• Start new business from scratch in a way both salespeople and clients can feel good about
• Ask hard questions in a soft way
• Close the deal by opening minds --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 242 pages
• Publisher: Franklin Covey; 1 edition (July 15, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1883219507
• ISBN-13: 978-1883219505
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 7.2 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (48 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #311,748 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

17 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent, but down to earth, April 27, 2001

By	Jagadeesh K. Venugopal - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Want to know how to sell? You've got to sell value. That's the gist of the book. Determining what's of value to your client and how to provide a solution that meets this value criteria is what this book is all about.

If you ever had any client facing role (you might be a consultant, or you might be a store clerk or a sales person of any kind) you will benefit greatly from reading this book. I loved Mahan's approach of first getting down to the major issues or opportunities, finding out their symptoms and solution benefits and then formulating a solution.

Though I don't directly sell, as an Internet professional I am constantly in front of clients, recommending solutions. I find this material invaluable as a means of eliciting client participation during the solutions process.

The book looks thick, but that's because of the paper. A very easy read. A great book to buy and keep.

15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A great book for selling large deals, March 1, 2002

By	"mpmcdonald" (St. Charles, Illinois USA) - See all my reviews

There are literally thousands of books on selling and most leave you with the feeling that you need to shower after you have read them. This one does not. Lets get real has a reality about it and a discussion of a simple process that reenforces all the things you knew about selling. The book hits the right blend of anedotal stories -- so you can see how it would apply to you and discussion of the process elements -- so you can figure out how to apply it yourself. This is no Zig Ziglar book -- this is something I want to conciously try to use every time.

The book is very clearly written and highly usable, breaking each aspect of the approach into small digestable chunks. Its something you can read and more importantly re-read/refresh yourself easily.

There is one limitation of the book. It seems to be geared more toward longer multiple call sales cycles, rather than transaction selling. At least that is the way I read it. I could not see my local car dealer selling this way -- although I wish they would.

This book is one that is going into my frequently read shelf. I would strongly recommend this book to anyone who is looking to build commercial relationship with a client.

15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A way to do "this" and not be sleazy, slick or cheesy, August 12, 2001

By	Jason Zeaman "djangoflow" (Dublin, CA United States) - See all my reviews

It wasn't until I read this book that I felt anything positive about being in "sales". I had done it in my past and I was about to do it again and thank god for this book or I'd still be uncomfortable and tossing and turning in my sleep.

We need a new word, "sales", as this book so aptly puts it, is something you do to someone else. You "sell" them on something. Nobody wants to be sold, we all avoid salespeople and we all feel stupid selling other people on something. And those who do enjoy "selling" someone are almost always in pursuit of their own "victory", oif beating the other person into buying from them, overcoming obstacles, leaping hurdles and getting the BIG CLOSE.

They aren't really focused on the other person, an urge I sometimes fall prey to myself. Our culture makes competition and personal victories very seductive, it is what we talk about, sports teams are rarely congratulated on their effort or fine play unless they win. We view so many things as black and white, which is not natural, throughout human history you can see cooperation as a dominant and prudent way to survive and thrive, not competition (see a dense, but brilliant book on this "Nonzero : The Logic of Human Destiny" by Robert Wright). Sales is a no-win game for everyone.

Maybe there isn't any word, the "trick", the "gimmick" that this book extols is genuiness, simply being real, if you will. You meet someone, you listen, you ask some good questions so that you understand them well and what they are trying to accomplish, if you think there might be a way that you or your company can help them you offer it to them, if not, you wish them well and part graciously.

What is that? Being human? Being real? "being real" has a vaguely cheesy sound to it too, my only complaint about this book is it's title which can turn people off before they even open it. Again maybe there is no word. Many of us will simply go out and meet people and listen well and feel good about what we are doing and be personally successful as well...or are those the same thing anyway :-)

The real value of this book is some excellent exercises you can do in a meeting with someone, things to really challenge you to break out of old patterns, very, very deeply ingrained patterns.