I'm pleased and proud to announce that The Best Damn Sales Book Ever, was the feature book review in the September/October issue of Diversity Plus Magazine. Diversity Plus Magazine is the only diversity magazine covering women and minority business opportunities both in the U.S. and overseas, including Asia, Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean. You can download a PDF of the review by clicking here or read it below.

The following review has been reposted with permssion from Diversity Plus. 

The Best Damn Sales Book Ever 

Listen closely and you can almost hear the groans…not another sales book! Sure, the occasional sales tip can come in handy, but it’s the rare how-to book that actually gives you the unvarnished truth about selling— because without motivation, you’re sunk.

Warren Greshes, a sales pro turned business improvement speaker, learned long ago that the right attitude opens doors…lots of them. In The Best Damn Sales Book Ever, Greshes outlines his “16 rock-solid rules for achieving sales success” — detailed steps for motivating yourself and developing a positive mental vision for your career and your life. It sounds like something we could all use, whether our job title has the word “sales” in it or not.

Planning to succeed
According to Greshes, attitude and commitment are not qualities we’re born with. Rather, they’re developed through setting goals, planning, and creating a sense of purpose for ourselves. When was the last time you visualized your success, a detailed mental picture of where you want to be next month, next year or even 10 years from now?

The Best Damn Sales Book Ever gives readers a useful process for maintaining a high level of personal motivation. It starts with developing a written five-year plan for your life, career, and business. This detailed list of goals enables you to focus more clearly on what you want to accomplish, when you want to accomplish it, and the specific steps you’ll take to get there.

Ever notice how much easier grocery shopping is with a written list? Without one, most of us tend to wander around aimlessly, wasting time and spending more money in the process. It’s the same with a life plan, says Greshes — writing down our goals provides some muchneeded focus. More importantly, it makes us accountable to ourselves.

The most effective life plans have three basic components, according to the author. They are 1) expressed in continuous action, 2) broken down into manageable steps, and 3) structured so you can measure your progress every step of the way. For example, your goal is to earn $100,000 this year. If your average commission is $1,000 on each sale, whatsounds less daunting —closing 100 deals, or closing just two sales a week?

By breaking down the steps even further — the number of appointments needed on average to make two sales a week, for example — you begin to create a plan for continuous action that will get you that much closer to your goal.

Building a better salesperson
So, besides a solid plan, what else do you need to succeed? Greshes identifies some of the personal qualities common to top salespeople everywhere:

They are goal-oriented.
They constantly practice and prepare.
They are in control.
They are persistent.

Most importantly, successful sales professionals learn to create and sell value rather than price, and seek to become indispensable by going the extra mile — delivering the benefits of speed and ease, and serving as a resource to educate and inform those around them.

Advice from the trenches
In addition to his “rock-solid rules,” Greshes sprinkles The Best Damn Sales Book Ever with entertaining sidebars— sales tips, alerts, and rants — from his years on the front lines. Among his best revelations: rejection is personal. The only way to handle it is to know howmuch rejection you “need,” or how manyno’s it takes you on average to get to a yes. Recognizing where you are in the processhelps you to view rejection as a necessarystep — one that gets you closer to your goal every time.

Greshes’ last rule is certainly one thatcan be applied to everyone in business,regardless of job title: love what you doand success will follow. That kind of passion can’t help but be contagious to customers, colleagues, and staff alike.

Lisa Fahoury is a Certified Business Communicator and Chief Creative Officer at West Orange, NJ-based Fahoury Ink(www.fahouryink.com), a marketing communications firm that helps businesses create marketing messages with maximumimpact. She can be reached at lisa(at)fahouryink(dot)com.