A huge number of books have been written about sales and finding one’s road to success in achieving exceptional sales performance. Like fresh-off-the-press diet book bestsellers, they promise spectacular results, but lasting improvement in the end is still hard to find. This book identifies the many myths associated with exceptional sales and explains how believing them may negatively affect one’s performance. It will also show how important it is to fit one’s talents into the right job, whether it be as sales representative or sales manager.
THE GREAT SALES MYTHS Doctors tell us that kidney stones are one of the most painful medical conditions human beings may suffer from. These small calcium fragments form in the kidney and eventually get stuck in the ureter, between the kidney and the bladder, causing tremendous pain. Fortunately, a treatment is available: ultrasonic-waves. However, people who have had one stone are very likely to have another. So for years, physicians placed such patients on low-calcium diets, thinking that since these stones are made of calcium, cutting down on calcium intake will do the trick. But soon, researchers studied the problem more and found that patients with low-calcium diets had 47% more stones than patients with normal calcium intake. The solution to the problem, appearing too simple and sensible, was in fact, totally wrong. This illustrates – rather painfully – the problem with assuming that if something makes sense intuitively, it must be true. For years Gallup has conducted research to verify what salespeople think of as fingertip knowledge.
