By Chuck Jones

Although it's not written specifically for financial advisors, How Winners Sell: 21 Proven Strategies to Outsell Your Competition & Win the Big Sale by Dave Stein is as good a general sales strategy book as you're going to find.

The book is slanted toward selling to businesses, as opposed to selling to individuals, so if you're in the employee benefit or executive compensation markets, you'll get more out of it. Others need not crack the spine.

The author begins by acknowledging that business operations have changed dramatically over the last few decades, and necessarily, the way salespeople operate needs to change. The old ways, he writes, are obsolete. He also tells why:

"Your clients don't have time to filter, analyze and integrate what's relevant from all the data that's bombarding them. It's like trying to drink water from a fire hose."

"Companies you sell for, as well as companies you sell to, know you are reachable anytime, anywhere--at work, on the road, at home, in the shower, at the Little League game, even on vacation. So everyone expects you to be on call, available and informed--your employers, your clients, your prospects, as well as your family and friends. . . .

"This information revolution has you, the sales professional, caught in a box. You are expected to provide whatever information the client needs, and more--not tomorrow, but right now! If you are unable to provide it, your client can easily find someone who will do the job. And so can your boss."

After this wake-up call, Stein says there's an upside. "One point in your favor: There's so much information available now that the job of finding, evaluating, managing and using it has become a limiting factor. Your clients don't have time to filter, analyze and integrate what's relevant from all the data that's bombarding them. It's like trying to drink water from a fire hose."

From there, the author presents 21 sales strategies that run in sequence through four stages of the sale:

1. Preparing yourself for the sale.
   
2. Looking for sales opportunities.
   
3. Getting into the sale and the presentation.
   
4. Working after the sale.

These strategies are presented logically in straightforward language that's not peppered with cute buzzwords and acronyms, which is refreshing in a sales book.

How Winners Sell: 21 Proven Strategies to Outsell Your Competition & Win the Big Sale Dave Stein Bard Press $24.95, hard cover www.bardpress.com

Tactic boxes
Of most help are the "tactic boxes" that are dispersed throughout the text. These are, in effect, sales tips--things you can try that are based on various strategies in the book. Here is a sampling:

• "If you are preparing to call on an executive, have enough information, insight and opinion to be able to talk about her world for 15 minutes longer than the time scheduled for the meeting. If you do this, you will never fear running out of something valuable to say."
  
• "Top salespeople know that if they can get into a company before an initiative is officially announced, they have a better chance of getting the inside track. Spend some of your time monitoring press releases, analysts' reports, SEC filings, industry reports and whatever else you can find about your target industries and accounts, so that if you see an opportunity to make a contribution, you are there first."
  
• "When you rehearse for an executive presentation with your team, have someone play the role of antagonist. Give him the responsibility of asking a wide range of tough, probing questions. Make sure you can answer them all confidently."
  

The book is full of practical tools and advice, including how to tell the difference between high-quality and low-quality sales opportunities, preparing an agenda for a sales presentation and an appendix with more than two dozen website addresses where readers can get more sales information. Most helpful is a series of checklists that helps the reader: prepare for a sales call, make the call, do follow-up interviews, and make proposals and presentations.

Stein's mission throughout the book seems to be to turn salespeople into business professionals. He puts it like this: "It comes down to perception. If your clients see you as just a salesperson, they won't respect you the way they would someone they view as a businessperson. Here's how they think: A businessperson is a professional; a businessperson is there for the long haul. Salespeople are all the same, interchangeable; they're just after a quick buck. This perception, common among top executives, is unfair, but it's a fact of life."

Indeed, times have changed in the sales profession, and How Winners Sell is a practical guide to making the transition.

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