What every sales leader should be looking for is a way to equip his/her sales force with tactical and strategic tools that will separate them from their competitors. This is where Heavy Hitter Sales Linguistics: 101 Advanced Sales Call Strategies for Senior Salespeople comes into play. It’s a unique, researched look into how people use and interpret language during the decision-making process. Written for senior salespeople it will help you, and therefore through coaching your team, to expand influence within the company and with prospects and clients. This will result in not only winning more business, but also being able to explain to others how and why you win. You’ll learn language-based strategies and tactics to secure customer meetings, what to say and do when presenting in face-to-face customer and prospect meetings and how to bond with customers using sales linguistics. Find out how the customer's mind uses language and perfect your sales intuition so you always say the right words at the right time.

The book addresses every step of the sales cycle and provides a paint-by-numbers process to approach, engage and persuade prospective customers. It’s easy to read, with short chapters, extensive examples, illustrations and exercises. This is one book every sales leader should have on their bookshelf.

Heavy Hitter Sales Wisdom:
Proven Sales Warfare Strategies, Secrets of Persuasion and Common Sense Tips for Success

Book Review by
Business Summaries

Heavy Hitter Sales Wisdom is a book of insight from some of the world's "heaviest hitters" of all time. It features the collective wisdom of such luminaries as Sun Tzu, Jesus Christ and Siddhartha Gautama. While these and other such famous figures featured in the book may not appear to have too much to do with sales, they were masters of strategy, common-sense judgment and persuasion. As the book shows, those who master the roles of strategist, persuader and sage of common sense become bona fide Heavy Hitters. 

This book provides state-of-the-art sales strategies, a uniquely entertaining approach to sales and truly enlightening wisdom to aid salespeople in their quest to plan and win the big sales battles. It picks up from where Martin's last book Heavy Hitter Selling leaves off. While the previous book teaches readers how to join the ranks of the sales elite, this new book helps readers solidify their status as true Heavy Hitters.

Heavy Hitter Selling:
How Successful Salespeople Use Language and Intuition to Persuade Customers to Buy

Harvard Business School Review

Like other marketing and sales books published recently, this one stresses the importance of human behavior. But unlike the others, it puts an emphasis on language. The first section deals with the human nature of communication.

It describes different layers of communication, including phonetics, content, purpose, and the way the mind uses and interprets language. "Heavy hitters," or successful salespeople, can structure their dialogue and create personal rapport with customers by borrowing ideas from neurolinguistics, the study of how the brain and the body work in conjunction with language.

The second section examines strategies for deciding which customers to target and which actions to take. The third section focuses on the power of persuasion, and touches on a deeper level of the meaning of language: the power of metaphor and language’s ability to appeal to emotions rather than logic. Though the author defines salesmanship principally as an art, he believes that art has a scientific element. Salespeople could well benefit by exploring scientific models of language. Practical exercises and a glossary make the book useful for everyone.

The Real Story of Informix Software and Phil White:
Lessons in Business and Leadership for the Executive Team

American Bar Association Review

In his engaging book, The Real Story of Informix Software and Phil White — Lessons in Business and Leadership for the Executive Team, Martin chronicles that story from an insider's perspective. For Martin, it is a cautionary tale that must be told against the backdrop of a unique chapter in Silicon Valley's history —a period that he terms "California's second gold rush."

After watching Informix grow from a hundred million to a billion dollars in sales, Martin witnessed key missteps by White that resulted in the company's "complete collapse —culturally, ethically and financially." Martin's first-hand account of these events expertly weaves together a history of the database industry, an analysis of the lessons learned from Informix's successes and failures, the legal and accounting issues behind the company's massive revenue restatement and White's securities fraud conviction, as well as a portrait of a leader he labels "the greatest salesperson I have ever seen." 

Martin's insights into the psyche of the CEO are also valuable (albeit, at times, somewhat disconcerting). The book's final chapter consists of an interview that Martin conducted with White immediately prior to his incarceration. While acknowledging some of his strategic mistakes, White nonetheless states, “ultimately, I still believe I didn't do anything wrong.... All I was trying to do was protect the company."

According to Martin, maybe the most important lesson learned is that history repeats itself. In his closing remarks, he offers this observation: most business leaders... are good people with consciences... However, the difference between greatness and infamy has never been smaller for today's business leaders. Under the business climate of Sarbanes-Oxley, officers risk losing not only their careers but also their freedom, every time they sign off on their company's numbers.