Can’t Sell, Won’t Sell…

📅 17th December 2020 | 2020/21 Sales Book Reviews

Rummaging through Linked-In recently I noticed that Stuart Pearce (no, not that Stuart Pearce) had written a sales book entitled “Can’t Sell, Won’t Sell“. It shares its title with a publication about advertising but I still decided to dip in and get a copy. This appears to be the authors third book, the previous two were about telesales. Read on….

What’s New

“That” Stuart Pearce became a bit of a national hero in 1996 at Wembley (you can Google the rest) and within a couple of minutes of reading CSWS I felt as though this book was from that era. There is nothing new in this publication at all. Most of the content one could have picked up from sales articles and sales training courses years ago. Some would say “well if it ain’t broken so why fix it?” suggesting that the sales methods from the last century are still relevant in the 2020’s. The author himself writes at the back of the book “Gone is the old, accepted way of selling” – so one has to question why the book is full of stuff like the ‘alternative close’, Neil Rackham’s aged SPIN; “smile when you dial”, Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs and A.I.D.A.

What’s Old

In the introduction, the author does remind the reader that in today’s world, buyers are much more aware of the sales process. Hence the need to show some contrast then! This book doesn’t. I did, however, like the section on overcoming objections. Stuart Pearce explains that this is a three-step process: 1. Ask back, 2. Empathise and 3. Provide the answer.

What’s Better

If you’re in your first telesales job, the short passage on getting past the gatekeeper is really useful as is Chapter Five. This describes the importance of vocal variety when speaking to a prospect either on the phone or face to face.

The pages on value and urgency shows the sales novice how to explain things to a customer in a certain way. e.g what would be the cost of not buying now?

What’s Worse

Most of what would normally be in this section I’ve already mentioned above.

Apart from the ‘Mehrabian’ pages, asking a customer (as the author suggests) “does that make sense?” is a real no-no. It implies that your customer hasn’t followed you. I also find it a bit patronising. Average public speakers tend to say this a lot.

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If you’re nineteen or twenty years of age and in your first sales role, then you’ll find this publication useful to flick through. It has some good points but cannot be considered as a serious publication for those salespeople who are in medium-to-high ticket B2B sales roles.

Tags: sales training