Clear Sales Message Book Review

📅 24th January 2021 | 2020/21 Sales Book Reviews

Assumption is the mother of all lost sales

What a delightfully quirky book Clear Sales Message is. Author James Newell, a former car salesman for Mercedes-Benz in the UK, maps out in three parts how you the small business owner with an e-commerce website, or sales professional (who regularly attends networking groups) can get your message across – because if your prospective customers can’t or doesn’t understand what you do, they won’t buy what you have to offer, will they?

Read on…

What’s New

CSM is a self-published book and reasonably priced. The branding and general feel of the book reminds me of the “Idiots Guide” series – not in a sardonic way but much more of a helpful guide. One anonymous individual described it as the little black book of sales. An epithet it probably deserves. There’s lots of repetition (which I normally reserve for the ‘what’s worse’ section) which is justified in my view. James does really bang home the point that unless you can clearly articulate what you can offer, then nobody will buy from you. Common sense really.

One of the last pages in the book, reminds us to update our sales message on a regular basis. Wise words.

What’s Old

The author makes a bold statement in the introduction. Essentially it says that sales and selling relies on honest and effective communication – and not sales techniques and persuasion. But he appears to be at odds with this with the “Yes” questions on 214. This whole ‘getting to yes’ schtick is, in my view, manipulation and does smack of 1980’s hard sales techniques. Look I know that ‘closing questions’ (wherever they are required in the sales conversation) need to have context and yes there are customers who need to be guided with a firm metaphorical shove between the shoulders – but ‘did you ever’ or ‘are you tired of’ may put someone’s back up in these times where customers have tremendous choice.

Far better, one asks questions which invoke a ‘NO’ – e.g. ‘have you considered the effect that the new legislation on **** will have on your export business?’

What’s Better

The end-of-chapter ‘lessons learnt’ or ‘tips from this section’ are comprehensive and full of take action points. There are many examples of what and what not to do. I particularly liked the passage on ‘differentiators’. The author cites “reliable” (widely used by individuals and companies) as being a differentiator – which of course it isn’t. Every customer needs a reliable plumber/gas engineer/IT support person – being reliable in business is a prerequisite.

I loved the pages on ‘getting people to remember you’. There several examples on how to create a memorable e-mail address and website domains using Plain English with action points for each.

Sales literature, social media handles; taglines, business cards & hashtags all come under scrutiny in CSM – it’s a bit like having your very own branding expert by the side of your bed, or wherever you read business improvement books! There’s even a guide and a call to action for owners of vans and trucks to think of some catchy phrase. Years ago, a representative from a cleaning firm stood up each week at a networking breakfast club and delivered this:

“We don’t cut corners, we clean ’em”

What’s Worse

Being published before the pandemic, one wonders whether some of the passages will be relevant in the future. Presumably James Sewell, who may have another book in the offing, will publish the various “what to do” now we’re firmly in the Zoom/Remo/Bluejeans era.

Finally, I would have liked to have seen a full reference section and index as is the case with many other sales books. This would have added a bit more credence to the publication.

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This is a noble effort by James Sewell and small business people will benefit from applying the ideas that are laid out in Clear Sales Message.

Tags: Learning, sales