Listen To This Article

A Book For How To Be A Better Sales Person

Marketing, sales and management, are 3 core requirements of any business. Chet Holmes draws on his own personal experiences, to outline 12 proven strategies to improve and grow business. Persons involved in sales, marketing and management, will definitely be able to increase profits, if they relentlessly focus on and implement the tips and strategies enumerated in this book. Disciplined practice of even some of the tips, will yield better sales. Anyone seeking to grow their business and shape their sales and sales strategy, should read this book.

Learn To Lead A Sales Team

• Importance of training your sales staff frequently and regularly
• The best training and management techniques for sales staff
• 2 qualities of sales superstars
• How to hire sales superstars
• Modern tactics for lead generation, nurturing, and closing
• Building and tracking a conversion funnel
• Importance of education based marketing. Do not just sell products, but sell the whole story behind the product
• Connect with your customers and build a relationship/rapport with them. Your best clients should become more friends than customers
• Avoid gatekeepers, identify decision makers, and pitch to them
• Importance of organizing email

The Ultimate Sales Machine Book Summary

A search on Amazon’s top selling books will reveal Chet’s book, The Ultimate Sales Machine as the #1 business book on Amazon, #1 Sales and Marketing book on Amazon, and also on New York Times best seller list.

The intense writing style and his no-nonsense approach is what sticks with the reader the most. You get a sense that Chet has much to say and much knowledge to share, and he has tried to squeeze it all into this one book. It ranks high amongst the most sold books of all time for a valid reason.

Published in 2007, the book may seem a little out dated at first, but it opens up your mind with some great ideas, actionable tips interspersed with some interesting anecdotes. He speaks of some unique and different strategies which he has personally used to close new business.

Email Organization: Organizing email might seem like a small trivial task today. However, as you continue to read you realize that email organization is an art. It tells how to organize email titles and headlines to stay efficient. His strategy leads you to understand the importance of email and also reveal to you exactly what you need to say in your email to hook your client. Then of course how to get clients and close deals is also included.

One of the great things about this book is it’s incredibly actionable. You can pick up his email template and incorporate it into your emails right away. It encourages you to use and apply all the tactical gems scattered throughout the content. Team communication is incredibly important and more difficult than ever today. The book The Messy Middle has more ideas and perspective on team communication.

Business Development Strategy: Sales managers need to structure their day to manage and accomplish tasks in the best possible manner. He lists all step-by-step and day-by-day tactics to get the best out of himself, best out of his employees, and win dream clients.

---

Want to buy a book review like this?

LEARN MORE

---

Tracking your actions and plans for success are keys to success according to Chet. Here is a list of our favorite 25 goal and tracking tools.

He provides different worksheets to fill up with your weekly activities. Minute details like cold calls made, meetings set up, meetings cancelled, how many CEO’s met and impressed – are all asked and this helps you to review your performance through the week and stay on top of the sales system. Another amazing book on the importance of consistency is Discipline Equals Freedom.

A sales manager who follows these tips and implements them regularly, will surely stay in the forefront of the sales system and garner a name and respect for himself in the eyes of his superiors, peers and employees.

Winning People: The name of the game in sales is to influence people and win them over. Chet Holmes suggests an old and new school approach to hook people. He gives different strategies to be noticed by prospects and then how to get them to respond. One of the strategies is how to give people cute little knickknacks as gifts, which have little monetary value but with immense potential to dominate conversations.

The out of the box strategies suggested in this book are really unique and fantastic. People like Chet are what are called Challengers. They are superstar sales people that can change the trajectory of your company. For more on this read the book The Challenger Sale.

This book’s approach to sales is very straight forward, thorough, and creative. Organizational basics are well enumerated and discussed, before he delves into the specifics and the practical. He strikes a great balance between storytelling and actionable ideas.

There is a story about when Chet was a sales manager (this is not in the book). At conference meetings he would set out some delicious treats. Only the people who hit their sales targets were invited to enjoy these treats. This speaks volumes about his strict focus on performance, no nonsense approach, and of course dedication to closing sales.

Many people have a bad taste in their mouth about sales, but it is necessary and at the center of all businesses. Billionaire Peter Thiel supports sales and talks a great deal about it in his book Zero To One. Another legendary book about sales is Winning Through Intimidation.

About The Author Chet Holmes

Chet Holmes was a much-admired corporate trainer and sales and marketing consultant. He was the founder of Chet Holmes International. He worked for Charlie Munger, Warren Buffett's billionaire business partner and was a proven selling superstar. Chet doubled revenues for one of their businesses three years in a row. He doubled sales for 9 divisions of the business. That too, in a declining industry--print advertising. The story goes that this caused Charlie Munger to comment, "Chet, are you sure we are not lying, cheating or stealing? In all my years in business, I've never seen anything like this."

Chet took the principles and strategies he had used, and then turned those into 65 training products and this New York Times bestseller.

Chet passed away in 2012, at age 55, after fighting a long and hard battle with leukemia. “The Ultimate Sales Machine” was the only book he authored before he passed away.

---

Want to buy a book review like this?

LEARN MORE

---