I noticed a conflicting comment above in posts. Since, in my opinion, it is a very important thread, I wanted to draw attention to these conflicting views;
Quote:
Dougd55;
These principles from so many years ago are even more valuable today in our complex, high-speed world. Dale Carnegie, Napoleon Hill, Wallace Wattles, and even Ben Franklin all lived by the principles that successful people today continue to live by. They never get old or change.
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Then;
Quote:
JacquesWerth;
It provides the basic ways to deal with people that you need just to enter into the sales profession. However, let's not get too carried away with our praises.
It does not provide much in the way of actionable modern sales strategies, tactics or processes, which are required for success in this century.
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As you can see, these are quite contradictory. Since the later are comments from a man I who I beleive was recently banned from this website forum and since the "basics" never change, the praise is well deserved indeed. I am with you
Dougd55.
Let's keep in context that Dale Carnegie's book and the audio version of same, still sells more today that Jacques Werth's relatively new book. And that something like 20 million copies have been sold, making it one of the best selling books of all time. In other words, do not take my opinion, just look at the stats.
The basic selling skills and basic human interaction (communication) skills have not changed since the day of the hero in Og Mandini's "The World's Greatest Salesman", a biblical carpet sales person. Today, is no differ4net than the day Rudyard Kipling wrote this for his new born son;
Quote:
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools ...
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There are many words being twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools. Look no further than the Internet, by far, the greatest problem with it is that marketing techniques (not sales techniques) are making book titles, websites, e-zines, e-reports and YouTube videos appear at the top of searches that promote concepts that are not well researched at all and not rooted in the foundation of selling or communication skills.
Mentoring, the old way of learning sales, has all but disappeared, replaced with a great deal of useless information being sold by those taking advantage of general ignorance.
Since I was mentored from age 17 and have spent my whole adult life in pursuit of the truth about sales and marketing, as well as sales training, with my own research and through being a sales trainer, I stand as perhaps one of today's foremost experts on the decline of sales training and the sales training industry, which has sped up dramatically since the popularity of the World Wide Web took off. Do not beleive the hype. People are not much different than they were 2,000+ years ago, at the dawn of civilization. The only thing that has changed is technology.
In fact, if you read The Fall of the Roman Empire, you will see that today's civilization has some remarkable parallels! As a race we have not learned from previous mistakes and, in general, we continue to pull down our trail blazers (Carnegie, Nightingale, etc). The latest way, which has not repeated itself twice, first in the 90's, now in the
'new millennium', is to say that people have changed. That you better change or else.
There is even one school that hypes SALES 2.0 ... that goes as far as to say that in "the Google Society" everythign is going to be bought online, sales people are going to decline and a whole load of other all encompassing comments on the future that is completely and totally unfounded.
What is "required for Success in this Century" is a return to the basics. Reading "How to win friends and influence people" should be a prerequisite of entering the sales profession. So should taking a sales course that teaches the fundamentals of probing, supporting, closing and handling attitudes. Once you have those under your belt and have learned the basics of prospecting too, then have 5 years expereince using these skills, you will see exactly why "The old is new again!"
Unless you sell in an industry that is highly researched online, and there aren't many of those, you will need to learn prospecting and direct marketing techniques to build your base of clients previous to receiving enough referrals to augment your sellign efforts. And, even if you can get enough leads online, you still need to know how to sell.
"Best of luck always, with whatever it is you decide to do!"
