Sales Automation Done Right (SADR) is Now Available as an eBook

The world of eCommerce is truly amazing. It took SalesWays Press several months to publish the paper version of Sales Automation Done Right and arrange distribution through Amazon.Com. Publishing the eBook version was much easier.

The first task was finding a reliable partner to convert the manuscript into the forms required by the eBook stores we had targeted to distribute. These are MobiPocket, a French company acquired by Amazon a couple of years ago; eReader, a subsidiary of Motricity and the Palm Software Store (operated by eReader). MobiPocket has its own proprietary format for text and illustrations, as does eReader.

We chose Scribe, based in Philadelphia and Miami to do the conversions. David Rech, Andy Brown and their teams worked with us to ensure that the book’s vital illustrations would be faithfully reproduced and usable on small PDA and smart phone screens. Scribe accomplished this by the use of magnified images that can be scrolled left and right, up and down to view all the information. They worked with us to create a system of hot links between chapters, sections and to illustrations to allow readers to move quickly to the information they need. They did a great job!

We worked with Jeremie Le Proust in Paris to upload the book into the MobiPocket eBook Store, and to solve a humorous problem that evolved over their use of the “customers who bought this book also bought” category. It seemed that the first few purchasers of SADR were also interested in purchasing other material that didn’t quite fit the same genre. We were hesitant to move forward with an inappropriate association linked to our book. We explained our position to Jeremie and he readily fixed it.

We worked with Jim Harvey, the head of content and developer services at Motricity to keep our project on track with eReader, and with Sarah Janoch at Publishing Dimensions, who manages the product library for eReader. Sarah helped us clear the last hurdles and publish versions on eReader and the Palm Store just as 1996 came to an end.

Some books are too valuable to leave at home on the shelf. The obvious problem is that most are too heavy and too bulky to carry around all of the time. The best example for medical professionals is the PDR, the phone book sized Physician’s Desk Reference that lists critical information about pharmaceuticals and drug interactions. Until eBooks arrived, these were impossible to carry around. Now they live comfortably in smart phones, PDAs and notebook computers, always available for reference at a moment’s notice. As eBooks, they can be digitally searched, bookmarked and notated without damaging the pages. Information links can make them even more useful.

SADR is the PDR for sales professionals. The paper version is not as big, but still too bulky to easily carry around all of the time. SADR is my CRM and sales automation bible. I refer to its glossary of CRM terminology frequently, and have book marks in about fifty places to help me when I’m planning marketing campaigns, plotting selling strategies, managing opportunities and looking for ideas.

To celebrate the publication of our first eBook, SalesWays is offering free registration codes for our SalesCycle Manager Software for Palm and Windows to purchasers of the eBook from any of the three publishers. Download a trial version of the software from the SalesWays Store, and send us the information requested in the registration instructions along with a copy of your sales receipt. As always, the Excel version is already available free of charge.

The combination of the SADR eBook and Sales Cycle Manager software is the perfect combination to empower you to unleash the potential of the SalesWays methodology and apply it to your personal needs.

I’m writing this on the way to Hawaii, on a cruise ship, a planned attempt at avoiding part of the long Canadian winter (which has actually been very forgiving this year). Cruises are always a good opportunity to read books, something that I find tough to do in life back home.

I quickly read two excellent books, the kind that you can’t put down once you start. One of them was Bob Woodward’s account of “deep throat,” the contact who gave him and Carl Bernstein guidance while investigating the Watergate break-in. In a short postscript, Bernstein said something that caught my attention: “Reporters may believe they control the story, but the story always controls the reporters.” This triggered something. I have often talked about the story that resides within our OPM sales method, which originated out of my first book and which has been expanded and augmented within the framework of OPM sales training. A sales method must have a story, because it has to follow real life experiences involved in the process of selling. A good many sales methods have been developed over the past decades and only a few of them have survived and are accepted. The test of a sales method is that it has to work, and it takes a lot of time to establish that. It’s extremely difficult to get salespeople to switch methods, even to a good one. They don’t have much patience, and if they try something new that detracts them from their normal routine, they had better see results quickly. If not, they revert to their previous way of doing things. The point is, that it is difficult to introduce new methods to salespeople if they have spent any significant time in the field and have confidence in what they believe is the right way to do it. Because of this, bad sales methods will never go mainstream–they are like bad news stories, unless they stand up to scrutiny, people won’t believe them.

Bernstein says the “story” controls the reporters. He’s right. Nothing can change the story, because it should be, by definition the truth. Reporters grapple with the task of finding the truth. It’s the same with sale methods. We try to discover a sales “method” Sometime, under scrutiny the method breaks down, because we haven’t got it right. The method only works if it truly reflects what goes on in the sales process—figuring that out is as difficult as a reporter trying to unearth the details that will piece together the “story”.

If I seem like I’m belaboring this point, it’s because I sometimes wonder how we got to where OPM is today. We started in the early nineties in assembling the components and here we are fifteen years later with a method, a book, a training course, and a patent. But the process was evolutionary, just like Woodward and Bernstein figuring out Watergate. There’s no doubt that the OPM method controlled us. Sometimes when we tried to add stuff the method fought back—with the new material the method broke down. We had to change it and test again, until it was right. As we added pieces to the puzzle, the basis for truth was tested. If we passed, we locked up that stage, and moved on.

The method controlled us, as the story controlled the reporters.

In my last post I referred to Michael Schrage’s comment that the 2×2 matrix rated along with PowerPoint as the two most popular business tools. I don’t rate them equal—PowerPoint does not have the same depth as the 2×2 in the power to unravel problems—it is more a set of tools to get a more effective portrayal of an idea or message. In an effort to learn more, I went over to Wikipedia to check on PowerPoint. This led to a digression that is worth blogging about.

Wikipedia says that PowerPoint is a ubiquitous presentation program. I guess we all knew that, and the reason it is ubiquitous is because of Microsoft’s marketing clout. It goes on to say that PowerPoint “is among the most prevalent forms of persuasion technology.” That last term caught my interest—I’ve heard of information technology, change technology, but this is the first I’ve heard of persuasion technology. I ploughed on:

“Persuasion technology is technology that can be used for presenting or promoting a point-of-view. Any technology designed and deployed for those purposes can be considered a persuasion technology. Such aids are regularly used in sales, diplomacy, politics, religion, military training, cult recruiting and management, and may potentially be used in any area of human interaction.”

Wow, look at what heads up the list–sales! Click on sales and you get this:

“Sales, or the activity of selling, forms an integral part of commercial activity. It could be argued that it is the cornerstone of business as it is the meeting of buyers and sellers and all other areas of business has the goal of making that meeting successful. Mastering sales is considered by many as some sort of persuading ‘art.’ On the contrary, the methodological approach of selling refers to it as a systematic process of repetitive and measurable milestones, by which a salesperson relates his offering, enabling the buyer to visualize how to achieve his goal in an economic way.”

I need to say “wow” a second time. That definition of sales is right on. I try to emphasize the true meaning of sales in our OPM course. I use a slide that says “sales is the business of doing business.” One of our trainers asked to take it out. I let him do it—but on sober second thought, I won’t do that again.

There is so much to talk about just in this simple wander through Wikipedia (sales is a persuading “art”, wow number 3!!)

Must do this again.