The Mordida Man by Ross Thomas
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
I’m a sucker for Ross Thomas books. I was reading this while suffering from a cold/flu and I was getting lost at the start juggling a number of characters but held on. Seemed to be more clever for the genre with the writing style and characters and a complicated plot.
Violating my policy of blogging about work-y stuff:
I work with a lot of different sales “execs”. I’m not saying it’s a high-turnover job, but I work at a growing company so there have been lots of new folks who’ve come in.
We have a pretty extensive training program for all new employees, but also with the sales team. It’s mostly to make sure they’re “speaking our language” in a way and also are following procedures we’ve set out. We do calls and meetings in a certain way for the most part.
The ones who don’t excel are the ones that start out by saying things internally like – “Hey, I’ve been selling a long time and I know how to do this…” or “I’ve been in this space for quite a while, I’m listening to the training, but on my calls I prefer to do it this way…”. To be fair, they’re eager to start selling, but it’s a flag.
The ones who last and make more sales are the ones that pay attention to the training and then afterwards are always taking notes and going over the transcripts of their past calls. They look to see what went well or what didn’t. They ask themselves “what did the prospect ask about and how did we answer”? Etc. It’s pretty interesting to watch them work.
Friday #deepthoughts
The Cocktail Waitress by James M. Cain
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Good pulp and an interesting afterword by the editor who restored the manuscript. May not be to everyone’s tastes but I thought it was enjoyable
Manifold: Time by Stephen Baxter
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
I liked most of it, but I think the ending went over my head. I should stew on it for a few days and come back and update…
Maybe I missed something – seemed to show promise until the last fourth of the book. Not sure. I wanted to like it but… ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Draft Animals: Living the Pro Cycling Dream by Phil Gaimon
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Phil still has the brochacho dick jokes but he spins a good yarn. It was more entertaining than I thought it’d be. It was a bit weird to read this so close to finishing Jens Voigt’s book. It’s like the flip side to that story and because of that feels more real in a way.