Closing out the 2019 Books
Had heard about this book for a while but when I got promoted a direct report recommended that I read it. There’s some decent advice in here.
So Good They Can’t Ignore You – ***
There were some interesting chapters and studies in there, but it felt like a really long blog post at times instead of a full book. I’m not sure why I get that vibe, but it stuck with me.
I enjoyed this quite a bit. The author has published more now, so there’s a series. I may try the second one soon.
Ooof- pretty serious, but well written. I’m not sure I’ll read more in the series unless friends recommend particular volumes.
Another enjoyable read. This may have been my first Gaiman novel to read (can that be right?).
The Mordida Man – ****
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.
Salesguys (or gals)
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
Follow up links / further reading
Regarding my last book post, here are some links to what I was referring to. I had wanted to know what happened to some of the agents involved in that case.
https://www.wired.com/2016/02/corrupt-silk-road-investigator-re-arrested-trying-to-flee-the-us/