“Sales Craft: Proven Tips, Tactics and Ideas to Elevate Your Sales” by Brendan McAdams is a quick read, well written and clearly based on practical experience.
Brendan McAdams on Sales Craft: Proven Tips to Elevate Your Sales
I first met Brendan McAdams (@BrendanMcAdams) in August of 2020 when when he dropped by a Virtual Bootstrapper Breakfast. He was knowledgeable and helpful, with a warmth and sense of humor that made for a great roundtable conversation. He mentioned he had a book coming out, Sales Craft: Proven Tips, Tactics and Ideas to Elevate Your Sales Because he had made such a favorable impression I bought the Kindle version and found that it offers a useful perspective on sales.
Brendan McAdams’ “Sales Craft” is a quick read, well written and clearly based on practical experience
Organized in short chapters that encapsulate lessons learned from McAdam’s successful career in enterprise sales, SalesCraft offers a wealth of practical tips for new salespeople and startup founders selling to the enterprise. McAdams is a careful observer, and his model of enterprise sales as project management resonates with my experience. He encourages salespeople to walk to the other side of the table and look at a potential deal from multiple perspectives:
- Who will benefit and who will lose if a deal goes through?
- What happens if it goes through–and what will happen if it does not?
- Where is the source of funding?
- What effect will it have on operations, competitive posture, and other issues the customer is weighing as part of the decision process?
I really like his short encapsulation of Kennedy’s vision for Apollo in the “Telling Stories” chapter:
- Send a man to the moon.
- Get him back safely to earth.
- Do it by the end of 1969
if only other strategic initiatives could be so clearly framed.
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Image Credit: “Sales Craft” (c) 2020 Brendan McAdams, used with permission