For the past few years, I've been answering questions about sales by clients in workshops, advisory engagements, sales coaching calls, and email. On Quora, users and followers ask me to answer sales and business development questions all the time. This book is a compilation of these questions and answers. The answers extracted from my Quora activity have been updated and expanded in many cases. I've organized the book so that each question is answered independently. That is, the book does not build on itself like many books with chapters. You should use the book frequently as a reference guide to difficult questions that arise during the workday. This also means from time to time, I may refer to a concept more than once or you may notice parts of one answer to be very similar to parts of other answers. Even with these occasional duplications, most of the content is original and does not overlap. I've also organized the book as best I can into sections, so that groups of questions about the same major topic are together. Many times answering one question leads to more questions and this organization attempts to provide the reader with some flow, given the otherwise modular nature of the book. Any references to outside resources, companies, blog posts, and books were done completely on my own and without request or provocation by these sources. I receive no financial gain for referring to these companies, except a reference or two to my other book I strongly urge you to buy and read, of course... Check it out on Amazon: "Startup Sales: How to Sell if You REALLY, REALLY Have to and Don't Know How." You might be asking, "Why 52 questions? Is this supposed to be one question per week?" I first thought about stopping at a nice round 50 questions. That number seemed too boring and unoriginal, so I added two more questions. Then, I was concerned that readers would relate "52" to weeks in the year, even though that was unintentional. Like a smart man, I ask my wife what I should do. She described this best: "When you're starting a company or a career in sales, questions arise all the time. If you can learn the answer to one of these questions every week for a year, your sales knowledge and abilities will increase so dramatically that you'll never need to worry about sales again." So there you have it - "52 Sales Questions Answered."
About the Author: Scott Sambucci is a Silicon Valley veteran, spending more than 15 years building sales processes, developing new markets, and creating technology products for two startups and two publicly traded companies. Throughout his career, Scott has sold educational products, software solutions, data services, and consulting engagements to: * Top universities, including Duke University, Columbia University, and the University of Pennsylvania; * Financial firms, including Wells Fargo, Bank of America, Morgan Stanley, and Freddie Mac; * United States government agencies, including the Federal Housing Financing Agency, the Department of Treasury, and the Federal Reserve Bank. He regularly teaches university courses in Economics, Finance, Entrepreneurship, and Strategic Management and recently received a "Faculty Member of Excellence" award in 2012. Scott has been interviewed on CNBC, NPR, and The Financial Times. Scott lives in Northern California with his wife and son, and is a three-time Ironman triathlete.