See of you can answer this question from the book correctly:
What do the top sales and marketing professionals have in common?
a. Experience and background
b. Education and training
c. Great presentation skills
d. Aggressive closers
e. None of the above

If you guessed "e", you are correct. According Gallup's extensive research spanning 30 years and interviews with 250,000 sales people, over 1 million customers and 25,000 sales managers, this is what the top sales people have in common:
* They were in the type of sales job where they were able to use their top talents every day
* They developed their own unique selling style based on their top talents
* They had a productive relationship with their manager.

Since the top 25 % of the sales force accounts for 57% of the sales revenue in most organizations, the more sales people get to use their top talents, the more likely they are to build a sustainable and profitable customer base.

So, how do you discover your individual strengths and talents? One of the unique features of this book is that you go to an Internet site and take an assessment that will immediately tell you what your top five strengths are. What I found intriguing is that these strengths are much more practical than the strengths I have seen in any other kind of assessment instruments. You can then use the book to determine how to put these strengths to work for you so they become true talents. (By focusing on these strengths I have increased my own productivity by 100%!!)

The other thing I really liked about this book is the easy to read format and the fact that the author includes great real world stories and examples of how top sales people used their talents to excel in their job. The author, Benson Smith, who started his career as a successful salesperson with a Fortune 500 medical device company and eventually became the CEO, writes in clear business language and does not spend a lot of time espousing complicated theories. If anything, the book is too short and leaves you wanting more.

The book also talks about the key role that managers play in insuring the success of the sales effort. The chapter on management should be required reading for anyone who is a manager or thinks they want to become one. (You will also find this chapter extremely helpful if your current manager is less than ideal.)

I have spent over 20 years in the medical and pharmaceutical industry in sales, management, marketing and training. Over the last 9 years, I have had a successful business focused on performance development consulting and training. This book has inspired me to rethink my approach. I hope it will do the same for others in my profession. Most organizations tie training to "improvement opportunities." Gallup's research has found that training will be far more productive if you focus on strengths and how to build them into true talents.

17 of 18 found the following review helpful:


Understand Your Sales Career - Know which job to pursue  Mar 02, 2003 By Matthew Gethins
I will first tell you that I have read thousands of books over the course of my life, many were books on business and sales. This is the first time that I have ever felt compelled to write a review. Also this is the first time I ever read a business book and then felt disappointed when the book was over, I would normally feel that way at the end of a particularly good novel.
I'll just have to go and buy all the other books in the series.

The information imparted by "Discovering Your Sales Strengths" has had a profound impact on me. Undoubtedly many salespeople that read the book will suddenly understand their own career a whole lot better. And hopefully this will be the beginning of the end of unenlightened and just plain dumb sales management.

This book has also greatly improved my overall confidence. I will probably be changing jobs later this year and I'll actually really know what kinds of jobs to aggressively pursue.

16 of 18 found the following review helpful:


Strengths & Sales = Gallup Delivers  Mar 11, 2003 By Joseph Valentine Dworak
Once again the Gallup organization, specifically Benson Smith and Tony Ruttigliano, deliver a good usable book to help improve your career based on strengths. This book begins with Gallup's common message, based on research, that if you focus on what you are good at; you will get better at it. This book continues on showing you what makes up a these strengths, based on a combination of talents which cluster together and come out as things like Competition, Empathy, and Command. This book will allow you to focus more on how you are wired, and what you have, than what you do not, and will never have.

Most importantly this book gives you access to your 'Top Five' strengths, or patterns for success. These strengths, ranging from Harmony to Woo, will show you how you alone are as unique as 1 in 30 million people. The book could have been 5 stars if Gallup would have provided more patterns of strength and how they work in sales careers, they only give you a few morsels from their vault of knowledge and what patterns and combinations of strengths work in sales. They do let you in on the fact that Competition, Command and Empathy were themes commonly found in successful sales-agents.

Overall this book is an A-, another great work from Gallup based on research, not just theory.

Joseph Dworak

18 of 21 found the following review helpful:


Duplicates 'Now, Discover Your Strengths'  Oct 27, 2003 By Business Reader "John"
DO NOT buy this book if you've already read the Gallup Organization's earlier book, 'Now, Discover Your Strengths' by Buckingham. They're almost identical and you really learn nothing new in 'Sales.' Having taken the StrengthFinders tests for both books, I found that 3 of 5 strengths were the same for me. In addition, I found that 'Sales Strengths' did nothing to tell me what sales environment or type of sales I should be in. The authors did a poor job of applying the theoretical strengths to practical sales environments and telling me that if I have x strength I should seek y sales job. Overall, the 'Sales' book read like a very long instruction guide to the test. Caveat emptor...

5 of 5 found the following review helpful:


What I Was looking For  Apr 14, 2003 By Esther M. Ogrady
After leaving a sales position in a company I helped start I felt very frustrated. I could not understand why my sales performance was so poor in a company that I cared so deeply about. My conclusion was that I must be a [lousy] sales guy. WRONG!

This book taught me that sales success comes from finding and using my talents. This requires that I work in a role that allows me to fully leverage those talents. This was a wonderful insight for me and I feel a great deal of gratitude to the authors for giving me the direction I was looking for. I would highly recommend this book to anyone who felt success was eluding them in their sales career.

However, anyone looking to see the documented research may not be satisfied. Sure, there are some juicy morsels to enjoy along the way, but most often I kept wanting to go deeper into the research. The authors' evangelistic style keeps the reader on the straight and narrow. I would have liked the opportunity to draw some of my own conclusions.

The supporting website makes this book an incredible value. The online assessment was excellent. Similar tests cost companies hundreds of dollars. The book, along with the assessment, was exactly what I was looking for while I make my next big career decision.

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