Sales Autopsy: 50 Postmortems Reveal What Killed the Sale (and What Might Have Saved It)

The ability to learn from one's mistakes is essential to business success, if not outright survival. Better still is to learn from someone else's mistakes. Dan Seidman gives readers this rare opportunity in his first book, "Sales Autopsy". Pulling from 600 of some of the worst real-life sales scenarios, Seidman conducts an analysis of what went wrong as well as his recommendations for how it could have gone better for 50 of the most egregious (and amusing). The concept itself is quite clever and well played by Seidman, who offers sound, practical advice for both the novice as well as some needed reminders for the seasoned sales professional in a concise entertaining read. As a small business owner constantly pressed for time, I was particularly helped by Seidman's work on how to quickly qualify and, more importantly, disqualify prospects. Developing a set of criteria and insightful questions to determine if a prospect is worth your limited resources is critical to effective sales management - a tool that will save you and your prospects a lot of time and headaches. Seidman also stresses the need to re-tool your sales process to respond to more sophisticated buyers, noting the most successful sales professional know how to listen, not just pitch. By asking the right questions to determine your customer's real need is much more effective than spouting your product features and benefits. Good advice, worth the read.

I loved this book! There's nothing like a little schadenfreude to make you feel better about yourself! More than just horrifically embarrassing stories, this book shows you how to learn from a mistake, or just let it go and move past it. I can already think of a few people this would be perfect for. I can't recommend it highly enough.