Book Review: Strengths Based Selling
Are all sellers the same? Of course not. There is no such thing as the prototype seller. Great, successful sellers come from all types of backgrounds; no two have exactly the same strengths or weaknesses; some are extraverts, others introverts; some are technically oriented, others have no technical aptitude what-so-ever.
So if there’s so much room for people with different strengths and characteristics to succeed in sales, what is the “secret” to success?
Tony Rutigliano and Brain Brim answer that question in Strengths Based Selling (Gallup Press: 2011). Based on the StrengthsFinder tool developed by Dr. Donald O. Clifton, the book describes the 34 ‘talent themes’ that are identified through the assessment tool. When a seller takes the assessment, it identifies the seller’s top five themes which are the strengths the seller should focus on—these are the strengths they should base their selling efforts on.
First, let’s define some terms as used in the book:
Talent: “a natural way of thinking, feeling, or behaving, such as the tendency to be outgoing in social situations.”
Strength: “the ability to consistently produce a positive outcome through near-perfect performance in a specific task.”
Skill: “the basic ability to move through the fundamental steps of a task.”
Knowledge: “information—what you know.”
Practice: repetition
The book’s argument is that by knowing your strengths which encompass your talents and then adding skills, knowledge, and practice, you can maximize your sales success because selling then becomes a natural extension of who you are—sales comes naturally.
So far, so good.
The authors then address the strengths based concept to the reality of selling—in prospecting, assessing opportunities, negotiating, customer service, and the various other areas of the sale.
The concept is great. The short coming of the book is it actually gives very little that can be used by a seller or manager to change one’s selling behavior—even after taking the StrengthsFinder assessment.
Readers of the book can take the assessment for free as each book has a code that can be used to access the StrengthsFinder. Upon completion of the assessment, the seller will be provided with their top 5 themes with some suggestions on how to implement them. The guidance is very broad and generalized.
If you don’t find the information to be specific enough to be of real help, you can pay for upgrades which will give you your additional themes and access to some individualized coaching.
Pick up a copy of the book—you will glean enough from the book to more than justify the price of the book. But don’t expect to see significant change in your sales business without investing more dollars since the book is really a marketing tool for the add-ons to the StrengthsFinder.
