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The Art of the Sale: Learning from the Masters About the Business of Life
From the author of Ahead of the Curve, a revelatory look at successful selling and how it can impact everything we do
The first book of its kind, The Art of the Sale is the result of a pilgrimage to learn the secrets of the world's foremost sales gurus. Bestselling author Philip Delves Broughton tracked down anyone who could help him understand what it took to achieve greatness in sales, from technology billionaires to the most successful saleswoman in Japan to a cannily observant rug merchant in Morocco. The wisdom and experience Broughton acquired, revealed in this outstanding book, demonstrates as never before the complex alchemy of effective selling and the power it has to overcome challenges we face every day.
The first book of its kind, The Art of the Sale is the result of a pilgrimage to learn the secrets of the world's foremost sales gurus. Bestselling author Philip Delves Broughton tracked down anyone who could help him understand what it took to achieve greatness in sales, from technology billionaires to the most successful saleswoman in Japan to a cannily observant rug merchant in Morocco. The wisdom and experience Broughton acquired, revealed in this outstanding book, demonstrates as never before the complex alchemy of effective selling and the power it has to overcome challenges we face every day.
291 pages, Paperback
First published April 3, 2012
81 people are currently reading
521 people want to read
About the author
Philip Delves Broughton
15 books80 followersI grew up in England, graduated from Oxford University and was a journalist for ten years for The Daily Telegraph and The Times of London. I was The Telegraph's bureau chief in New York and Paris before going to Harvard Business School in 2004 to obtain my MBA. I now live in Connecticut with my wife and two sons."
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 47 reviews
August 11, 2015
Like Daniel Pink's To Sell is Human, but with more compelling stories.
When we sell we are forced to confront the truth about ourselves. What we are willing to do for a buck: the way we present ourselves to different people in different settings to different ends; the extent to which we mix our personal with our professional relationships. There are no right or wrong answers to these questions, but whatever answers we decide upon determine much about who we are and our chances at personal success.
From Majid, a morrocan salesman:
You judge a good salesman when he buys. The profit is not when you sell, it's when you buy. You make a profit the moment you buy. Only losers wait till they sell to make a profit. Everyone is always ready to buy or sell, it's just a question of asking.
You are like a beggar in sales, asking again and again all day. You never get upset. Of course, sometimes you have customers and you want to kill them. But you're not allowed to.
As salespeople, you look at everyone. But often customers don't even look at salespeople, they treat them like dirt. But if you stand there and watch and listen, you can learn a lot about the customer. The salesman who interrupts and waves his hands about has another twenty years of learning to do.
Accurately perceiving the motivations of a customer then, is just as important as understanding what product they want (e.g. when they equate 'the best' to mean 'the most expensive'.
Infomercials are a kind of highly targeted focus group, by which you can test products and methods of selling them.
Close by creating a sense of great value and scarcity. "Act now!" "For the low low price of only $19.95!"
More respect is giving to marketers rather than salespeople, even though when you give them something to sell they'll come back saying this was wrong, that needs to be changed. Such a mindset leads to a dreary homogeneity.
For Wynn (of the vegas hotel/casinos), storytelling as a means of getting employees to feel good about themselves through their work and provide superlative customer service as a result is like 'splitting the atom'.
When firms hire salespeople, they should be looking for a willingness to fail, rather than a track record of success. If they have only tasted success they've led a sheltered life and will soon crumple under the personal assault inevitable in any sales job.
Mcmurry: The single most important trait in any salesperson is the wooing instinct. This individual has a compulsive need to win and hold the affection of others.
In the absence of thousands of people with those rare wooer traits, the best a company can do is create platoons of highly trained actors, memorising lines and responses to likely scenarios.
The challenge in finding good salespeople is that you need excellent empathizers who aren't so emphathetic they can't close a sale. And you need people with strong ego needs who can still take a moemnt to figure out what another person wants. They must be aggressive enough to close, but not so aggressive they put people off. Too much empathy and you're a nice guy finishing last. Too much ego drive and you'll be scorching earth everywhere you go.
To do it well, you must believe the work will change you. You must expect it.
No one wakes up in the morning and thinks "I want to buy an advertisement. They think "I have a perception to change. How do I best do that?"
Rather than feel inhibited by strict but murky social rules, you must try to discover that there is in fact a wide range of acceptable behaviors for any social situation. You don't need to be the same as everyone else to succeed. You need not be ruled by your fears.
The opposite of courage is not cowardice, it is conformity.
People who qualify are looking at people for their wallets. Make a friend and they'll give you their wallet.
Ritual and habit provide the smooth craft in which to navigate the turbulence of life, whether it is a hitter's poor hitting streak or the effort to build postapartheid South Africa (Mandela making his bed everyday).
People who want to work can find it even in a recession. You just have to get your prices right and adjust your expectations. But you have to keep working, to keep the energy levels around you, to attract more work.
To be a good salesman, you have to be good at taking blows, dealing with other peoples' problems.
Madoff gave everyone a reality check. For decades people were ready to buy what he was selling because they so wanted it to be true. He woke the country up to what was going around everywhere, people avoiding reality and buying fantasies.
When you are selling a familiar product again and again with slight adjustments (e.g. iphones) you can depend on marketing. But when you have a new, unproven product of dubious economic value (e.g. art pieces), you still have to sell.
Spirituality was not about finding inner peace, but approaching truth, however brutal it might be.
The process of becoming a better person, and a better salesman, is not hard to understand. There is no magic to it. But doing it, day after day, with unremitting effort, distinguishes the extraordinary from the ordinary.
Selling is as much about mustering resources and support within your own company as it is about gathering these things from your customer (meeting customer demands). The customer is offering $75 million for your product, but in order to get to that price, you have to secure concessions from different branches of the company, the finance division, production.
Sales is based on collection, not billing.
I trust people and move on. Sometimes you'll be wrong. But people who do it the other way are missing the good part of life.
The learning-oriented approach environment works when you do need salespeople to build trust, to act in your company's long-term interests, to persevere in the face of difficulty and establish real relationships with customers. Applied in the wrong setting though, it can lead to a lazy, excuse-filled culture where sales are constantly being delayed and long-term profits are never realised.
The skill Martin Shanker most wanted his kids to learn was the ability to meet their own needs. Selling is a crucial part of meeting one's own needs.
A salesperson's job is to get you to buy something. It's not their job to be your best friend. The need to sell has to win out the need to be liked.
If you're looking for a reason to sell, satisfying other people's psychological needs seems more interseting work than pushing product.
e.g. the way an elevator changes the pricing of the floors of a building. Without one, the ground floor is the priciest, being the most accessible. Put an elevator in and the top floor takes over. You're not selling an elevator, you're selling the view.
An unhappy customer always trumps a board of venture capitalists. - Don Valentine, VC
If nothing else, selling is an endless confrontation with truth, the truth about yourself and others. It is raw and uncomfortable and personally exposing in a way other business functions rarely are.
To sell well, free of unnecessary inhibitions, is to confront the truth of what moves us - and then to turn it loose.
When we sell we are forced to confront the truth about ourselves. What we are willing to do for a buck: the way we present ourselves to different people in different settings to different ends; the extent to which we mix our personal with our professional relationships. There are no right or wrong answers to these questions, but whatever answers we decide upon determine much about who we are and our chances at personal success.
From Majid, a morrocan salesman:
You judge a good salesman when he buys. The profit is not when you sell, it's when you buy. You make a profit the moment you buy. Only losers wait till they sell to make a profit. Everyone is always ready to buy or sell, it's just a question of asking.
You are like a beggar in sales, asking again and again all day. You never get upset. Of course, sometimes you have customers and you want to kill them. But you're not allowed to.
As salespeople, you look at everyone. But often customers don't even look at salespeople, they treat them like dirt. But if you stand there and watch and listen, you can learn a lot about the customer. The salesman who interrupts and waves his hands about has another twenty years of learning to do.
Accurately perceiving the motivations of a customer then, is just as important as understanding what product they want (e.g. when they equate 'the best' to mean 'the most expensive'.
Infomercials are a kind of highly targeted focus group, by which you can test products and methods of selling them.
Close by creating a sense of great value and scarcity. "Act now!" "For the low low price of only $19.95!"
More respect is giving to marketers rather than salespeople, even though when you give them something to sell they'll come back saying this was wrong, that needs to be changed. Such a mindset leads to a dreary homogeneity.
For Wynn (of the vegas hotel/casinos), storytelling as a means of getting employees to feel good about themselves through their work and provide superlative customer service as a result is like 'splitting the atom'.
When firms hire salespeople, they should be looking for a willingness to fail, rather than a track record of success. If they have only tasted success they've led a sheltered life and will soon crumple under the personal assault inevitable in any sales job.
Mcmurry: The single most important trait in any salesperson is the wooing instinct. This individual has a compulsive need to win and hold the affection of others.
In the absence of thousands of people with those rare wooer traits, the best a company can do is create platoons of highly trained actors, memorising lines and responses to likely scenarios.
The challenge in finding good salespeople is that you need excellent empathizers who aren't so emphathetic they can't close a sale. And you need people with strong ego needs who can still take a moemnt to figure out what another person wants. They must be aggressive enough to close, but not so aggressive they put people off. Too much empathy and you're a nice guy finishing last. Too much ego drive and you'll be scorching earth everywhere you go.
To do it well, you must believe the work will change you. You must expect it.
No one wakes up in the morning and thinks "I want to buy an advertisement. They think "I have a perception to change. How do I best do that?"
Rather than feel inhibited by strict but murky social rules, you must try to discover that there is in fact a wide range of acceptable behaviors for any social situation. You don't need to be the same as everyone else to succeed. You need not be ruled by your fears.
The opposite of courage is not cowardice, it is conformity.
People who qualify are looking at people for their wallets. Make a friend and they'll give you their wallet.
Ritual and habit provide the smooth craft in which to navigate the turbulence of life, whether it is a hitter's poor hitting streak or the effort to build postapartheid South Africa (Mandela making his bed everyday).
People who want to work can find it even in a recession. You just have to get your prices right and adjust your expectations. But you have to keep working, to keep the energy levels around you, to attract more work.
To be a good salesman, you have to be good at taking blows, dealing with other peoples' problems.
Madoff gave everyone a reality check. For decades people were ready to buy what he was selling because they so wanted it to be true. He woke the country up to what was going around everywhere, people avoiding reality and buying fantasies.
When you are selling a familiar product again and again with slight adjustments (e.g. iphones) you can depend on marketing. But when you have a new, unproven product of dubious economic value (e.g. art pieces), you still have to sell.
Spirituality was not about finding inner peace, but approaching truth, however brutal it might be.
The process of becoming a better person, and a better salesman, is not hard to understand. There is no magic to it. But doing it, day after day, with unremitting effort, distinguishes the extraordinary from the ordinary.
Selling is as much about mustering resources and support within your own company as it is about gathering these things from your customer (meeting customer demands). The customer is offering $75 million for your product, but in order to get to that price, you have to secure concessions from different branches of the company, the finance division, production.
Sales is based on collection, not billing.
I trust people and move on. Sometimes you'll be wrong. But people who do it the other way are missing the good part of life.
The learning-oriented approach environment works when you do need salespeople to build trust, to act in your company's long-term interests, to persevere in the face of difficulty and establish real relationships with customers. Applied in the wrong setting though, it can lead to a lazy, excuse-filled culture where sales are constantly being delayed and long-term profits are never realised.
The skill Martin Shanker most wanted his kids to learn was the ability to meet their own needs. Selling is a crucial part of meeting one's own needs.
A salesperson's job is to get you to buy something. It's not their job to be your best friend. The need to sell has to win out the need to be liked.
If you're looking for a reason to sell, satisfying other people's psychological needs seems more interseting work than pushing product.
e.g. the way an elevator changes the pricing of the floors of a building. Without one, the ground floor is the priciest, being the most accessible. Put an elevator in and the top floor takes over. You're not selling an elevator, you're selling the view.
An unhappy customer always trumps a board of venture capitalists. - Don Valentine, VC
If nothing else, selling is an endless confrontation with truth, the truth about yourself and others. It is raw and uncomfortable and personally exposing in a way other business functions rarely are.
To sell well, free of unnecessary inhibitions, is to confront the truth of what moves us - and then to turn it loose.
August 10, 2012
Probably the best on sales I have ever read. This should be required reading for those in the sales industry.
Broughton has a Harvard MBA and yet he understands out underrated sales skills and teachings are, especially in academia. Most graduate (and even undergraduate) program don't teach sales. It it seen as the lowest of the low. Yet sales jobs are some of the highest positions in the world. Broughton digs into this deeper by interviewing various successful sales people to try and close the gap between the negative heat about sales and how sales works.
If you are looking for a step by step direction on what to do to improve your sales skills you won't find it here. This book is a true read, and one you need to spend time reading to fully absorb everything Broughton discovers. I made copious notes in my iPhone from all the nuggets of wisdom Broughton brought forth in this book. This is a great read.
Broughton has a Harvard MBA and yet he understands out underrated sales skills and teachings are, especially in academia. Most graduate (and even undergraduate) program don't teach sales. It it seen as the lowest of the low. Yet sales jobs are some of the highest positions in the world. Broughton digs into this deeper by interviewing various successful sales people to try and close the gap between the negative heat about sales and how sales works.
If you are looking for a step by step direction on what to do to improve your sales skills you won't find it here. This book is a true read, and one you need to spend time reading to fully absorb everything Broughton discovers. I made copious notes in my iPhone from all the nuggets of wisdom Broughton brought forth in this book. This is a great read.
March 20, 2015
If you're in sales, read this book.
If you've ever considered a career in sales, read this book.
If, like me, you've always *avoided* a career in sales because it seemed a little sleazy, or pushy, or just "not you," read this book.
This isn't a how-to on selling, but more like Malcolm Gladwell's books it's a collections of interesting stories from and about top salespeople that tie the subject together and paint the job of selling in whole new light.
The audiobook, read by the author, is excellent.
As always, YMMV.
If you've ever considered a career in sales, read this book.
If, like me, you've always *avoided* a career in sales because it seemed a little sleazy, or pushy, or just "not you," read this book.
This isn't a how-to on selling, but more like Malcolm Gladwell's books it's a collections of interesting stories from and about top salespeople that tie the subject together and paint the job of selling in whole new light.
The audiobook, read by the author, is excellent.
As always, YMMV.
June 26, 2016
Just finished this book on cd, read by the author, and really loved it. Rather than sales techniques, he talks about why we sell, and how selling is human. There were many stories of businessmen, and how they got started selling. Great resource for a diverse range of topics that all come back to how some business titans are really artists with a salesman title. This book has gotten me even more interested in psychology.
May 26, 2012
The Art of the Sale by Philip Delves Broughton is a non-fiction book in which the author shares stories and theories about what makes a salesperson. Mr. Broughton believes that we are all salespeople and could use sales skills everyday of our lives.
I’m in agreement.
Using extensive research and personal experience, the author writes about sales techniques from a Moroccan souk to Wall Street financiers, from street vendors to selling we all do each and every day.
The Art of the Sale by Philip Delves Broughton is a fun, charming and educational book which gives one a glimpse into the world of the sales force. The book can be read in parts as every chapter gives anecdotes from successful salesman.
One of my biggest regrets is not learning how to sell. My friend Tripp Braden told me a long time ago that if I knew how to sell I'd never have to look for a job. The more I get immersed in the business world, the more I see how right he was. I convinced myself I was a bad salesman, from some unbeknownst reason which I'm not willing to dwell on for my emotional well being and my constantly empty wallet. However, I can tell that this is not the case — as a web developer I spent hours upon hours with marketing personnel and sales personnel. While I certainly don't think I can do the high pressure sale, I can certainly use people skill, patience and power of persuasion to make a few extra bucks.
I remember walking with my beloved wife, may she live a long life, through the souk in Jerusalem. As an American, she was nervous and a bit frightened by the aggressiveness of the vendors. To be honest, I was on edge as well. However, we quickly discovered that we could probably get all our gift shopping done that day in one place.
We found a vendor (or did he find us?) and I tried to bargain a packaged deal for a whole bunch of stuff (crosses, stars of David, camels, and whatnot…). What the vendor didn’t know is that I’m not bad at math and figured out the total sum. After about 40 minutes of haggling, punching numbers into a calculator and promising to give me the deal of the decade he came up with a number which was extremely close to…my original estimate. At this point my wife’s nerves were quickly coming to an end and we just paid and left.
But I could have knocked it down by at least 20%.
The book tells about fascinating and hypocritical aspects of the sales person. The innate ability to believe whatever BS you’re selling, the good sales can do (getting a job, selling a book) and the bad (knowingly selling bad stocks), about rejection and success, perseverance and failure. While almost no-one likes sales to the point where business schools don’t even teach it, our economy wouldn’t be what it is without the one-on-one pitch.
I found the philosophy of an ace Japanese salesman to be especially poignant:
"The objective in sales becomes the same as that in the rest of your life, to respect others and do the best for them. Then you don’t have to be a salesperson about what you do. Selling becomes an activity consistent with who you are."
How many of us can honestly say that about salespeople we meet? How about those that sell you your 401K plan?
Do you think they do what’s best for you or that they get paid to offer you investments whether they’re good or not?
Mr. Boughton points out something which every person involves in sales, from the souk to Wall Street should keep in mind. Currency is more than just hard cold cash; currency is good will, affirmation, guidance and approval. If everyone would have the thought process of the Japanese salesman, our society would look differently, our wallets fatter and our lives happier.
For more reviews and bookish posts please visit: http://www.ManOfLaBook.com
I’m in agreement.
Using extensive research and personal experience, the author writes about sales techniques from a Moroccan souk to Wall Street financiers, from street vendors to selling we all do each and every day.
The Art of the Sale by Philip Delves Broughton is a fun, charming and educational book which gives one a glimpse into the world of the sales force. The book can be read in parts as every chapter gives anecdotes from successful salesman.
One of my biggest regrets is not learning how to sell. My friend Tripp Braden told me a long time ago that if I knew how to sell I'd never have to look for a job. The more I get immersed in the business world, the more I see how right he was. I convinced myself I was a bad salesman, from some unbeknownst reason which I'm not willing to dwell on for my emotional well being and my constantly empty wallet. However, I can tell that this is not the case — as a web developer I spent hours upon hours with marketing personnel and sales personnel. While I certainly don't think I can do the high pressure sale, I can certainly use people skill, patience and power of persuasion to make a few extra bucks.
I remember walking with my beloved wife, may she live a long life, through the souk in Jerusalem. As an American, she was nervous and a bit frightened by the aggressiveness of the vendors. To be honest, I was on edge as well. However, we quickly discovered that we could probably get all our gift shopping done that day in one place.
We found a vendor (or did he find us?) and I tried to bargain a packaged deal for a whole bunch of stuff (crosses, stars of David, camels, and whatnot…). What the vendor didn’t know is that I’m not bad at math and figured out the total sum. After about 40 minutes of haggling, punching numbers into a calculator and promising to give me the deal of the decade he came up with a number which was extremely close to…my original estimate. At this point my wife’s nerves were quickly coming to an end and we just paid and left.
But I could have knocked it down by at least 20%.
The book tells about fascinating and hypocritical aspects of the sales person. The innate ability to believe whatever BS you’re selling, the good sales can do (getting a job, selling a book) and the bad (knowingly selling bad stocks), about rejection and success, perseverance and failure. While almost no-one likes sales to the point where business schools don’t even teach it, our economy wouldn’t be what it is without the one-on-one pitch.
I found the philosophy of an ace Japanese salesman to be especially poignant:
"The objective in sales becomes the same as that in the rest of your life, to respect others and do the best for them. Then you don’t have to be a salesperson about what you do. Selling becomes an activity consistent with who you are."
How many of us can honestly say that about salespeople we meet? How about those that sell you your 401K plan?
Do you think they do what’s best for you or that they get paid to offer you investments whether they’re good or not?
Mr. Boughton points out something which every person involves in sales, from the souk to Wall Street should keep in mind. Currency is more than just hard cold cash; currency is good will, affirmation, guidance and approval. If everyone would have the thought process of the Japanese salesman, our society would look differently, our wallets fatter and our lives happier.
For more reviews and bookish posts please visit: http://www.ManOfLaBook.com
September 19, 2013
Definitely not a how-to book on sales--more of an investigation into being a salesperson.
Broughton did his homework. He takes us on a journey from Morocco to Manhattan, from selling trinkets to technology, from remodeling to Rembrandt.
I sensed that he wasn't trying to make salespeople out to be the saviors of the world, but neither did he try to demonize them, either. In fact, the tone of his narrative often reflected the person he was interviewing and profiling at the moment.
The stories alone are worth the read, but I come away from this book with a newfound appreciation for what I do as a independent professional--and how vitally important sales are.
As Thomas Watson said, "Nothing happens until someone sells something."
Broughton did his homework. He takes us on a journey from Morocco to Manhattan, from selling trinkets to technology, from remodeling to Rembrandt.
I sensed that he wasn't trying to make salespeople out to be the saviors of the world, but neither did he try to demonize them, either. In fact, the tone of his narrative often reflected the person he was interviewing and profiling at the moment.
The stories alone are worth the read, but I come away from this book with a newfound appreciation for what I do as a independent professional--and how vitally important sales are.
As Thomas Watson said, "Nothing happens until someone sells something."
November 15, 2018
Selling might the most unappreciated part of doing business. People tend to focus on the visible and shinny (fancy marketing, fancy watches, management etc.) but forget that without selling there is no business period! Plus we are all essentially salespeople of something the author writes: „Sales is nothing more than the purely human ordeal of rejection and acceptance“ which describes the art of persuasion pretty well.
Great book on making that clear.
It also exposes some of the bullshit vendors giving advice jet not following it themselves (think sales-gurus who can’t sell their own books/ programs or social-media gurus who have less followers than the average joe). Sales can’t really be teached since there is no one size fits all but one can learn the basic human nature fundamentals that drive every decision making process.
Great book on making that clear.
It also exposes some of the bullshit vendors giving advice jet not following it themselves (think sales-gurus who can’t sell their own books/ programs or social-media gurus who have less followers than the average joe). Sales can’t really be teached since there is no one size fits all but one can learn the basic human nature fundamentals that drive every decision making process.
December 25, 2018
Refreshing read on sales. Philip takes ud on a trip around the world and shares his encounters with different sales types across different cultures and industries.
If your in sales, this book will make you thinking and ponder. If you not in sales, this is a refreshing point of view that shines light on the many sales people who are honest and passionate about their profession!
If your in sales, this book will make you thinking and ponder. If you not in sales, this is a refreshing point of view that shines light on the many sales people who are honest and passionate about their profession!
December 10, 2017
I think it’s an increasingly accurate book that points out the psychology of sales in a competing global market. It will not Support any false ideas of what a great sales person truly is, but it will give insight as to how sales can be tough and interesting at the same time.
April 15, 2019
I found this book to be a good read. This book reads like Malcolm Gladwell's "Outliers' by telling a story and a different lesson with each chapter. Each story covered a different persons life and the varies sales tactics they used to become successful in their practice.
December 23, 2018
Beautiful book about selling, maybe a mistake to quote a really bad luck story but the result is fine
June 13, 2021
I mostly remember the story of the one shopkeeper.
Not my favorite book on sales, but I like what it had to say.
Not my favorite book on sales, but I like what it had to say.
January 2, 2025
2.5 ✨ Ehh, I’m just glad to be done with it.
April 11, 2025
Good history on sales. Slow and a bit jumbled- but overall a good read.
March 1, 2017
Sirve para entender la mente de un vendedor, y ver qué cosas tienen en común los vendedores existosos de los vendedores promedio, por lo que da un buen acercamiento de la relación que debe tener el vendedor con su cliente.
Si estás buscando técnicas de cierre y cosas por el estilo, este libro NO ES para ti.
Si estás buscando técnicas de cierre y cosas por el estilo, este libro NO ES para ti.
July 6, 2012
I have always enjoyed sales books. (I love Randy Clyde's recommendation of the Spin Selling book.) I heard the author on NPR and was impressed. However, I was not as impressed reading it. I wanted more formulas for better selling. One of the author's subtle contentions is, after being with several great salesman, is there is no formula. However, one could compile the author's experiences with sales people to suggest the following formula: 1) be yourself; 2) get to know the potential customer and what is driving his desire to possibly buy your product/service; and 3) Love that person not for the possibility of a sale and if so, sales will follow. Some good gospel correlations.
January 2, 2013
not terrible but just sort of meandering discussion of salespersonship, structured around visiting successful salespeople in various realms (infomercials, retail, traveling salespeople, realtors.....). Some fairly obvious points about desirability of being optimistic, not taking rejection too hard, etc., but otherwise tends to draw "on the one hand, on the other" conclusions about how there is no one "type" of person who can be successful in this area, and there are greedy scam artists as well as helpful people connecting you with stuff you could use, and so on.
Cialdini's book "Influence" on same topic is much better IMO.
Cialdini's book "Influence" on same topic is much better IMO.
May 4, 2013
Philip Delves Broughton is a wonderful writer. He has a wry sense of humor and the ability to mock at himself in an otherwise would be highly perceived situation such as his experience in HBS. I enjoyed his Ahead of the Curve immensely and am very glad he decided to write a book on the art of sale. I like the book so far but think the build-up of the story is a bit lengthy at times. Nevertheless this is the book to buy if you were ever in a sales position at any point of life and wondered how the hell all these years of education teach nothing on selling, the very basic of any business.
July 2, 2015
I love this book. Reading pleasure bring me a good assessment of what have I gone through for the past few years on both business, failed. It opens my mind the inter-related of sales underneath the business pillars. Touches also between ethical and individual trust that I have faced, failed. I am picking up these pieces and map into my career growth in sales. That it is, the missing point. Thanks Philip, I shall look into it what has left that I had missed. I have initiated something as I got nothing to loose.
April 19, 2016
I'm intrigued by the name of the book, "the art of the sale". Yet, the book doesn't read as exciting as the author's previous . The book consists of various stories or movies or personal experience on salesmanship in the previous chapters. Most important is the last chapter where states the main lesson learned, "optimism and resistance" are the shared characters of various salesmen.
It almost seems a book to allow author himself to explore the benign and evil aspects in the salesmanship. In the last chapter, inner peace is reached.
It almost seems a book to allow author himself to explore the benign and evil aspects in the salesmanship. In the last chapter, inner peace is reached.
March 10, 2018
An interesting look at the work of a variety of salesmen. It combines narrative of the author's observations of various accomplished sellers with research into what makes good sellers, commentary on the ethics of sales, and the role that salesmen play in different types of business organizations. Most of all, it blends the art of selling with the art of living, explaining how selling is part of life for many in all of its exciting, frustrating, depression, and triumphant moments.
August 9, 2012
I read this book because some regulars at my work bought it for me knowing I was an accounting major. I would never have picked this book up on my own and after reading it debated on giving it a 2 or a 3. I gave it a 2 because, compared to other books I've read it was pretty boring, however, for a book on sales it was actually quite interesting. It made a lot of great points, and really got me thinking about what it takes to be in sales.
June 19, 2012
There is no definitive conclusion as to what lies behind the art of the sale; we're simply taken for the trip along the author's thought processes while vicariously experiencing interactions with salespeople who are regarded as the best in the business. What surprised me was the amount of psychology and introspection and sheer sensitivity that lays at the foundation of being a salesperson-- who would have thought that the field of sales could be so deep?
May 6, 2014
The Art of the Sale is an excellent book for anyone in business. The misunderstanding of the salespersons relegates them to what Broughton calls the "foot solider" of the company. However, it is the salesperson that moves a company forward. Without the sales force, how is product sold? Without a sales force, how is a company's customer serviced? I highly recommend this book!
July 11, 2012
This book is not a "how-to" as much as it is a memoir or some great sales people. From a Moroccan rug salesman to a guy who sold planes for Boeing. A great read from a writer who admires sales people and their craft.
October 15, 2012
Interesting book about the ideals of what makes a good salesperson. While not a how to book, does have many good tips and pointers. Good read until the end, the epilong was long and did not add anything to rest of the book.
November 22, 2012
This is an amazing study of what makes a good salesman. Different personalities are needed to sell different products. This is a must read if you are in sales, it has lessons that help anyone in their everyday life no matter what you do for a living.
July 9, 2014
Säljbok som mest handlar om några olika "framgångsrika" self-made säljare. Inga principer som jag kunde hänga upp något på. Lärdom: Att sälja abstrakta konsulttjänster är förmodligen den svåraste typen av sälj.
September 29, 2014
Informative. Not a "how to" selling guide, but rather a collection of others philosophies with interpretation and analyses. Entertaining and offers many leads towards further reading from sales leaders past and present.
Thank you Philip Broughton!
Thank you Philip Broughton!
March 24, 2015
This is not your typical "7 Quick Tips for Sales Success". It is a detailed essay on what makes a good salesperson and what sales mean in our day to day lives. Some sections can be repetitive, but it is a worthy read for anyone interested in discovering the true value and discipline of sales.
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