Sell

'Sell: The Art, the Science, the Witchcraft..' is a unique book about sales.The Author Subroto Bagchi is an accomplished entrepreneur, who built IT services company MindTree after his leadership roles at Wipro.Subroto is a master storyteller. Unlike many other business authors, he provides his own experiences. In spite of his accomplishments, He comes across as a simple storyteller without exaggerations. It is worth reading for this reason alone.The book is full of important points, for example...1. "The Truth is, even among the knowledgeable professionals, selling is seen as an act of invasion, something that denotes vested, even veiled interest" - Honest, yet inspiring point.2. "Good salespeople will have knowledge, wisdom, intuition, energy to persist and will see their commitment through. They exibit skills that sometimes border on pure wizardry". - The Sales leaders he introduced in each chapter does show these skills.3. "Sales is a key component for professional success in every field" - So true.4. Selling to Solutioning - wow....If you start highlighting the important lines, you will end up the almost whole book with key insights.While the book is excellent for beginners of sales career and non-sales guys who need sales skills,being serious readers may expect more from the author.Because of the story format, reading it for the 2nd or 3rd time is hard.Few things to consider,1. Each chapter ending with key takeaways and questions to reflect upon.2. References - For ex, Author mention the neuroscience on why we behave the way we do.3. Further reading - list of books author recommends.Good to see leaders like Subroto sharing their knowledge. Great work !If the reader is looking for good books on Sales skills,Few recommendations:1. The Only Sales Guide You'll Ever Need - Anthony Iannarino2. The Science of Selling David Hoffeld3. The Lost Art of Closing - Anthony Iannarino

“To sell is human”. But I used to hate sales and sales guys; because their commitments to customers have caused me and my team spend days and nights in the office working like crazy. Now learning and doing sales myself, I understand the importance of this profession and what it is NOT about.And what sales guys in my previous organizations were missing in their approach. And what we need to improve as a team on the sales front in our company.Read this book, if you are able to correlate with my challenges.Who should read this book: The book will help people who want to improve their understanding of the B2B sales, specifically about technology B2B sales. This book will be more beneficial if you have been involved in sales function from few months, but looking for understanding it more from the perspective of-->How to improve your prospecting, funnel management and sales process,-->Importance of consultative approach in B2B sales,-->EQ management in sales,-->Impact of your company culture on your sales.This book is not for: This book is not for people who are specifically looking for a manual or how-to guide on understanding and improving your sales process. But then you only need nuggets from the master like Subroto to tell you what is going wrong in your sales process or what you are missing in your approach.My learning from this book:--->Best sales people never give-up on follow-up’s & having conversations. And in you are an introvert like me and lacks the ability to have conversations, you will have a tough time initially in the sales job. Read a-lot on different topics, about your prospect and what’s happening in the world in general. And slowly you may learn the art of sales.-->Don’t take rejections at heart. You will get plenty of that in your sales life.-->Your funnel size decides your conversion rates.-->As a salesperson, you need to be good at understanding people and what makes them successful.-->The best line of the book is “The prospecting process has changed. Your future customers are already doing prospecting about you and your company“. Read the book to understand this in detail.-->There is a thin line between selling and helping the customer find a solution. The minute you sell, your prospect goes to the shell of not sharing their problems and challenges. People like to buy the things rather than being sold the things.-->Be yourself and don’t take yourself too seriously. Customers want to buy from people who are genuine and comfortable being themselves.-->The best read is when Subroto shares story “The Naked Burger” when he attended the Apple sales conference. I will buy this book again just to read this chapter.-->Never ever lose hope while making a deal. But you should have a strong belief in your product and its value, if you don’t have, don’t sell it.-->We may be living in a digital world with bots and AI, but people still buy from people. Simply quoting data and facts will not appeal to your customer. Humans are beings. Connect to a being to allow your customer to open up. Best line “Authenticity is in short; hence in demand”.-->Another gem in this book is this chapter “DO IT LIKE SWEDES”. It talks about how progressive companies around the world are embracing the different set of behaviours to influence their organizational culture. Customers want to buy products & services with a certain culture at its core.-->To build a successful profitable organization, it’s not enough to win few wars (customers). You have to do it for many years to come without excreting yourself. A successful salesperson learns to be effortless by planning well, choosing their turf wisely and prepare themselves to play a long game.There are only few books on B2B technology sales. And specifically from those who have done sales, and that too large deal sales. It’s definitely worth a read without much heavy weight jargon.

I am not a salesman, I am an engineer, a technical person and whole my life I have stayed away from reading anything about Selling and marketing and whole lot of things. I always believed those salesmen out there want to just sell something to make money.But this book has changed my perspective on Selling. Selling is not just for making money, but it is a for building a lasting relationship, solving your customer's problems and a whole lot more.This is the second book I read from Subroto Bagchi and I loved his writing style, very easy and lucid. And he has written it as if he is talking to you.

I am a fan of Mr Bagchi's books. "Sell" is a wonderfully written account from his experiences and will surely have an instant connect for professionals in all fields. Very authentically written and I was able to connect so well with my own experiences even though I am not in the direct field of Sales (thinking about it I strongly feel everyone needs an expertise on sales in any case, be it to sell a service, product or one's own skills).Thank you Mr Bagchi.

The book is just about average filled with cliches and no worthwhile experiences being shared by the author. Being a book on sales you would atleast expect the laying out of a concrete sales strategy or techniques but that doesn't really happen. Expected more from this book as its written by a distinguished author, ex CEO of Mindtree.