The two books by Thomas J. Williams focus on real challenges faced by salespersons. Inspired by questions asked by participants in sales workshops, the books tackle challenges of selling complex products and illustrate real situations.

Rob Hartnett’s “It’s All Possible” is a motivational book that aims to inspire people to dream bigger and reach higher goals through a four-step possibility system. It is about shifting the mindset and setting higher benchmarks, rather than remaining at mundane levels. Rob looked at high-performance sportspersons to develop his framework.

Stu is a Hall-of-Fame-nominated marketer and Wall Street Journal cartoonist and brings a unique perspective to marketing that involves creativity and utility. His second book, “Get The Meeting” is about getting a face to face meeting through contact marketing.

Catherine B. Roy’s book “Live from Your Heart and Mind” comes from 10 years of research in varied scientific fields. It aims to provide an elegant system for development of emotional and intellectual development. It covers the most important aspects of life including balance, happiness, love, relationships, emotional stability, overcoming obstacles and solving personal problems.

At the core is the attempt to understand the balance between product, customer and customer, while looking at long-term relationships. Instead of competing on price, products must compete through differentiation. This can be done in many ways, and one keyway is to understand the perceived value of a product in the mind of the customer.

Startups have to understand customer needs and propose solutions for the user, rather than trying to sell a ‘product’. Salespeople in startups have the responsibility of introducing the product, to build the brand, and to continue to demonstrate the product to the end user. The Sales Cycle does not end with the sale itself, rather, hand-holding has to continue so that the user becomes familiar with using the product.

The book talks about a single powerful strategy that contributes to maximizing sales, with emphasis on use case selling. There are several kinds of needs. Even if the buyer has done research, there are still needs that are not known by the buyer. Value can be created by servicing unknown needs as well.