There's nothing smarmy or dishonest about sales. Misleading sales is bad sales. The best salespeople are focused on fulfilling the customer's needs, not selling the product. The product sells itself once the customer understands that it fulfills their needs and offers them real benefits relative to the expense. And expense isn't just money. It's time. It's risk. It's learning curves.
Customers often don't understand their own needs very well, so a big part of sales is helping the customer understand their own problems, in order to provide valuable solutions.
The engineer who can really dig into requirements, really get to understand the customer and help the customer understand their own needs, and then offers a working solution, with clearly stated benefits and clearly stated costs, will do far better.
It's not about sales it's about how people think, act, and make decisions. I would bet that most any book on sales will invariably touch on at least some of the topics covered in this book.
It's a fun read and I promise you will start to see these patterns being used in everyday life in verbal and non-verbal communication.
Start with How to Win Friends and Influence People, by Dale Carnegie. Ignore the cheesy-sounding title; this book was written in the 1930s and has been in print continuously ever since, which speaks to its effectiveness. I also recommend To Sell Is Human, by Daniel Pink (and all of Daniel Pink's other books, as well).
There's nothing smarmy or dishonest about sales. Misleading sales is bad sales. The best salespeople are focused on fulfilling the customer's needs, not selling the product. The product sells itself once the customer understands that it fulfills their needs and offers them real benefits relative to the expense. And expense isn't just money. It's time. It's risk. It's learning curves.
Customers often don't understand their own needs very well, so a big part of sales is helping the customer understand their own problems, in order to provide valuable solutions.
The engineer who can really dig into requirements, really get to understand the customer and help the customer understand their own needs, and then offers a working solution, with clearly stated benefits and clearly stated costs, will do far better.