Rating: 
Summary: This work teaches how to show VALUE measurably!
Review: However much people like Mahan's book, the CD is even better! There are six CDs and I listened to them in my car as I drove to and from work. Mahan is a fantastic speaker. I think if I'd read the book, I'd have lent him a tone that he just doesn't have.The CDs taught me how to go from a problem statement or solution idea and quantify how we will show success against that once we implement our idea. Many of you may have a technique already that can take you from a problem to a set of measures that can show improvement, but I did not. While this work is targeted at doing sales, I have found it useful in requirements management and scope management for any project imaginable. It helps us to show the customer we are interested in their success more than in their list of features, and to ensure that what we are building truly adds value. I strongly recommend this CD set to anyone who needs to prove the value of a solution, especially if they don't yet have a technique to do so.
Rating:
Summary: This work teaches how to show VALUE measurably!
Review: However much people like Mahan's book, the CD is even better! There are six CDs and I listened to them in my car as I drove to and from work. Mahan is a fantastic speaker. I think if I'd read the book, I'd have lent him a tone that he just doesn't have. The CDs taught me how to go from a problem statement or solution idea and quantify how we will show success against that once we implement our idea. Many of you may have a technique already that can take you from a problem to a set of measures that can show improvement, but I did not. While this work is targeted at doing sales, I have found it useful in requirements management and scope management for any project imaginable. It helps us to show the customer we are interested in their success more than in their list of features, and to ensure that what we are building truly adds value. I strongly recommend this CD set to anyone who needs to prove the value of a solution, especially if they don't yet have a technique to do so.
Rating:
Summary: The guru in salesmanship
Review: I first picked up the auditio tapes from one of Franklin Covey stores as recommend by the store manager. I listened to the tape. I think the book concept is very applicable and great. I really like his part on issue, evidence, and impact when it comes to analyzing issues. I use it in my consulting work now. I would recommend this to everyone who loves to learn the art of salemanship or marketing. I later went back to the USA and bought CD and the book. I bought more than 200 books in 3 years. This is the only title I bought 3 sets of the same title. Mahan is the man. If you want a book on marketing a consulting service. LETS GET REAL with Mahan Book and LETS NOT PLAY WITH OTHER BOOKS TOO MUCH. Go right into the sfuff in the book Mahan has to offer.
Rating:
Summary: I wish I'd known this stuff 10 years ago
Review: I have listened again and again to Khalsa's tapes. Not only are the principles and techniques useful (no guessing, stop at yellow lights, how to get to the heart of the matter), you really feel like he's talking one on one to you, not just reading the book out loud. I'm buying extra copies for my sales team.
Rating:
Summary: Major breakthrough in How to SELL !
Review: I have worked with Mahan for many years and funded some of his early work in teaching others the magic of his process. We used the concepts covered in this book to teach our professionals how to elicit customer input on needs, etc. The consulting group grew rapidly and now employs over 5000 professionals. Quite a testimony to Mahan's incredible teaching ability and the concepts covered in this book! -
Rating: 
Summary: Try SPIN Selling By Which This Book Is Based On
Review: I must say that this is quite a good book on selling. It has borrowed some useful ideas directly or indirectly from SPIN Selling, and Non-Manipulative Selling, which are the " real classics" in the field. The ORDER model on selling as suggested in the book is also sound. However, personally I still like SPIN Selling better because it is more practical, concise, and less conceptual in writing . Try SPIN Selling and Non-manipulative Selling before you read this book. You will have more paradigm shift experiences. To look back, I think books on selling by Brian Tracy, Tom Hopkins, and the like are less useful or heavyweight for the 21st Century because the buyers have become more sophisticated, and have already read a lot of books on selling themselves. To influence the buyers positively and effectively, the sellers must first equip themselves with cutting-edge, unpredictable selling skills. For this reason, you must read SPIN Selling first before you read this book. Trust me !
Rating:
Summary: Let's Get Real is Real Good
Review: In Let's Get Real or Let's Not Play, Mahan Khalsa presents a well thought out and carefully explained approach to ethical selling. The book teaches sellers how to help clients succeed, so that the buy/sell environment becomes a win/win situation, instead of an environment where one party wins and the other loses.
This book is congruent with TrustBuild Program philosophy and principles, and it contains a wealth of valuable information. Particularly useful are Khalsa's examples of verbal give and take between sellers and buyers, which show how a seller can keep a meeting moving forward positively, without manipulating the buyer.
Khalsa clearly has the consulting industry in mind, and many of his discussions draw on experiences from that environment. Even so, sellers of complex products will find much of value in the book.
Author Mahan Khalsa observes early in Let's Get Real... that "...sales has often become a fear-based relationship. Customers are afraid they will be "sold" a bill of goods ... Salespeople fear they won't make the sale."
These fears, he says, lead to a dysfunctional situation where buyers institute policies to protect themselves from sellers and sellers wish to protect themselves from being used by buyers.
Khalsa wants sellers to break this "vicious, downward cycle. His prescription: "...be authentic, ...be truthful, ...say what you mean, ...be congruent with what you value." In short, get real.
He believes that sellers and buyers share an important interest - both want a solution that truly meets the client's needs. He reasons that "not buying ... is not the worst that can happen. Worse is if they buy our solution and then figure out it doesn't meet their needs. Then we either spend all our profits and more trying to make it right, or we have an unhappy client."
In Let's Get Real..., Mahan Khalsa presents an approach to sales that is congruent with the TrustBuild philosophy and principles. In addition, the book contains specific examples that support Khalsa's recommendations and demonstrate how to put them into practice.
The book is clearly oriented toward the complex services market and will be most valuable to those in consulting businesses. Those who sell complex products will also benefit from reading this book, but they may have to modify some of the recommendations to make them appropriate for their market. Those in transactional sales will probably not find this book as worthwhile.
Robert Reed
President
TrustBuild
Rating:
Summary: A way to do "this" and not be sleazy, slick or cheesy
Review: It wasn't until I read this book that I felt anything positive about being in "sales". I had done it in my past and I was about to do it again and thank god for this book or I'd still be uncomfortable and tossing and turning in my sleep. We need a new word, "sales", as this book so aptly puts it, is something you do to someone else. You "sell" them on something. Nobody wants to be sold, we all avoid salespeople and we all feel stupid selling other people on something. And those who do enjoy "selling" someone are almost always in pursuit of their own "victory", oif beating the other person into buying from them, overcoming obstacles, leaping hurdles and getting the BIG CLOSE. They aren't really focused on the other person, an urge I sometimes fall prey to myself. Our culture makes competition and personal victories very seductive, it is what we talk about, sports teams are rarely congratulated on their effort or fine play unless they win. We view so many things as black and white, which is not natural, throughout human history you can see cooperation as a dominant and prudent way to survive and thrive, not competition (see a dense, but brilliant book on this "Nonzero : The Logic of Human Destiny" by Robert Wright). Sales is a no-win game for everyone. Maybe there isn't any word, the "trick", the "gimmick" that this book extols is genuiness, simply being real, if you will. You meet someone, you listen, you ask some good questions so that you understand them well and what they are trying to accomplish, if you think there might be a way that you or your company can help them you offer it to them, if not, you wish them well and part graciously. What is that? Being human? Being real? "being real" has a vaguely cheesy sound to it too, my only complaint about this book is it's title which can turn people off before they even open it. Again maybe there is no word. Many of us will simply go out and meet people and listen well and feel good about what we are doing and be personally successful as well...or are those the same thing anyway :-) The real value of this book is some excellent exercises you can do in a meeting with someone, things to really challenge you to break out of old patterns, very, very deeply ingrained patterns.
Rating:
Summary: A way to do "this" and not be sleazy, slick or cheesy
Review: It wasn't until I read this book that I felt anything positive about being in "sales". I had done it in my past and I was about to do it again and thank god for this book or I'd still be uncomfortable and tossing and turning in my sleep. We need a new word, "sales", as this book so aptly puts it, is something you do to someone else. You "sell" them on something. Nobody wants to be sold, we all avoid salespeople and we all feel stupid selling other people on something. And those who do enjoy "selling" someone are almost always in pursuit of their own "victory", oif beating the other person into buying from them, overcoming obstacles, leaping hurdles and getting the BIG CLOSE. They aren't really focused on the other person, an urge I sometimes fall prey to myself. Our culture makes competition and personal victories very seductive, it is what we talk about, sports teams are rarely congratulated on their effort or fine play unless they win. We view so many things as black and white, which is not natural, throughout human history you can see cooperation as a dominant and prudent way to survive and thrive, not competition (see a dense, but brilliant book on this "Nonzero : The Logic of Human Destiny" by Robert Wright). Sales is a no-win game for everyone. Maybe there isn't any word, the "trick", the "gimmick" that this book extols is genuiness, simply being real, if you will. You meet someone, you listen, you ask some good questions so that you understand them well and what they are trying to accomplish, if you think there might be a way that you or your company can help them you offer it to them, if not, you wish them well and part graciously. What is that? Being human? Being real? "being real" has a vaguely cheesy sound to it too, my only complaint about this book is it's title which can turn people off before they even open it. Again maybe there is no word. Many of us will simply go out and meet people and listen well and feel good about what we are doing and be personally successful as well...or are those the same thing anyway :-) The real value of this book is some excellent exercises you can do in a meeting with someone, things to really challenge you to break out of old patterns, very, very deeply ingrained patterns.
Rating:
Summary: Solid Addition to the 7-Habits Family of Literature
Review: Let's Get Real provides the reader with a fairly focused application of the 7 habits principles to the *science* of selling. The primary benefit to the reader is a change in perspective toward a consultitative sales approach, suitable for large scale transactions. I found the book primarily helpful in improving qualification processes. It helps provide a foundation for helping sales people do the homework that all good sale people ought to be doing. *No Guessing* is a central theme that rings with reality. This is not a how-to, but rather a *here's why.* I thought it sufficiently insightful that I purchased one for each of my team members.
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