ZenWise Selling: Mindful Methods to Improve Your Sales...and Your Self

Rating:
Summary: At peace with sales in a high pressure world
Review: "Zen Wise Selling" is about achieving the Holy Grail of sales - clearing your mind, finding calm and peace within yourself, and selling without any stress despite looming deadlines, quotas, and other standard fare of sales. Scattered throughout the book are multiple exercises to help the reader find that peace inside their self. This peace translates into a stronger personal aura and a strong sense of presence.

One of the most important points of the book besides establishing this internal peace is to approach each sales opportunity from a fresh viewpoint with no preconceptions. This allows an honest relationship to develop between the customer and salesperson and a true partnership. This is selling with integrity at it's best. "Zen Wise Selling" is not a sales techniques book but a book on the foundation that underlies all relationships, including sales. The information in sales techniques books can then be applied to this foundation. Sell more, less stress, more peace, achieve the Zen of selling. "Zen Wise Selling" is a highly recommended book.

Rating:
Summary: At peace with sales in a high pressure world
Review: "Zen Wise Selling" is about achieving the Holy Grail of sales - clearing your mind, finding calm and peace within yourself, and selling without any stress despite looming deadlines, quotas, and other standard fare of sales. Scattered throughout the book are multiple exercises to help the reader find that peace inside their self. This peace translates into a stronger personal aura and a strong sense of presence.

One of the most important points of the book besides establishing this internal peace is to approach each sales opportunity from a fresh viewpoint with no preconceptions. This allows an honest relationship to develop between the customer and salesperson and a true partnership. This is selling with integrity at it's best. "Zen Wise Selling" is not a sales techniques book but a book on the foundation that underlies all relationships, including sales. The information in sales techniques books can then be applied to this foundation. Sell more, less stress, more peace, achieve the Zen of selling. "Zen Wise Selling" is a highly recommended book.

Rating:
Summary: Skeptic at first, then impressed
Review: I've learned eight or nine different sales strategies over the years. I assumed ZenWise Selling was just another spin on the same old tune: techniques to 'buddy up' to prospects until you can effectively pitch them. While this book touches on standard prospecting and presenting, it mainly focuses on the individual doing the selling. Why are they doing this? What makes them tick? I really appreciated the 'fill in the blank' exercises. (My first answers weren't always the most correct.) If you want something that touches the heart of the salesperson, buy this book.


Rating:
Summary: In a sea of selling books, this one sails above the rest
Review: In a sea of books that teach strategies to help people become better salespersons, ZenWise Selling aims to teach the salesperson to become a better person, first. Once on this path, the salesperson will find the journey adventuresome and filled with lifelong successes. I also loved the Appendix overviewing the origins and history of Zen. WOW!
Brenda Avadian, M.A.
TheCaregiversVoice.com
Speaker and Author, "Where's my shoes?" My Father's Walk Through Alzheimer's (2nd ed) and editor of the Finding the JOY in Alzheimer's series.


Rating:
Summary: What a great resource for anyone in sales!
Review: Mr. Godden has blended an ancient philosophy to help with a current trend in stressed out salespeople! I've just finished his book, and I think I may replace the "squeeze ball" and "Bang Head Here" poster from my office and buy one of those peaceful little desk sand gardens. His writing style makes it obvious he's been in the trenches of sales professionals with the rest of us, and really knows what it's like. I never realized how cluttered one's mind really IS until I tried his meditation exercises at lunch this week. It's not easy, but I kept at it until I felt such relaxation the third try, I went back to work that afternoon feeling as though I'd had a mini vacation, it's simple but it works! I liked his direct style and the way he coaches the reader to regain personal integrity and self esteem which can be lost so easily in the fast paced world of quotas, and meeting the demands of the job.
Reading his book left me with a renewed sense of pride in myself and my profession, and I was on the verge of total burn out. I already know a few coworkers for whom this will be a great holiday gift!

Rating:
Summary: A handbook of how to sell respectfully and ethically
Review: We talk a lot about marketing. And one-to-one contact is, of course, a major piece of the larger marketing pie. The act of meeting with a prospect, or speaking to one over the telephone, and convincing that person that your products and services can fill a need, solve a problem, or make an improvement is one of the most badly practiced arts around--so many people don't have a clue about how to sell ethically and in a way that fully respects the prospect.

Therefore, it's always nice to recommend a resource that can improve the selling experience for both seller and buyer. I recommend a few such books in the Principled Pro fit bibliography, which is now posted on the website. And I'm always glad to find more.

Lee Godden sent me a copy of his new book, ZenWise Selling, and he's clearly based in exactly that kind of wisdom. He espouses a gentle, mindful selling orientation that replaces the aggressive hard sell. Instead, he suggests really listing, ethical behavior, and accepting the ups and downs of the process as a keen observer of the world, as opposed to as someone who gets bent out of shape by every little setback.

Godden is a Zen practitioner, and there's certainly quite a bit about meditative techniques and general Zen practices, as well as a nice little history of Zen at the end of the book. But he isn't preachy, and even if you don't see yourself meditating, there's much here that will be useful and practical for anyone in sales.

And actually, while reading this book, I had an emergency root canal on one of my teeth. I let Lee's message flow over me, and achieved a meditative state in the dentist's chair that made the procedure a lot less painful, and the recovery a lot faster, than it might have been.

Rating:
Summary: Confidently recommended as a superbly balanced work
Review: Zen Wise Selling: Mindful Methods To Improve Your Sales... And Your Self by sales trainer, public speaker, and Zen practitioner Lee Godden offers readers a unique blend of Zen principles and great business methodologies revolving around the core idea that excellence in personal understanding, bearing, character and credibility will inevitably result in excellent sales. From living and selling in-the-moment; to learning to accept, embrace, and learn from one's failures and fears; to the arts of managing salespeople; to team selling, and more, Zen Wise Selling is confidently recommended as a superbly balanced work leading to self-improve-ment on physical, economic, and spiritual fronts.