Rating: 
Summary: Great for Start-Ups
Review: This book is a BASIC easy to read text. I was able to read it in one evening. I strongly recommend this book for the sales consultant who needs to use the telephone to set up face-to-face meetings.Remember this is just a basic book -- don't buy if you're looking for excuses why your sales prospecting isn't working. Read the book -- try Stephan's easy to follow method -- watch the appointments increase.
Rating:
Summary: Great for Start-Ups
Review: This book is a BASIC easy to read text. I was able to read it in one evening. I strongly recommend this book for the sales consultant who needs to use the telephone to set up face-to-face meetings. Remember this is just a basic book -- don't buy if you're looking for excuses why your sales prospecting isn't working. Read the book -- try Stephan's easy to follow method -- watch the appointments increase.
Rating:
Summary: Recommended
Review: This book is about calling to get appointments to get prospects that get sales - A=P=S. Well suited to the professional or service provider looking to build a client base. You know Stephan is a master when you read this book, in fact he says to just follow his teachings even if you don't believe them at first because you need to follow the steps to make it work. I know he's been on the front lines from his writing and his examples. He describes a lot of scenarios with specific examples of what is said and how to respond. if you need more clients or prospects, this is good reading worth your time.
Rating: 
Summary: Fast and Easy to Apply!
Review: This is a great book for anyone who sells. Even if you don't sell over the phone, the techniques the author gives increases your appointments, and to my surprize, dramatically increases your call backs. If you find yourself leaving messages, this book will help you leave the right message to get your prospect to call you back.
Rating:
Summary: Get Cold Calling Results!
Review: This was a great book. I was able to read the entire book in just over a couple of hours over the weekend, and applied the techniques the following week. At the end of the first week, I had set up 8 new appointments. For any salesperson, whose business depends on meeting a customer face to face, this book is a must-have. As with any book of this type, you must put the principles into action.
Rating:
Summary: Simple, Very Useable
Review: This was my first book on the subject of cold calling, and I admit I still am not as well read on the topic as some of the other reviewers may be. The book does boil cold calling down to a very basic and straighforward level, which may offend some who want to believe that in order for a strategy to work it has to be complex. Personally, I think there's enough innate complexity in life, we should not look for strategies that incorporate it as well. The techniques are straightforward, and contrary to what Bob from New York will tell you, the author does not advocate gimmicks, in fact he admonishes the reader not to use them. This book should be read and considered by anyone interested in cold calling. w f depp
Rating:
Summary: Simple, Very Useable
Review: This was my first book on the subject of cold calling, and I admit I still am not as well read on the topic as some of the other reviewers may be. The book does boil cold calling down to a very basic and straighforward level, which may offend some who want to believe that in order for a strategy to work it has to be complex. Personally, I think there's enough innate complexity in life, we should not look for strategies that incorporate it as well. The techniques are straightforward, and contrary to what Bob from New York will tell you, the author does not advocate gimmicks, in fact he admonishes the reader not to use them. This book should be read and considered by anyone interested in cold calling. w f depp
Rating:
Summary: Get The Appointment
Review: To make a big sale, you have to get in front of your buyers. The author advocates a simple, honest message to the potential clients on the phone. The straight forward language make the book easy to digest in one sitting. This is definitely a hands on book, with tips that can be put in practice the next day. The biggest downfall is that not enough time is spent on actually getting through to the client. From my experience, this is definitely the hardest part.
Rating: 
Summary: Eh....
Review: Very repetative book. It could be condensed into only a few chapters. Solid info, but some of it is totally inapplicable to many salesmen (me included). Setting up the appointment is great, and it's what we all want to do as salespeople. However, for many salesman, just blindly setting up an appointment within 20 seconds of speaking with a person is foolish. There's no mention of qualifying the people you're speaking with.
The book IS movitational, and offers many helpful insights, such as tracking your calls, making sure you make your calls every day, etc. It just wasn't what I expected.
Rating: 
Summary: Tragedy of the Sales field
Review: What is taught in this book will be successful if you are lucky enough. This book can easily be summarized by its five basic elements to cold call:
1. get the person s attention
2. identify yourself and your company
3. give the reason for your call
4. make a qualifying/questioning statement
5. set the appointment You can see how cliche it is. The first one-third of the book just talks about the benefits of doing more sales call. Then the nightmare begins. Guess how the author teaches you to start a good opening. -- Good morning, Mr. Jones.-- That?s it. Wouldn t a kid do that? He has claimed that -- the reality is no matter what you say in the opening, people are going to respond to you, AND YOU CAN PREPARE FOR THOSE RESPONSES.-- But guess again what those so called turning around common response techniques are. If someone will tell you that -I am not interested.- You should say, --well, Mr. Jones, a lot of people had the same reaction you did when I first called ? before they had a chance to see how what we do will benefit them.-- The answer to I am too busy is -- Mr. Jones, the only reason I was calling was to set an appointment. Would next Tuesday at 3:00 be okay?-- If somebody request you sending some literature for review, you simply just need to say ? Can t we just get together? How about next Tuesday ??-- I had received such calls before. The presentations of the callers were exactly the same as those listed in this book. I cannot imagine your responses. But for me, that is not acceptable. I had received a call when I was terribly busy. I told him to call in later. But that guy still hanging there and murmuring -- I JUST WANT TO SET AN APPOINTMENT WITH YOU. WILL IT BE POSSIBLE ON ??-- What would you do then? Also, if I were truly not interested by that moment, how would I fulfill someone s request for making an appointment? Will life be that simple? Will those top managers be such easy going? This kind of hard push selling method is out of date. If you folks can accept this pushy style, then buy this book and practice it. The recommendation to get past the gatekeepers in this book is ? to call later, or earlier. Bcos probably the gatekeepers will not be there to block you. No more, no less. Obviously this approach is out of intuition. The author never ever tried to think on some better ways to overcome the gatekeeper questions. This book also has not touched on issues like fear to call. The last one-third of this book blah-blah-blah on referral calls, follow up calls, and the sales process. Gee, quite match to the book title! This is one of the worst books I have ever read. I bought this book bcos of its already sold quantity and also the good comments from other reviews. Having 15 years in direct sales and marketing, I can only say this book is totally a bs, no no-nonsense The author heaped up this book with many other stuff. He also conjectured most of the pretending real life conversations. Mine is the fourth edition (1999). I have no idea about the first edition (1987). But I guess there is no big difference. Go for other books if you really want to learn how to Cold Call. Recommend us if you find a real good one. This book did not much better than a kid can. I just wonder how the author can have trained over 350,000 salespeople, even at some famous corp. What would their performance on Cold Call be? In fact, the author s basic principle tells you all ? No matter what the person says to you, you are going to say, --We really should get together.-- YOU KNOW SOMETHING!
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