Discover Your Sales Strengths: How the World's Greatest Salespeople Develop Winning Careers Hardcover – February 26, 2003

This is not a book. It is an essential tool for any sales professional no matter what stage in your career. New rep? Toughest thing for a new rep is finding themselves who are you? What type of rep will you be? Stop just copying other reps and instead find YOUR groove based off of an honest realization of your strengths and weaknesses. Unhappy rep? I actually quit a job after reading this because I realized that I was in a sale and situation that used almost none of my strengths? Direct reports/managers? Feel like your reps aren't speaking your language well use this tool to ensure you are defining terms the same way and speaking the same language. Help develop your reps strengths and hide their weaknesses.This is not a ra ra book that tells you how great you are and that you will make a million dollars tomorrow. This is for big boys and girls who want to truly become sales professionals and own their career.

In fact, I purchased several copies as gifts. The online assessment is worth the price of this book. As a business coach, I have tremendous appreciation for the breadth of his Gallup-based research. When we focus on our strengths we become better. I strongly recommend this book for anyone interested in developing their career. I should add that his points about selecting a sales career that matches strengths with relationship with your manager is congruent with my experiePassionate Action: 5 Steps to Extraordinary Success in Life and Worknce. I have 2 family members who are sales managers. And I work with many salespeople who struggle with career satisfaction. Hence, I srongle endorse this book. Doug Gray, PCC, and author of

Once again the Gallup organization, specifically Benson Smith and Tony Ruttigliano, deliver a good usable book to help improve your career based on strengths. This book begins with Gallup's common message, based on research, that if you focus on what you are good at; you will get better at it. This book continues on showing you what makes up a these strengths, based on a combination of talents which cluster together and come out as things like Competition, Empathy, and Command. This book will allow you to focus more on how you are wired, and what you have, than what you do not, and will never have.Most importantly this book gives you access to your 'Top Five' strengths, or patterns for success. These strengths, ranging from Harmony to Woo, will show you how you alone are as unique as 1 in 30 million people. The book could have been 5 stars if Gallup would have provided more patterns of strength and how they work in sales careers, they only give you a few morsels from their vault of knowledge and what patterns and combinations of strengths work in sales. They do let you in on the fact that Competition, Command and Empathy were themes commonly found in successful sales-agents.Overall this book is an A-, another great work from Gallup based on research, not just theory.Joseph Dworak

This book is great for those who have not read Now, Discover Your Strengths. There are some great statistics and ideas for sales managers, however, not too great for sales personnel. I would have liked to have seen more of a sales oriented spin on the interpretation strengthfinder assessment. It was the same interpretation as the assessment for Now, Discover Your Strengths.

I was having some trouble with my sales team. Out of the blue, a trusted previous sales manager called me and told me about the book. I got it a few weeks ago and I have already implemented changes. First thing I did, was made every sales rep on my team get a copy of it to find out what there strengths are.It dispells so many myths that I held true. For example, "If you can sell, then you can sell anything." I could not have been more wrong. I figured out quickly that I have made some hiring mistakes.Now I am working on recruiting the right fit for the company and our products. The changes are instantaneous. The book was a life saver.

Understanding your strengths, regardless if you are a stay at home parent, a high school graduate, or a hard core workaholic, is paramount for a successful life.... everyone should read this series... they should teach this in school to set students on the right career path. I used this with my son's, my husband, my co-workers and friends and have seen nothing but positive results from everyone who has taken the strength test... the other book in this series 2.0 is a very quick and easy read.

Boring and predictable. Too much of the author and not enough content - not to be recommended unless you like this sort of book.

This book extends the Gallup Organizations' sound concepts to the sales arena. It is a tremendously valuable book, but in the end, we all have different strengths upon which we must build our style to maximize our effectiveness in any arena. This book contains many stories illustrating the various styles that have been effective. They are inspirational as well as informative, and may help many to develop their style to achieve even greater success!A good companion book would be the the second in the Gallup series, "Now, Discover Your Strengths".

今流行り？のタイプ別診断とその強み弱みの解説、という流れ。営業なら読んでみてもいいかも。

As a big fan of 'First, break all the rules' and 'Now, discover your strengths' I had high hopes for this book and was, unfortunately, disappointed.If you've not read either of the other titles and you're in sales, you'll probably find this book fascinating. If you have read either of the other books, there really isn't anything new here.Having already identified my 'Signature Themes' from the assessment in 'Now, discover your strengths', I was hoping this book would explain how to play to those strengths in a sales role. It doesn't. In fact, to my annoyance, early on in the book the authors almost suggest that the Gallup research that identified the 34 Themes first introduced in the other two books was conducted specifically as research into sales success (when it was for employee performance generally).[If you are yet to take Gallup's assessment, this book does allow to do the StregthsFinder test].The book's saving grace is new research into 'Building Customer Engagement' with 8 associated questions along the lines of the 12 questions in 'First, break all the rules' (which are also examined here). The Customer Engagement concepts did cause me to re-examine my customer relationships and consider how I could truly engage my customers.There is then a chapter on Sales Management and then the book comes to a rather abrupt end.All in all, not up to the usual standard and can only be described as a repackaging of old material.