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Creating a Million dollar a Year Sales Income

Book reviews > Creating a Million dollar a Year Sales Income

McCord, P. (2007) Creating a Million dollar a Year Sales Income: Sales Success Through Client Referrals, Hoboken, NJ: Wiley

From the title of this book you might guess that this is just another sales book that over-promises and under-delivers. Fortunately, you'd be wrong: This is a serious and practical book that can deliver what it says on the tin and more. What McCord has done is identify the most powerful way of gaining sales leads, taken it apart and re-built it into a powerfully more effective process.

The heart of McCord's method is the transaction that you build when you make a sale: a deliberate deal where you ask for solid referrals in exchange for proven great delivery and service. Of course you have to deliver on this promise, which then entitles you to ask for a separate meeting just for getting referrals. In this meeting you seek not just names and addresses but also introductions that make the referrals far more likely to lead to conversions.

The neat framing that McCord suggests you can add to conversation and personal branding that actually legitimizes your referral approach is the 'spiral of success' that: (a) by delivering great service you get great referrals, and (b) by getting great referrals you save so much time in prospecting you have the space in which to deliver great service.

Overall the book is very readable and stuffed full of tips, examples and strong how-do detail. It is, quite simply, the best manual on gaining and using referrals I have found.

The only thing I would change about this book is its title. All sales people know that referrals are by far and away the best way of gaining more sales and the 'million dollar' title is a distraction that can be interpreted as cheap sales pap. Personally, I would call the book something more direct such as 'Referral selling' or 'How to make referrals really work'.

In the end, the joy that earns this book a rare five stars is the practical, thorough and innovative treatment of referrals that can have literally massive benefit to anyone, not just in sales, who wants to connect with valued other people.