Zach Selch reviews Gap Selling by Keenan, a book that codifies B2B sales into nine clear rules. It works for both newcomers without a sales philosophy and veterans who wing it. Selch praises Keenan's candid voice and recommends the book for anyone serious about sales.
Chapters
I'm in the Central Train Station in Milan. In my opinion, this is the most beautiful train station in the world, and you get from here just about, well, just about anywhere in Europe. I've taken night trains here from Vienna, from Paris, from Switzerland, from other places. It's a great place to get around, and the advantage of taking trains into town instead of flying in is you go from the center of town to the center of town, and I love that. But I also just have to say I love the aesthetics. Unfortunately, what can you say, fascists do a great job of building, uh, buildings and train stations. I want to talk today about a book called Gap Selling by Keenan. And this is a great sales book. I mean, might be the best sales book that's come out in the last couple of years. And I'm going to talk— I talk about different genres of books. This one's almost like a philosophy of selling. It's looking at the sales process and the concept of selling in a slightly different way. And it isn't a revolutionary way. I apologize to Keenan. This isn't revolutionary. If you are a B2B salesperson who has been Hitting his numbers for years and doing well with complex sales, you understand exactly what he's saying. He is just putting it in better language and he is codifying it. He gives you 9 rules to follow, for instance, or to understand, and he talks about stuff like that. It is very, very comprehensive. Well, okay, it's a comprehensive philosophy, so he's not going down into detail, detail, detail. It's not like somebody talking about techniques per se. It's more like an overlying philosophy of how to sell. And I would say, if you know somebody who's getting into sales or somebody who is relatively new to B2B sales, or one of those old guys who's been doing it for 50 years but doesn't really have a philosophy behind it, he's just doing it from instinct, this is a perfect book for those people, right? But it's good for anybody. I've been selling B2B million-dollar deals for 30 years. And I, there were things I learned from it. There were things I enjoyed about it. I'll also say I love the way Keenan talks and writes. His voice is fantastic. He and I are in a lot of ways pretty different. You know, he likes lumberjack shirts. I like suits. He was a football player. I was an infantryman. But, you know, we're talking, he talks like a real sales manager does. He's using— He's a real salesman. What my mother used to call salty language, and I find that refreshing. Well, I would highly recommend it for a lot of different reasons. Remember, when you're ready to grow your international sales, reach out to us. We can help. When you decide it's time to grow your international sales, call us.
