Zach Selch reviews Jim Cathcart's The 8 Competencies of Relationship Selling, a book that balances motivational messaging with practical sales tactics. It emphasizes targeting the right prospects and building relationships alongside product knowledge, making it useful for new managers or experienced sellers who need to strengthen their people skills.
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Hi, I'm in the Amman Airport on Jordan. Beautiful airport. It's really improved over the years. It's just a beautiful, modern, poured concrete airport. And I'm reading The 8 Competencies of Relationship Selling by Jim Cathcart. It's an interesting book. So on the one hand, I'm not a big fan I'm not a fan of the rah-rah type books, you know, that sort of say, well, you know how you're going to make your money? You're going to make your money by working harder than everybody else, so get up an hour earlier and work 15 minutes longer and all that. Which, to a large extent, this is what it is. A lot of people like that. On the other hand, a lot of people like, need, benefit from those type of books. So from perspective of that type of book, this is a very good one, okay? And it tells you really in detail. You know what I do like about different books and different courses and stuff, and you find a lot here, is it basically breaks down everything you're supposed to be doing and tells you, gives you a few ideas how to improve it, plus it sort of motivates you to try and improve it. Okay, so in that instance, that's the type of thing that I like to do. I like to take a look at things, break them into little pieces and then say, well, how do I improve this? How do I improve this? How do I improve this? And here, that's a lot of what it is, with a lot of motivation on top of it. There are a couple of other things that I find very interesting. So one thing that a lot of people overlook is targeting. Okay, what do I mean by targeting? Is, well, how much time am I going to spend trying to identify the right prospect to talk to? and how much time am I gonna spend talking to different prospects who might not be the right one? And I think most people have the wrong ratio. I'd rather spend an hour trying to find the right prospect and never talk to the wrong prospect. And he talks about that in here, which is really good, sort of targeting the right prospects. There are a couple of other things that he talks about, you know, things like How important is product knowledge versus selling skill? How you're perceived by the people you're doing business with, those type of things. So if you knew somebody, I'll tell you who the perfect person for this is. It's not for a sales manager. Maybe it is for a sales manager, but I'd say a newish sales manager. But if you have a sales guy, you know, who's been selling something for a few years, doing pretty well, and is now going into bigger ticketed items, items that require more of a relationship. Or for instance, you might know somebody who's doing really well understanding the product side of things, and now where he really needs to work on is building relationships. Okay, a lot of people I know They're strong on relationships and they're soft on process, right? But if you're really strong on product and you need to develop your relationship skills, this would be a great book for somebody like that. 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.
