Smeal MBA Career Coach Pens Book On Sales Myths And Strategy

UNIVERSITY PARK, PA (March 12, 2007) – A new book by Arnold Tilden, a career coach in the MBA Program at Penn State's Smeal College of Business, exposes four myths that dominate the sales profession and impede sales efforts. The book provides a roadmap for companies and salespeople to stop relying on mythology and refocus their resources on strategy, structure, and people.

In the first section of Rainmakers, Closers, and Other Sales Myths, published by University Press of America, Tilden identifies and debunks the four major false beliefs that can prove detrimental to a company's sales efforts:

    •  "Rainmakers" – the belief that salespeople are born with special God-given talents that allow them to make sales.
    •  "Closers" – the belief that better closing skills are the key to sales success.
    •  "Schmooze" – the tendency of salespeople and managers to put too much emphasis on extracurricular activities, and not enough on building trust and displaying expertise and competency
    •   "Field of Dreams" ("If you build it, they will come") – the tendency of managers to neglect the sales function of their business and focus all of their resources on engineering new features for their product or service.

The rest of the book uses activities, examples, research, scorecards, and worksheets to help salespeople and their managers replace these myths, which Tilden admits hold some truth, with his "integrated sales system that coordinates Strategy, Structure, and People™."

Sales strategy, Tilden writes, can be compared to that of war, with shareholders as sovereigns, executives as generals, sales management as officers, and salespeople as soldiers. Finding success with the right strategy then requires a structure that supports it with the right metrics, an appropriate hierarchy, and access to necessary resources. Finally, Tilden says, recruiting the right people and equipping them with the right skills will complete a company's transition away from mythology to a real, integrated sales system.

Rainmakers, Closers, and Other Sales Myths is available for purchase at www.univpress.com/Catalog/SingleBook.shtml?command=Search&db=%5EDB/CATALOG.db&eqSKUdata=0761835482.

Read the foreword, by Steve Wiley, chief executive officer of The Wiley Group, at www.tildensst.com/foreword.htm.

About the Author, Arnold Tilden
Tilden is the principal of Tilden & Associates (www.tildensst.com) and a partner in PfP Consulting, firms that help clients grow their businesses through performance consulting, training, recruitment and selection, strategic planning, and executive development. He has served as the lead consultant on performance improvement projects for clients like Barclays Global Investors, The Federal Reserve Bank, Johnson Controls, KPMG, and BNP Paribas.

At Smeal, Tilden works with the college's MBA students as one of its career counselors, helping students explore and prepare for diverse careers in business.

Tilden holds a doctorate in educational psychology from Temple University.