Book Review: The One Minute Sales Person by Spenser Johnson MD and Larry Wilson

Summary: The premise of The One Minute Sales Person is that everyone is a salesperson, whether conscious of it or not. Whether you're selling a thing, an idea or a service. If you're on a career path - you're selling yourself and your skils.

Do I recommend it? Yes, with caveats.

This is an old school book that purported itself to be "new school" back when it was published. It's worth adding to your repertoire of books. Because it's a super fast and short read, you can feel like you accomplished something. It's a classic for a reason. Overall it's a worthwhile use of your time if you want to shift or reset your expectations about the sales process and how to conceptualize your role in it. I profoundly dislike sales, having come from academia, and it feels like a huge investment of work to someone like me to reframe that sales process, but it's grown on me. I'm trying to help solve other people's problems and to do that, I have to know what their problems are and how they feel about it. I have to sell myself - and so do you - to employers and potential customers and clients.

"What do you do to help other people get what they want?" - One Minute Sales Person

What's great about it? It's great if you need an extra push to convince yourself that you are worth the investment. You need to be invested in selling yourself and willing to work to figure out how to sell yourself to someone. (Spoiler alert - you need to put yourself into someone else's shoes).

Not so great if you're easily annoyed by the narrative device used by this and other business books. It feels like fake storytelling to me and I tend to be annoyed by how people are portrayed.

The biggest caveat I have is that it's an old book and it is feeling its age - but still worth a read.

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