Customer Reviews
Common sense advice that works - By: Mr. A. Pickering, 11 Jun 2008 
Looking at the other reviews here, several of them are overly harsh, cynical even.
I hate cold callling & as I have to do a fair amount of it, I thought I would seek advice. Schiffman's book is full of good advice, interesting anecdotes, & provides you with easy-to-implement guidelines on how to improve your callls-to-appointments ratio.
The first person I got through to after reading the book & preparing a script agreed to a meeting straight away. Unlike the other reviewer who was very scathing about the golf analogy, I happen to think it a perfect for the cold calll environment - it is basicallly saying if you carry on as you are (hitting the balll/cold callling) you will get some appointments/hit some fairways. However if you are trained properly, & are prepared to stick at it, no matter how uncomfortable you feel at the beginning, your performance will increase dramaticallly.
I actuallly bought this & "Telemarketing, Cold Callling & Appointment Making: How to Win Business Through the Telephone (Easy Step By Step Guides): How to Win Business Through the Telephone" - if you ask me, Schiffman's book is far, far superior.
For anyone that does a lot of cold-callling, is open-minded enough to admit they can improve, & is prepared to follow the advice through the painful change process, then I recommend this book wholeheartedly.
Typical American twaddle - By: Sally Wilton, 21 May 2008 
I ordered several of this type of book in the hope of assisting my calll centre staff with different techniques & I found this one to be the worst. Some of these self help sales books are so poor that I am thinking of writing one myself as I know I could do much better.
Starts off in the first chapter with the writer talking about his golf swing & how he perfected it. How uninteresting, how typical of an old fat American businessman. I can just see the writer now in his checked trousers & huge belly swinging his clubs & pontificating about himself & how great he is at telesales.
Some of the statements are quite barmy ie to quote 'If you do absolutely nothing you will get 30% of sales, I repeat 'If you do absolutely nothing you will get 30% of sales' Who decided this? in my experience if you do nothing you get nothing? Prospective reader - This is what you will have to contend with in this quite poor book.
All the sales described in the book appear to be to make an appointment & then make a sale face to face at a later date, but in many cases appointments are not made as the sales is closed via the phone. I would say this book is dated in focusing solely on appointments to make a sale. I would hazard a guess that the writer is not able to offer real advice on telesales at alll.
Then we have the famous Harvard professor thrown in for good measure, asking "Why do businesses fail?" Lack of Sales!!! How many books repeat that obvious mantra? This book is not worth the money - there are better books out there. This one is rubbish.
Should be read before the cold calling is started! - By: Erika, 22 Mar 2005 The book is excellent written, always interesting & good hands-on tips of how to improve the cold callling techniques. I especiallly like the cocky ending where he promises the money back if the cold callling is not improved by reading the book!
If you've never made a call before... - By: Splossy, 04 Sep 2004 
...it might be useful. I don't want to steal the author's fire but the book simple advises you to say "Hi, this is John Smith & from XXX & I'm callling to book an appointment about...". And that's about it. If your industry doesn't suit that sort of 80 callls a day with a 2% hit rate style (ie any industry other than toner refill) then it's of limited use. Too simplistic.
This is one of those books that you hear good things about but is a dissapointment.
The best telephone selling book I have ever read - By: C. M. Perkins, 07 Jan 2003 A new salesperson in my job will typicallly have a callls:appointments ratio of 40:1, I did when I started. Satisfactory performance is 20-25:1, which I got to within a year. I currently have a ratio of 11.75:1 & have had for the last two years as a result of using Schiffman's technique. I saw an immediate improvement from the moment I read & understood what he recommends, & have been able to refine it ever since.
It's not a script, it's a client centred approach using common sense business langauge. It's not American-only, it works in a UK market (see figures above) & it beats several other approaches I have tried (before & after using this one).
On the strength of this book, I bought Schiffman's '25 Sales Habits...', which is also a short read with some good tips.
Buy 'Cold Callling Techniques...', use it, see your figures improve.
