Jim Keenan challenged me to write this blog post. He wants us all to remember that our success depends on other people. He chose Chris Brogan as the person who helped him the most in 2016. Happily, I can take credit for the introduction, something Chris has done for me countless times.
My take is going to be different from Jim’s, and from the rest of the people who have responded to his prompt.
There isn’t a single person who helped me as much as the group of people who helped me. It wasn’t one person; it was many people.
I launched my first book, The Only Sales Guide You’ll Ever Need, on October 11th, 2016. That book hit number 1 on Amazon.com and is a USA Today national bestseller. As proud of that accomplishment as I am, it wasn’t me who did that. It was due to the community.
The community of my peers all helped me launch the book.
Alphabetically, that list includes, Alen Mayer, Alice Heiman, Andy Paul (who had me on his stellar podcast), Babette Ten Haken, Barbara Giamanco, Barbara Weaver Smith, Bernadette McClelland, Carole Mahoney, the irrepressible Dan Waldschmidt, Deb Calvert, Doyle Slayton, Elinor Stutz, Heather Morgan, Jack Malcolm, Jaclyn Goldman, James Muir, Jeff Beals (who brought me onto his radio show), Jeff Shore (who did an awesome YouTube video for me), the one-of-kind Jim Keenan, Kelly McCormick, Kelly Riggs (who brought me on his fantastic podcast), Ken Thoreson (who wrote a review of the book), Leeann Hoagland-Smith, Lee Salz (who emailed his massive LinkedIn Group for me), Lori Richardson (who wrote an awesome review), Lynn Hidy (who wrote a week’s work of blog posts covering the book), Matt Heinz, Mike Kunkle, Nancy Nardin, Richard Ruff, Bob Terson, Sam Richter, Shane Gibson (who interviewed me on his podcast, something we should do more often), Diane Gearin, Tibor Shanto, Tim Hurson, Todd Schnick (yes, another killer podcast), Townsend Wardlaw (who has always has my back), and Viveka von Rosen.
My good friends, Jeb Blount, Mark Hunter, Mike Weinberg, Miles Austin, John Spence, Jill Konrath, and Dave Brock all promoted my book to their communities. This is like having Oprah recommend your book. These folks have audiences who trust them, and they would not recommend something they don’t believe creates value for their community. Dave Stein brought me onto to his podcast for Sales & Marketing Management Magazine.
And, of course, my friend Lahat Tzvi, who got my book required at the Shimon Peres Academy in Israel.
The gang at Portfolio Penguin were a tremendous help.
My friend, Bob Burg, interviewed me for his podcast (I believe I am the only guest to have been on his show three times). He also introduced me to Bruce Turkel, who emailed his list and wrote a blog post for me the day after launching his own book! I knew Bruce for all of a week.
Bob also introduced me to Lolly Daskal who, without knowing me well at all, promoted my book with an Inc. Magazine article and recommends the book to her community.
My friend, Gerhard Gschwandtner, of Selling Power and Sales 2.0 Conferences, stepped up in a big way, making introductions and helping me promote the book.
My friends at Kinopicz did an extraordinary job helping me build the launch videos and the accompanying websites. I could not have sold close to 11,000 books in the first week without the help of Beth, Heather, and Amy who went way beyond anything expected to help me move 11,000 books.
Many of the companies that have spoken to over the past few years bought books for their teams, including Travel Counsellors, IDEXX, Inktel, iD Commerce, Westlake Financial, TOPS Software, and some companies who prefer not be named.
The Community
The people who make up my community made the difference. There is no reason to write a book except for to serve some group of people, and these are the people for whom I wrote this book.
The people who read the blog, watch the YouTube show and receive the newsletter stepped up and preordered the book in numbers we couldn’t have imagined at the time. In fact, we had so many orders that we had trouble shipping them all in week one and had to find additional books.
These people ordered my book, site unseen. They ordered the book 10 weeks before the book was announced, based only on my promise that they would find it helpful in improving their mindsets and skill sets.
I thank Jim Keenan for the prompt to go through this exercise. All of us depend on others for our success.
.jpg?width=768&height=994&name=salescall-planner-ebook-v3-1-cover%20(1).jpg)
