Selling (un)selling

The Reading List for 29 Dec 23

If you haven’t bought Kevin Casey’s book on how to sell, get a copy.

It’s worth the time.

Not complicated.

Plenty of useful insights and tips.

And true to his own style, Kevin gives you information as a story that is entertaining and light on the touch.

Not a heavy sell.

The 14 principles Kevin promotes are familiar. Like the advice about using simple words rather than complicated ones.

But that’s not the meat of the book.

That’s in the Core Four: key questions to get you focused as a person doing the selling.

Then there’s what Kevin calls the Zero Pressure Sequence.

The real insight you’ll get though is not from reading the book. It’s watching how Kevin is selling the book.

Along the way you’ll discover kevincasey.ca, which is the real point of the whole exercise: pitching Kevin as sales guru.

This is a well-ploughed patch, including one guy who has exactly the same title on his book that Kevin uses The other guy got there first, which is a big problem for Kevin in several ways. He’s already used the “un” thing extensively, for one thing so Kevin isn't distinguishing himself in the marketplace. It would be odd hit the other guy not to challenge Kevin for poaching.

That’s why it will be interesting to see how this turns out. Is Kevin genuinely different? Or is he just another version of the same? Believe me: there are lots of The Same out there in the marketing guru space.

In that context, it might be useful to use Kevin’s ideas and do a reverse analysis on Kevin’s marketing for his own project to see if he’s practicing what he preaches.

Not saying whether Kevin is or isn’t but it’s an idea to make Kevin a case study of his own techniques. Maybe a case-y study, if you want the sort of cheesy plays on words that sometimes work to get attention.

Anyway, buy Kevin’s book.

You won’t regret it.

Now it’s on to the last grab-bag of curious stuff to read for 2023.