Noting the success of author/lawyer John Grisham in spotlighting his profession in fiction, C.M. Nevill thought it was about time real estate took the dramatic stage of the action-adventure novel. His first book, Due Diligence, 
follows the trail of Sam Reid, a struggling newbie real estate professional in Houston, as he unwittingly becomes involved with an international drug cartel.
Nevill, a residential salesperson with Jim Stewart, REALTORS®, in Waco, Texas, talked with us about finding the inspiration and time to write, the difficulties of publishing a first novel, and how aspiring authors in real estate can follow his lead into the literary world.
Due Diligence is an action-adventure novel, but the story is still firmly entwined in Texas real estate. How much do you draw on your everyday life to craft Sam Reid’s world?
Nevill: I have a really wild imagination, and it’s very easy now in today’s world to actually get involved in just about anything you want to by getting on the web. You can pretty much find out any information that you want simply by Googling. And, so as far as my own personal involvement in the story, maybe a few little odds and ends, but mainly it’s just creative imagination.
How did you get started?
Nevill: Real estate really comes first in my life, and in real estate you sometimes have some down time. A lot of people go out and they play golf or tennis or fish or something like that. But I like to read. And it just occurred to me that, you know, a lot of this reading that I do, I could probably get involved in writing too.
From reading John Grisham, he involves lawyers in a lot of things, and I thought, “Well, we ought to be able to come up with something that would involve a young real estate agent.” And so, my creative juices just started coming together. Continue reading »
Are you sick and tired of the prima donna sales rep who cherry picks the best leads and leaves the hard work for someone else? Well, Marketo President and CEO Phil Fernandez suggests putting this supposedly bad behavior at the center of your revenue performance management process.
This bold idea is one of many in Fernandez’ new book, Revenue Disruption: Game-Changing Sales And Marketing Strategies To Accelerate Growth. In this excerpt, Fernandez explains how a simple shift can help marketing and sales teams work together to create a more efficient, cost-effective process that better reflects the new realities facing the modern sales team. Continue reading »
You’re either an entrepreneur or you’re not. Right?
Well, according to Heart, Smarts, Guts, and Luck: What it Takes to be an Entrepreneur and Build a Great Business, success in business creation is not dependent on just one “it” factor. Authors Tony Tjan, Dick Harrington, and Tsun-yan Hsieh argue that, within each successful entrepreneur is a combination of the four driving attributes identified in their book’s title.
Furthermore, they argue that knowing which of these four traits drives you could be the key to unlocking your true potential. The book itself won’t be available until August, though you can pre-order it at their site. But as something of a personalized preview, the authors offer the Entrepreneurial Aptitude Test, or EAT, as a sort of entry point to their book. Continue reading »
Real estate is experiencing an evolution where traditional marketing may no longer be effective. REALTOR® and first-time author Michael J. Maher sums up an emerging entrepreneurial philosophy as a move from the “ego era” to the “generosity generation.” Maher lays out this business and life strategy in (7L) The Seven Levels of Communication (AuthorHouse, 2010), a narrative-style novel telling the story of Rick Masters, a fictional salesperson who learns the transforming lessons of selflessness.
Maher spoke with the Weekly Book Scan to talk about 7L, the generosity generation, and the power of word-of-mouth.
Your book starts out with a very intense moment – your own cardiac arrest. How did that event motivate you to write this book?
Maher: Well there’s “motivation,” and then there’s “MOTIVATION” in all caps, bold letters, underlined and italics. There’s never a moment where you really see or think about your legacy more than when your mortality is in front of you.
My father passed away from cancer in 1992. I had the opportunity to hang out with him during the final three years of his life. I learned more in those three years than I had in the previous 19. He was the father of five, and also a coach and a teacher, so he was busy all of the time when I was younger. But at the end of those last three years, he said his one regret was that he had not written his memoirs. They would’ve been very powerful memoirs because he was a very influential and highly respected man in our community. I can just imagine reading those memoirs to my son Max. That thought crossed my mind as they were wheeling me to the surgery room to put in a temporary pace maker — that night in ICU I started writing. I just thought, I’ve got this information in my head, I’ve got this system that is producing business for me, and I need to share it.
Can you describe the main character, Rick Masters? Continue reading »
For their new book—Sales Growth: Five Proven Strategies From The World’s Sales Leaders—Thomas Baumgartner, Jon Vander Ark, and Homayoun Hatami observed the inner workings of successful companies. Based on interviews of more than 120 of today’s most successful global sales leaders, this book offers real-life examples of how they overcame difficulties and found growth in a challenging market.
Part of finding growth is developing a sales team. While mentoring is a learning process, it shouldn’t feel like going back to a high school lecture hall. In this excerpt from the book, the three partners in McKinsey & Company talk about trainers and coaches who apply the tenets of successful adult education to their programs. Adults retain the most new information by doing—not hearing—and companies that integrate hands-on learning into their mentoring programs can benefit from that built-in bias. The authors also address how to reinforce successes while also giving special attention to those who need it. The excerpt closes with an innovative method of coaching the coach, an investment that for one company yielded an impressive return in close rates.
EXCERPT:
Coach Rookies Into Rainmakers
Unlocking people’s potential to maximize their performance is about helping them to learn rather than teaching them. This form of coaching is critical in sales because adults learn best through “experiential” learning—that is, by doing. Studies have shown that adults retain 65 percent of experiential learning compared to just 10 percent of material they receive in a lecture setting or in demonstrations. Continue reading »
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