Newsletter Tells Sales Disaster Stories

Posted on December 3, 1999

The masthead on the free monthly publication reads: Here are the archives of salespeople who have crashed and burned. Each month the "war correspondent of selling," Dan Seidman, compiles the best of the worst selling disasters for his subscribers.

Dan explains how he created the publication: "I got sick of all the sales success stories. Are we really inspired by the kid who closed that tough sale? Or would we rather enjoy the misery of our selling colleagues who bombed? I'm betting the farm on great gruesome failures."

The free newsletter is avialable on SalesAutopsy.com. Visitors can attain web immortality by confessing their most embarrassing moments. There are two rules for salespeople revealing their sales nightmares: no happy endings and you must share the lesson you learned.

Dan Seidman believes the root of most sales failure is rather simple. "The rep is probably using an old technique. Selling guru, Larry Wilson, put it best when he stated that, 'Today, buyers are better at buying than sellers are at selling.' This means that the buyer has heard all the salesperson's closes so often, the buyer knows them better than the rep!"