Peer Review

The Power of Selling

Material Detail page

Reviewed:: Jan 6, 2020 by Business

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Ratings

Overall Rating:

Content Quality:

Effectiveness:

Ease of Use:

Overview:

The Power of Selling is an open text for professional selling. This is one of many open textbooks available via the open text system in Minnesota and Saylor.org. The content/direction tends to be more to the professional, but is applicable for students.

Type of Material:

Open (Access) Textbook

Recommended Uses:

This could easily serve as a textbook for a selling or sales class, at the undergraduate level. It could also be used as in-class, individual, self-paced, stand alone learning material.

Technical Requirements:

web access; pdf reader

Identify Major Learning Goals:

The text is designed to provide an "inside" perspective of professional sales, as both a profession, and as an aspect of "everyday life."

Some of the most relevent/major learning goals:

Understanding the role of selling in everyday life.

Discuss the characteristics required to be successful in a career in sales.

Understand why relationships are so important in selling.

Understand ethics and what composes ethical behavior.

Recognize the elements of effective business communication.

Describe the different types of customers and why this information is important in determining customers’ needs.

Explain the role of the seven steps of the selling process.

Explain how to research a qualified prospect and list resources to conduct prospect research.

Understand the role of first impressions and the importance of a strong approach.

Learn how to prepare for a sales presentation.

Understand what a sales objection is.

Understand what follow-up entails and why it is so important.

Understand how to manage yourself as a selling professional.

Discuss the role of entrepreneurial businesses in the economy.

Target Student Population:

Undergraduate marketing/sales students and MBA level students who perhaps have not had a previous professional selling/sales class.

Prerequisite Knowledge or Skills:

Basic marketing concepts and principles should be sufficient pre-requisite knowledge.

Content Quality

Rating:

Strengths:

Content coverage is good, and current. A variety of multi-media and in-text insight boxes engage students. Content is available via PDF downloadable document, or online.

Content is clear and concise. It could be adapted easily to a course or as a stand-alone material. It gives good definitions and strong, recent examples.

Concerns:

The content is presented more as a professional trade publication, but this might provide a unique experience for students in the traditional classroom. It could use more examples and visuals, and is somewhat dense with text.

Potential Effectiveness as a Teaching Tool

Rating:

Strengths:

The material is engaging, and provides multiple perspectives of the chapter content. Each chapter includes Selling U section that provides a practical application of the chapter content for personal / professional application, such as cover letters and resumes. Each chapter also includes a Review and Practice summary section. This includes review questions, activities, as well as a role place activity. All of these relate to the chapter content, and reinforce the material presented. It would be easy to integrate into a course as a text resource. The chapters divided into segments for efficiency, and identify learning objectives that can be integrated and measured. Activities are built into the chapters.

Concerns:

There is no pre-requisite information, and it could use a bit more building on concepts.

Learning objectives for each chapter are rather "typical" and could be improved to better meet Bloom's Taxonomy.

Ease of Use for Both Students and Faculty

Rating:

Strengths:

The online, interactive textbook is very user-friendly and easy to navigate. Consistency in design and layout provide ease of navigation. The material is very easy to use – just a text. The instructions (aka read) are clear. The material is mostly accessible, no major accessibility issues, but simple text should have no accessibility issues.

Concerns:

There are few visuals, no interaction, not very appealing (just dense text). It could use more visuals to be more engaging.

The PDF verion lacks a Table of Contents, and it has no internal links to easily naviagate. As such, instructors would need to identify the specific page students need to navigate to, and it simply scrolls throught the entire document.

Other Issues and Comments:: Instructors could easily design their course in any sequence desired, and use the online interactive version as it fits their individual course. Instructors may want to develop their own chapter learning objectives, as those included are so-so.
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