Tech-Powered Sales: Achieve Superhuman Sales Skills

The star rating is not for the major thesis of the book: Adapt to change, embrace technology and learn the new tools. It is for non-focused and jargon-filled writing. There are more acronyms than a defense contractor. It reads like a piece of PR work for selling tech platforms vs. helpful strategies for sales reps. I found the tone of the book arrogant and rudimentary in some of its sales strategies. While I agree we need to embrace the new tools of the digital world, at the end of the day people work with people they trust on large deals. You must be authentic and curious. Programing a sequencer may produce appointments and New business opportunities, but be wary of the prospects you may alienate. Tools are only as good as the person using the tools.

Who it's for: digital salespeople who are open to evolving into cyborgs, ie: not resisting technology but incorporating it in a complementary manner. I'm a freelancer business-to-business copywriter who makes a living with sales. I learned a ton of useful things both for selling my services as well as writing copy for clients. Tech-Powered Sales is applicable to single-person operators and to the most advanced salespeople in the world's largest corporations. Also applicable to B2B copywriters.Most important takeaway: Don't resist technology. Learn to use it where it's best suited. In effect, this is an instruction manual for become an advanced sales cyborg. How cool is that?Background required: Somewhat experienced to very experienced salespeople. I'm using LinkedIn daily and learned tactics, strategies, ways of thinking that are immediately applicable. If someone is new to sales and doesn't know the fundamentals they likely won't be able to apply it.Reading style: Authoritative but lively and fast. I like how it engages rather than insults the reader's intelligence.Other notes: Tech-Powered Sales gives everything from high-level trends sales professionals need to know, to detailed tactics for outbound messages or inbound responses. It covers technology specifics from email and texts to new AI-powered platforms I never heard of. It gives enough detail to execute, but still need to use creativity (a HUMAN skill) to apply it.Disclosure: Author asked me to review, I bought the book and have already applied it with good results in my business, so I recommend it enthusiastically. Cool stuff.

I read nearly every new sales book that comes out. Some of those I review. Many of the principles in these books are timeless and are simply reframing, enhancements or a modernized twist to these timeless principles. But one in a while a book comes out that is truly unique - and Tech-Powered Sales by Tony Hughes and Justin Michael is just such a book. Tech-Powered Sales is both an assay of the current and future sales technology landscape as well as a practical manual for implementing that technology. Few people have the real-world experience that the authors do when it comes to the world of sales tech. Justin Michael and Tony Hughes live on the bleeding edge of what is happening in this space. They've seen what's possible, what works and what doesn't work, and that makes this information both rare and valuable.The book itself is eleven chapters broken down into three sections:Part 1 - Salesborg TheoryPart 2 - Salesborg ActionPart 3 - The Future of SellingSalesborg TheoryIn part 1 we get a wakeup call as to the current trends in the sales tech space. Newsflash - it's here and it isn't going away. To be successful in selling you *must* be able to leverage it, and ignoring it is tantamount to suicide. But, Tony and Justin go to great lengths to point out that it is a trap to think that technology in and of itself is the solution. Rather, technology should be used to optimize and enhance the human interaction between buyer and seller - not replace it. This is a key insight that is often forgotten. Technology done right makes the process better for both the buyer and the seller.Salesborg in ActionIn section two we get practical and discuss exactly how to apply technology to your sales process and the best practices for doing so. You'll discover the criteria and things to consider as you formulate your ideal technology stack. The insights in this section are amazing and hugely valuable. In fact, this section comprises seven full chapters that outline everything from the selection, integration, implementation and ongoing refinement of your sales technology stack.The Future of SellingSection three concludes by giving us a glimpse into what the future holds for those of us in the selling industry - and the future is wild. The potential to fill pipeline orders of magnitude over what we are all doing today is proven but largely unimplemented. That creates a landscape where it's not the big that eat the small, it's the fast that eat the slow. And this makes Tech-Powered Sales a valuable investment for sales organizations of all sizes.SummaryTech-Powered Sales is a truly unique book that is worth reading and re-reading. I am very familiar with most state-of-the-art sales strategies and discovered almost a dozen strategies that were brand new to me. The pace is lively and fast and full of things you can do immediately. It's a timely and invaluable resource for companies of all sizes on leveraging technology to grow pipeline. Highly recommended.

Revenue generation has been (and still is) an immensely labor intensive activity in all B2B companies. Marketing automation and CRM solutions have been promising productivity improvements for more than twenty years now, but little has happened. In many companies revenue generation is a black box. We’re delighted when it works and sad when it doesn’t. However we have a hard time telling the difference.Those days are over and this book explains why that is the case and what will happen.I agree with the perspective presented but I am not so sure that it will happen so fast. Still, those that embrace the technology available will outperform their competitors and that may move the needle.I am little more skeptical on how it should be implemented and organized. I am not sure revenue generation professionals can be trained to become technical whiz kids.I highly recommend the book to anyone working with revenue generation.

Having already consumed Combo prospecting (a must-read for any sales rep wanting to learn a new approach to prospecting), I was recommended Tech-Powered Sales.Tony and Justin set the scene by using an extract from one of my all-time favourite films. - The Matrix, you chose the red pill or the blue pill. Having been in awe at this film when its first launch its fair to say, if you watch it now unless you watched it when it first came out, you'd be like... yeah, it's okay, just like my nine-year-old did, when we sat down to watch it a few weeks back.However, the Matrix films kick-started a whole series of films that pushed the boundaries for the film industry. The book introduces you to a series of AI-driven tools that are designed to aid the entire sales process, and just like the Matrix films, will drive the industry forward at break-neck speed."You choose the blue pill or the red pill" - I'll take both, please. As someone who has studied IT and has a vested interest in its adoption, Tech-Powered Sales does an excellent job of pitching the future, highlighting very succinctly that you must jump on board, grasp the future with both hands, enjoy the ride, or be left behind.Technology moves at an incredible pace - if you're in Sales, or any way associated with Sales in your organisation, then this book is a must-read if only to open your eyes to what's available today and what could be available in the future. A different bread of Sales book, and one I couldn't put down - or should I say, was only put down, to google yet another reference tool of the future.Having finished the book in a little over a few days, I now need to go back and reread it as there is so much knowledge and takeaways.Excellent read, Tony, Justin

Choosing the best tech products for marketing and sales growth and support is complex. The book gives a succinct overview of different techniques and products to enable team growth. Helpful notes on location specific tools across AM and EMEA. Would be great to get a holistic sense of the better tech stack combinations.

Tony Hughes is a sales visionary. He not only has the ability to see around corners but also profers the insights and strategies to avoid the oncoming traffic ! His latest collaboration “Tech Powered Sales” is a journey into the future providing prescient guidance to successfully navigate the Fourth Industrial Revolution. Frankly ,I've never read anything like this before... mind-blowing content that can actually be implemented in business-to-business selling environments. As a CEO, this enables me to drive sales and marketing in the same direction, to modernise and align with the customer's 'digital first' buying journey. As a sales leader it enables me to build a sales team that goes to the next level of competitive effectiveness. Fail to read this at your own peril... your competitors definitely are.

Phew, what a relief!Tony Hughes does not fall into the trap of declaring that technology is THE solution in its own right that will solve all sales problems and challenges, just by buying a software license or by subscribing to an app.Instead, he calls out that technology can and should be used to enhance the HUMAN interaction between buyer and seller, not replace it, and to make both selling and buying easier at the same time.Tony is a master at making the complex simple, even when he is applying his many years of practical experience and combining it with forward-thinking, futuristic concepts.At the same time, the book is extremely well structured and easy to follow. Each chapter has a useful take-away that summarizes the key points, very useful for skimming by time-poor executives. It also offers many detailed examples of how specific apps can help help sales reps achieve, and exceed, their sales quota.Highly recommended.

I was an engineer before going into sales and I see interesting parallels between what's happening in sales productivity and what happened to engineer productivity.DevOps transformed engineering as we know it, as it allowed a single engineer to be able to not just build software but automate the delivery of the software to the cloud and scale up the infrastructure as the demand grows.The same kind of engineering thinking has now come to the sales function. It's the "Sales Devops" revolution with an emphasis on data-driven thinking, rapid experimentation with messaging/targeting at a large scale, and scaling up the winning formula once it's discovered.No one knows this better than Justin (cause he's a cyborg), and he understands it better than anyone else since he's done it for the leading tech companies on the planet.This book will become the new sales bible. Think Predictable Revenue, but if it was written in 2021.Go read this asap!