Continues Wood, "SalesGuru aims to change that by providing a monthly dose of real-world advice that can be used right now, to boost selling skills. This is achieved by means of a 'how-to' approach to topics covered. Rather than taking a strategic overview of high-end selling skills, we are focusing on helping to get the basics right."
SalesGuru, which launched in August 2006, will be published 12 times per year, with the editorial focusing on providing a 'how-to' sales tool for sales professionals. The publishers are Sunninghill-based SalesGuru Holdings, a privately-held partnership between Brett Wood, Mark Keating-Meyer and Colin Browne, a former editor of Marketing Mix magazine.
"If SalesGuru delivers on its intentions, it will prove to salespeople across South Africa that sales is not only a respectable vocation, it is a creative, innovative and highly exciting profession with a long and certain career path. With the right attitude and passion, salespeople starting out in a telesales position today could be tomorrow's top performers or sales leaders with significant control over their careers and their earnings," says Browne, editor of SalesGuru.
The magazine is for sale only through corporate - and in some cases individual - subscriptions. According to the publishers, customers who have already taken multiple subscriptions on behalf of their sales teams include major banks, car manufacturers, office product companies and many others. More than 4000 subscriptions have already been sold in this way, with an annual subscription costing R360, or R1 per day per salesperson.
"We are encouraging sales directors and sales managers that have subscribed on behalf of their sales staff to use the magazine within their training sessions, as a regularly updated, cost-effective tool. As such we aim to provide information that is relevant within a training environment, as well as articles which passionate salespeople can read in their own time to better their own selling techniques," says Keating-Meyer, sales director of SalesGuru.
"Among the positive feedback we have received are comments indicating that the monthly frequency of the magazine and the bite-sized chunks in which information is presented are of really significant use to salespeople in general," he concludes.
