In Selling Senses Armen Avanessian, head of sales for the financial services company Antom, explores developing stronger sales by appealing to the senses, as well as calling on faith.
A veteran sales professional with years at Citibank, Bank of America, and Capital One under his belt, Avanessian offers advice on connecting with customers through six senses: sight, sound, touch, taste, smell, plus spiritual intelligence and intuition. This approach is a subset of the more traditional consultative selling, in which customers’ needs are taken into consideration to offer tailored, valuable solutions.
The author describes the ways in which big brands depend on color, jingles and memorable visuals to sell their wares. For example, Nike uses high-action, high-energy photography, while Air France worked with a master perfumer to pump a signature fragrance into their premium lounges.
The spiritual intelligence and spiritual intuition sense is simply a new term for Christian prayer; readers are advised to read psalms to prepare themselves for work and incorporate prayer into meetings. For example, citing 1 Thessalonians 5:17, the author writes: “Begin and end each sales meeting with a prayer. Seek God’s guidance and wisdom for the decisions and actions to be taken.”
Overall, this is an interesting angle on the over-explored topic of sales optimization, but the execution hampers its effectiveness. The narrative is extremely repetitive; in each section, Avanessian explains that senses evoke emotion over and over before finally detailing how to harness the power of those senses. This creates a tedious read. Additionally, the definition of consultative selling consumes pages when a few lines would do.
The book may, however, appeal to salespeople who feel they’ve truly reached the end of their toolbox. While much of the advice is obvious — use professional photographers to produce visually appealing assets, for example—having it gathered in one place and presented with a novel focus may be useful for salespeople, particularly Christians who are feeling stuck.
Also available in hardcover and ebook.