The Salesman's Magician: A Business Parable for Today's Sales and Marketing Professional

K. Karl Leavitt
iUniverse, Inc. (2005)
ISBN 0595359302
Reviewed by Cherie Fisher for Reader Views (10/06)

 “The Salesman’s Magician: A Business Parable for Today’s Sales and Marketing Professional” is designed to teach the professional about the importance of sales philosophy and planning in a business.  The book is an easy read and packed with lots of valuable information.  Using a parable to teach business concepts is a great idea and works very effectively in getting the point across and for memory retention, especially for a right-brained thinker like me. 

The story begins with a young man named Sydney Arthur who lives on the planet Inc in the kingdom of Equity.  His family business does well in his early days of running it, but he does it more from using his innate business sense than a good strategy with a strong plan.  Sales is not an recognized occupation on planet Inc. with a good training program.  Does this sound familiar when describing a lot of small businesses today?  Enter the competition.  Alaine, the Duchess of Avidity is a very smart, successful and resourceful woman.  She begins to see the value in creating a strong sales and marketing strategy and soon begins to move into Sydney’s territory and his family’s company begins to suffer sales losses. 

As Sydney’s company losses begin to mount and they face downsizing, the famous magician Margin comes into the picture.  He offers to take Sydney away for a year and teach him a comprehensive sales strategy.   This begins his adventure with the magician.  His training takes him to new lands and other planets to observe other groups good and bad strategies.  It turns out that Alaine is also receiving assistance from another magician, Agitato, and is gaining serious ground while Sydney is away.  Margin realizes that he is being spied on and works to train Sydney faster and to mislead Agitato in the direction of his training. 

When it comes time for Sydney to return home, he finds that things are a lot worse than when he left.  But he is now fully armed with a good sales strategy and quickly rolls his sleeves up and jumps back in the ring against Alaine.   His company begins seeing positive results and the company sales losses soon stop and become profits again. 

“The Salesman’s Magician” gives good solid advice on building a strong business.  The story makes it fun to read and because of this a right- brained thinker like me will retain more information than a traditional textbook.  It ends on a good note with Sydney’s final realization that “There may be little magic in sales, in accomplishment.  It is more a matter of thoughtfully putting one foot in front of the other with ever a careful eye on the future.  But there is magic in the world.  It lies in working as if your deeds will last forever, while living as though each one might be your last, the one by which people will remember you the most”.  This is a good rule to live by.  I highly recommend “The Salesman’s Magician” to people who are thinking about going into, or are already in, the sales and marketing field. 

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