Outlaw

Outlaw: Fight for Your Customers and Sell Without Fear by Trent Leyshan, 165 pages

In Outlaw, Leyshan offers tips on being a better salesman, regardless of what you're selling. The book attempts to cover everything from preparing for a pitch to presenting the right personality to secure sales to beating burnout.

However, it's hard for me to muster any enthusiasm for the book. It's oddly structured, with short sections that don't logically follow each other, set apart by random quotes from everyone from Albert Einstein to Zig Ziglar. Occasionally, there are also short stories of "real life Outlaws," though only one, Ned Kelly, is an actual outlaw (sorry, Richard Branson, you don't count). Leyshan also offers random defining characteristics of "Outlaw" salespeople, though I never got a whole picture.

There is some useful information in here, but it's not worth fighting through the paragraphs full of inspirational affirmations (I swear Leyshan just looked at posters on office walls whenever he got writer's block) to find that info. There's not much to recommend this book, though I do look forward to what's sure to be a lively, rip-into-this discussion at Thursday's Business Reads book group.