Accelerants: 12 Strategies to Sell Faster, Close Deals Faster and Grow Your Business Faster

At its core, Boylan's message is simple: sales pitches often fail because they're too long, don't contain enough solid information and aren't targeted to the right people. He spins that out into a fancy chart identifying 12 constraints on any sales pitch and the 12 tools he's developed to overcome them, each of which he addresses in detail. After showing readers how to suss out prospective clients' attitudes about their products and their competitors, he delivers the crucial (though inelegantly phrased) advice to "metric the message"—that is, to "grind down the messages and value propositions" into a concise, specific promise about what you can deliver. In presentations, less is more, argues Boylan (The Power to Get In ). He recommends cutting your pitch down to a third of its usual length, front-loading it with the most essential information and getting into details only if the customer wants to hear more. On its own, Boylan's advice is useful, but he turns the closing sections into a blatant commercial pitch, urging readers to get fuller training in the Accelerant program through his consulting firm. For most readers, the introduction should provide all the help they need. (Jan.)