Our Books

Rod Large has written a number of books that capture our philosophy and training content so you can access some insights and helpful resources before and after commiting to training with Smart-Train. You can access the first couple of chapters by clicking the PREVIEW button below each of the covers below.

Purchase Options:

  • Available at any online book store including Amazon, The Nile, Fishpond, Barnes & Noble, Kobo etc…
  • Order via your local book store – just ask if you can’t see it straight away. 
  • Contact us for a signed printed copy or bulk quantities sent straight to your door.
  • Also by clicking on the previews  below you can enjoy the first chapter or two, then access these as eBooks or in print format from Amazon in your preferred location.

Solution Oriented Selling

Focusing on the solution means first understanding the problem…
There are some sales organisations who only recruit new salespeople who have never sold before. The reason for that is because it’s extremely hard to develop new habits, when old habits already exist. The old days of sell benefits and features, are long gone. But old habits die hard and the issue of training salespeople in what is now a highly skilled profession, is what Rod Large is ready to challenge in Solution Oriented Sales. Now we must learn new engagement principles, behavioural styles of our customers, and how to invite them to ‘open an account’, instead of ‘part with their money’.

This book explores what any new or existing salesperson needs to understand to engage with well researched prospects, who often know more about a product or service than the seller does.
Rod share’s his simple but very effective processes for gaining trust and increasing your referral power. Gaining lifetime advocates and repeat business is easy when you know how to do it. Proving once more that sales is the most highly paid hard work, and the lowest paid easy work.

 

CONTENTS Include:

  • Different Social Styles
  • Follow up and Service
  • Six Core Questions
  • Hot Prospecting and Cold Calling
  • Getting the appointment
  • The Language of No
  • Interviewing
  • Golden Rules for Interviewing
  • Bad Habits and Filtering
  • The Power of ‘Because’
  • Link Formulas for Different Social Styles
  • A Win/Loose Imbalance
  • Fatigue and Procrastination
  • Tools and Systems Failure/Task Interference

This is the ultimate handbook for sales managers, sales people new to their jobs, and even older sales veterans wanting to achieve better outcomes.

  • 106 pages
  • 8.5×5.5 in  | eBook and print options
  • Published January 2023

The Culture of Modern Leadership

The true qualities of leadership

In many leadership books, the lessons have come from overseas studies and examples. From a New Zealand point of view it is easy to find concurring examples in our own industry. This has led to an interesting question. Where do we differ? The answer is simple – our culture.

Our culture is influenced by the large number of different races that make up our work force. New Zealand has an abundance of Polynesian employees who through their cultural beliefs and protocols, have offered another intangible but most powerful element. It is wairua or spirit. No longer only head and heart we need to capture and faster. But one step deeper – our spirit. Truly Maori Culture leads this belief that we must seek ways to engage our people’s spirits at work which will magnify their performance. From this belief, we discover that all other races also have spirit and when awakened by others showing spiritual leadership, they too follow and join in.

Our culture is also well mixed with predominantly European influence and we are truly a bicultural country. Here too, the lessons of leadership when seen as a whole differ through the unique cultural mix we have in New Zealand.

“This is therefore a book about heart and spirit of leadership from a uniquely cultural perspective in business.”

STEPHEN THOMAS, SENIOR MANAGER KIWIRAIL

  • 166 pages 
  • 8.5×5.5 in  | eBook and print options
  • Published May 2021
  • 100 Pages
  • Print and eBook Options
  • First published 2008
  • Revised updated edition published 2018

Each chapter has tools and resources for assisting the reader to make positive changes that will help future direction and clarity of purpose.

 

The Other F Word

Recognising failure as part of the growth process

When Things Go Wrong…

What makes some people successful and others seem to continually struggle to survive is not about circumstance, birth, or even education. It’s more about what successful people do; the habits they create for themselves. It’s their personal understanding of how they function of various levels of engagement with others which really determines individual success or failure.

Identifying your strengths in terms of social style, and how that may affect your ability to create, bounce back, and learn to work with those strengths is just part of what this book delves into. Rod Large discusses the eight common failures and how these can be avoided or worked around in order to ensure your greater potential for success.

These include ways to deal with:
•Complacency and self doubt
•Lack of personal accountability
•Resistance to change
•Loss of purpose
•Control of stress

The Other F Word offers easy to learn techniques and ideas for overcoming common traps for business operators, sales people, and managers. These concepts are based on nearly forty years training individuals and teams of managers and sales professionals throughout Australia and New Zealand, UK and Canada.

Contents:
Failure No. 1: Inability to Understand Self
Failure No. 2: Unwillingness to Accept Personal Accountability
Failure No. 3: Being Devoted to the Trappings of Success
Failure No. 4: Complacency & Self Doubt
Failure No. 5: Avoiding Loss of Purpose
Failure No. 6: Resistance to Change
Failure No. 7: Failing to Control Stress
Failure No. 8: Plan of Action