Conquering The Seven Summits Of Sales

Two experts who have summited the tallest mountains on each of the seven continents—and scaled the highest peaks in corporate sales—examine what it takes to achieve sales success, drawing on the techniques and determination it takes to climb the world’s highest peaks. When Susan Ershler and John Waechter each made the grueling journey to the top of Mount Everest, they were motivated by the desire to join the elite group of climbers that had conquered the Seven Summits, the highest peaks on each of the seven continents. It was this same determination that made them star performers in corporate sales, one of the toughest jobs in global business. They both cherish the deep satisfaction that only comes from attaining a seemingly impossible goal through focus, determination, and persistence. In this unique and inspiring guide, Susan and John draw on their experiences to inspire sales professionals to overcome their perceived limitations and reach new heights of success, illustrating how any sales professional can achieve peak performance. They show how to clearly define goals, “choose the right Sherpa” (build the right team), commit to a vision, “travel light” (manage your time), and “measure the mountain” (track your progress). Interweaving concrete, tested methods for high achievement in sales, with stories of harrowing climbs and perseverance, Conquering the Seven Summits of Sales proves that anyone can experience the tremendous sense of closure and satisfaction that comes with overcoming perceived limitations and achieve something real and meaningful.

On May 16, 2002, Phil and Susan Ershler reached the top of Mt. Everest and became the first couple in history to scale the fabled Seven Summits. What made their achievement all the more remarkable was that Susan was not a mountain climber, but a high-powered Fortune 500 executive who had never hiked or climbed until she met Phil at the age of 36. Phil, a professional mountain guide who was the first American to summit Everest from its treacherous north face, had climbed his whole life with Crohn's disease, a chronic, debilitating illness. Adding to these challenges, just before their final summit, Phil was diagnosed with colon cancer, and the resulting surgeries and complications were expected to end his career. This is Susan and Phil's story: a tale of love set in the mountains, a story of triumphal highs and devastating lows in quest of a seemingly impossible dream.

“In climbing the Seven Summits, Silvia Vasquez-Lavado did nothing less than take back her own life—one brave step at a time. She will inspire untold numbers of souls with this story, for her victory is a win on behalf of all of us.”—Elizabeth Gilbert Endless ice. Thin air. The threat of dropping into nothingness thousands of feet below. This is the climb Silvia Vasquez-Lavado braves in her page-turning, pulse-raising memoir chronicling her journey to Mount Everest. A Latina hero in the elite macho tech world of Silicon Valley, privately, she was hanging by a thread. Deep in the throes of alcoholism, hiding her sexuality from her family, and repressing the abuse she’d suffered as a child, she started climbing. Something about the brute force required for the ascent—the risk and spirit and sheer size of the mountains and death’s close proximity—woke her up. She then took her biggest pain as a survivor to the biggest mountain: Everest. “The Mother of the World,” as it’s known in Nepal, allows few to reach her summit, but Silvia didn’t go alone. She gathered a group of young female survivors and led them to base camp alongside her. It was never easy. At times hair-raising, nerve-racking, and always challenging, Silvia remembers the acute anxiety of leading a group of novice climbers to Everest’s base, all the while coping with her own nerves of summiting. But, there were also moments of peace, joy, and healing with the strength of her fellow survivors and community propelling her forward. In the Shadow of the Mountain is a remarkable story of heroism, one which awakens in all of us a lust for adventure, an appetite for risk, and faith in our own resilience.

In this completely revised and updated edition of the customer service classic, Carl Sewell enhances his time-tested advice with fresh ideas and new examples and explains how the groundbreaking “Ten Commandments of Customer Service” apply to today’s world. Drawing on his incredible success in transforming his Dallas Cadillac dealership into the second largest in America, Carl Sewell revealed the secret of getting customers to return again and again in the original Customers for Life. A lively, down-to-earth narrative, it set the standard for customer service excellence and became a perennial bestseller. Building on that solid foundation, this expanded edition features five completely new chapters, as well as significant additions to the original material, based on the lessons Sewell has learned over the last ten years. Sewell focuses on the expectations and demands of contemporary consumers and employees, showing that businesses can remain committed to quality service in the fast-paced new millennium by sticking to his time-proven approach: Figure out what customers want and make sure they get it. His “Ten Commandants” provide the essential guidelines, including: • Underpromise, overdeliver: Never disappoint your customers by charging them more than they planned. Always beat your estimate or throw in an extra service free of charge. • No complaints? Something’s wrong: If you never ask your customers what else they want, how are you going to give it to them? • Measure everything: Telling your employees to do their best won’t work if you don’t know how they can improve.

Funny, entertaining, educational and inspiring especially for adventurers who don't have a lot of extra money, tied up on a full-time job, and not born with superhuman strength. A book about a long journey to an impossible adventure quest that took so many years to complete, spanning many countries in all seven continents – to achieve a dream... The dream of climbing Mt Everest and all the highest mountains in all continents. 'Akyat' is a Filipino word that means 'climb' (the book is written in English).

With a new preface by the author • As featured in the upcoming motion picture Everest, starring Jason Clarke, Josh Brolin, John Hawkes, Robin Wright, Emily Watson, Keira Knightley, Sam Worthington, and Jake Gyllenhaal “I can tell you that some force within me rejected death at the last moment and then guided me, blind and stumbling—quite literally a dead man walking—into camp and the shaky start of my return to life.” In 1996 Beck Weathers and a climbing team pushed toward the summit of Mount Everest. Then a storm exploded on the mountain, ripping the team to shreds, forcing brave men to scratch and crawl for their lives. Rescuers who reached Weathers saw that he was dying, and left him. Twelve hours later, the inexplicable occurred. Weathers appeared, blinded, gloveless, and caked with ice—walking down the mountain. In this powerful memoir, now featuring a new Preface, Weathers describes not only his escape from hypothermia and the murderous storm that killed eight climbers, but the journey of his life. This is the story of a man’s route to a dangerous sport and a fateful expedition, as well as the road of recovery he has traveled since; of survival in the face of certain death, the reclaiming of a family and a life; and of the most extraordinary adventure of all: finding the courage to say yes when life offers us a second chance. Praise for Left for Dead “Riveting . . . [a] remarkable survival story . . . Left for Dead takes a long, critical look at climbing: Weathers is particularly candid about how the demanding sport altered and strained his relationships.”—USA Today “Ultimately, this engrossing tale depicts the difficulty of a man’s struggle to reform his life.”—Publishers Weekly

How to stop thinking about life’s inevitable transitions as goals to reach and learn how to navigate through times of unpredictability and uncertainty. We live in a culture, Steve Donahue writes, which loves “climbing mountains.” We want to see the peak, map out a route, and follow it to the top. Sometimes this approach works, but not always, particularly when we are enduring a personal crisis—divorce, job loss, addiction, illness, or death. We may not know exactly where we are going, how to get there, or even how we’ll know we’ve arrived. And it’s not just in times of crisis. There are many deserts in our lives, situations with no clear paths or boundaries. Finding a job is usually a mountain, but changing careers can be a desert. Having a baby is a mountain, especially for the mom. But raising a child is a desert. Battling cancer is a mountain. Living with a chronic illness is a desert. In the desert, we need to follow different rules than we follow when conquering a mountain. We need to be more intuitive, more patient, more spontaneous. Donahue outlines six “rules of desert travel” that will help us discover our direction by wandering, find our own personal oases, and cross our self-imposed borders. Shifting Sands shows us how to slow down, reflect, and embrace the changes of life graciously, naturally, and courageously.

A thrilling chronicle of the tragedy-ridden history of climbing the world's most difficult and unpredictable mountain, by the bestselling authors of The Mountain and No Shortcuts to the Top “Gripping . . . reveals a good deal about the rarefied noble-gonzo world of high-altitude mountaineering.”—The New York Times Ed Viesturs, one of the world's premier high-altitude mountaineers, explores the remarkable history of K2 and of those who have attempted to conquer it. At the same time, he probes the mountain's most memorable sagas in order to illustrate lessons about the fundamental questions mountaineering raises—questions of risk, ambition, loyalty to one's teammates, self-sacrifice, and the price of glory. Viesturs knows the mountain firsthand. He and renowned alpinist Scott Fischer climbed it in 1992 and got caught in an avalanche that sent them sliding to almost certain death before Ed managed to get into a self-arrest position with his ice ax and stop both his fall and Scott's. Focusing on seven of the mountain's most dramatic campaigns, from his own troubled ascent to the 2008 tragedy, Viesturs crafts an edge-of-your-seat narrative that climbers and armchair travelers alike will find unforgettably compelling. With photographs from Viesturs's personal collection and from historical sources, this is the definitive account of the world's ultimate mountain, and of the lessons that can be gleaned from struggling toward its elusive summit.