Inc. magazine Entrepreneur of the Year and International Automotive Hall of Fame member Marion Luna Brem reveals the strategies she learned that have made her successful in sales—and in life. As Brem makes clear, we’re all salesmen in one way or another. Whenever we try to make a good first impression or persuade someone else of our point of view, we’re selling ourselves. Brem shows how to do it better.
It was the definition of a “living nightmare.” Marion Luna Brem, a thirty-year-old mother of two, had just been told the most dreadful words anyone could hear: “You have two to five years to live.” She had no job. No health insurance. Her marriage would collapse under the stress of her treatment. And her most pressing concern: How do I pay next month’s rent?
“You’ve always been good with people. Why don’t you try sales?” her best friend suggested.
After sixteen fruitless job interviews, Brem landed her first major “sale”—a job as a car salesman. Within two months, Brem had become salesperson of the month, and by the end of her first year, salesperson of the year. Four and a half years after selling her first car, Brem bought her own dealership, and in the next decade went on to open additional dealerships and businesses.
In Women Make the Best Salesmen, Marion Luna Brem reveals countless unconventional sales stratagems she discovered, refined, and applied to build a multimillion dollar enterprise. As she makes abundantly clear, the skills one learns in sales are transferable to all walks of life. “The fact is we are all ‘salesmen’—whether we are selling ourselves at a job interview or operating a register at a department store, trying to get our children into a special program or looking for a lifelong companion. And women, with their natural social skills and acute emotional antennae, have natural advantages both sexes can learn from.”
Using examples from her own business and personal life, Brem reveals how to create a niche and name for yourself, how to turn a no into a yes, how to persuade even the most difficult people, how to open new doors, and how to close deals.
