How to Sell a Lobster: The Money-Making Secrets of a Streetwise Entrepreneur.

Janet Arnett is the former campus manager of adult education at Ontario’s Georgian College. She is the author of Antiques and Collectibles: Starting Small, The Grange at Knock, and 673 Ways to Save Money.

Think like a customer, Bishop says, and you’re on your way from salesperson to marketer. Sales, he says, is when you knock on someone’s door, trying to make a sale. Marketing is when you do something to get the prospective purchaser to knock on your door, asking to buy.

There are challenges to thinking first about customers and prospects. This is especially true for businesses built around a specific product. But there’s hope and help to be had. Bishop presents 17 strategies that can be applied to any business. These include creating a marketing blueprint, blue-skying approaches, getting someone to make a small purchase in order to convert them from prospect to customer, influencing the perception of demand for the product, sampling, contests, and knowing when to offer a choice. Underlying specific strategies is the basic message that marketing involves building long-term relationships with prospects and customers by “educational marketing,” “courting,” and coaching over time. Salespeople, Bishop says, have good answers. Coaches have good questions. Marketers are coaches. The key to success in relationship marketing is not simply to make sales, but to make the right sales to the right people.

The style employed in the book is that of parables about solving problems that mirror real-life business challenges. The tone is light, making for a quick read and painless refresher of solid marketing strategies.