Buying and Selling Information: A Guide for Information Professionals and Salespeople to Build Mutual Success

We are living in an age of information in which any person can deal with different information goods in different contexts for different purposes and needs. Regardless of who we are, we should be familiar with how information can be economically communicated. This is especially of importance for information professionals and salespeople who increasingly engage in informational business relationships. This book has been designed to help both librarians and salespeople outthink and outperform their colleagues based on mutual benefit, and guide them through the process of successfully buying and selling information. It is divided into 14 chapters under three main parts that show how an efficient deal is achieved in an information-oriented environment.

Part 1, “The info pro-salesperson relationship” (four chapters), revolves around establishing a sustainable win-win communication between salespeople and librarians to help people. To do this, some practical hints beneficial to both sides are emphasized. Part 2, “The sales meeting” (six chapters), takes a step forward along the road of realizing the deal. It examines useful issues sales representatives and information professionals need to know before they can fruitfully hold the sales meetings. Some complementary topics like negotiating skills, using an agenda, visualizing the sales meeting, making a good first impression, time management, the structure of a sales meeting, the importance of value and alleviating the barriers are also covered. Part 3, “Closing the sale” (four chapters), as its name suggests, examines the final steps of the process, that is the decision-making. It also considers some remarks affecting sales satisfaction (pre- and post-sales relationships). In conclusion, highlighting that “both salespeople and information professionals face an ever-changing landscape” (p. 169), the author reminds us that both parties must be vigilant and reinvent themselves on the basis of knowledge and constant assessment. To sum up, this easy-to-read-and-understand book is a journey of experiences by Michael Gruenberg, which, in turn, adds a step-by-step guide to the literature on conducting successful impressive deals in the field of buying and selling information. Every professional who would like to hold the upper hand in information markets can benefit from reading this logically structured book. This theoretical, practical and managerial work is recommended to professors and students of Library and Information Science interested in the economics of information. It is expected that via referring to such publications particularly in a globe awash with information, the related bodies become much more informed, powerful and successful in potential informational deals.