Business Is Combat: A Fighter Pilot's Guide to Winning in Modern Business Warfare

Advocating the use of military training techniques in motivating sales people, Murphy walks his talk as a sales consultant and F15 fighter pilot for the Air National Guard. Having started in sales as a high school student working for a family office-supplies business, he contends that he has successfully divided his time between work and the military for a number of years because of the similarities between the two fields. In his view, both fighter pilots and sales people require mission statements that "must be absolutely clear and understandable... measurable...achievable and must support the overall objectives of the organization". In addition, just as fighter pilots must take a specific sequence of steps in the course of each flight, sales people need a concrete action plan for accomplishing their goals, such as focusing on their key objective and eliminating the unnecessary clutter: "Listen, don't talk.... Know when to abort and establish a sense of value to the mission". Writing in a friendly, anecdotal tone, rather than that of a military commander, Murphy offers some helpful advice, although it would be more effective if he had supplemented his own experiences with additional examples from the real world of sales.Murphy, James D. is the author of 'Business Is Combat: A Fighter Pilot's Guide to Winning in Modern Business Warfare' with ISBN 9780060393250 and ISBN 0060393254.