The nameless protagonist of this slender motivational parable originally published in 1984 suffers from the existential predicament of the salesman: "the quiet fear of rejection" caused by the nagging suspicion that "the customer did not want to buy the product." From a succession of sales gurus he learns the One Minute secret-it's not selling, it's "helping people...to feel good about what they buy." Johnson, author of the business mega-seller Who Moved My Cheese?, offers practical suggestions ranging from sensible (treat customers like people, listen carefully to their needs, use after-sale calls to generate good will and referrals) to questionable (use one-minute positive-thinking rituals to visualize successful sales calls) to sort of depressing (paste sales goals beside your shaving mirror). The "eighty/twenty rule" is paramount: "Eighty percent of our results are produced by about twenty percent of what we do." Unfortunately, the book embodies this rule a little too well: about twenty percent is truly solid advice, while eighty percent feels more like filler ("The man took out his notebook to record what he sensed was going to be useful information") padded further with extra-large type.

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