Bizcast: Peter Cohan on his book, “Suspending Disbelief”, in conversation with Subhanjan Sarkar
Podcast (bits-about-books): Play in new window
Peter Cohan is the founder and principal of The Second Derivative and the author of the Great Demo! and Doing Discovery methodologies, focused on helping software organisations improve their presales, sales and marketing results – primarily through improving organisations’ demonstrations and discovery skills.
Before The Second Derivative, Peter founded the Discovery Tools® business unit at Symyx Technologies, where he grew the business from an empty spreadsheet into a $30 million per year operation. Prior to Symyx, Peter served in marketing, sales, and management positions at MDL Information Systems, a leading provider of scientific information management software. Peter currently serves on the Board of Directors for Collaborative Drug Discovery, Inc., is an advisor to IN2SV, Inc. and a mentor to StartX, the Stanford University start-up accelerator. He holds a degree in chemistry.

- In this episode, Peter Cohan talks about Suspending Disbelief, a collection of stories that wrap important sales methodologies in them. The advantage of telling a story is that retention is much higher, and stories are repeatable, making them spread.
- While Peter’s earlier books were extremely data-driven, this book has anecdotal evidence. The truth is that often “facts” do not resonate as well with the audience as stories do. And hence the need for such a collection. Most of these are drawn from the author’s personal experience or from the experiences of colleagues.
- The author hopes that readers will learn easily from the book methodologies that, in many cases, took the author decades to figure out.
Run time – 00:43:05 mins.
Links for Subhanjan