The Force

"If you want to know how America's business wars are waged in the trenches, The Force is for you. A gripping book."
--Newsday
"SKILLFULLY REPORTED, INSIGHTFUL...Dorsey lights up our vision of the American salesman with his own sharply reported eyewitness account."
--People
In this fascinating book, reporter David Dorsey turns a year on the Xerox sales force into an emotionally charged human drama. The Force tracks Fred Thomas and his sales team from the shiny glass office building where work starts at dawn to the rolling green country clubs where they woo customers, from the smoke-filled bars where they unwind to the plush suburban bedrooms where they try to forget the pressures of the day. And as the year unfolds, we get swept up in the burning question at the center of all of their lives: will they make their quota?
"Meet Fred Thomas. He's a real person, working in a real job in a real company. And he's the hero of The Force, David Dorsey's brilliant chronicle of life in the real world of contemporary business. Dorsey's book draws a picture that is as intimate as a great novel. It is a book that captures in the most essential details and the most sweeping prose the cross-wired paradoxes that lie at the heart of the New Economy. Fred is Us. He's the next-generation Willie Loman working in a world put into hyperdrive...Fred is the salesman as Everyman."
--Harvard Business Review


From the Trade Paperback edition.

Written with manic energy and uncanny insight into the guerrilla warfare of salesmanship, this day-by-day, almost novelistic chronicle tracks one Xerox sales team in Cleveland in its efforts to surpass its yearly quota selling photocopier machines. Dorsey, who spent seven years as business editor and reporter covering Xerox for the Rochester, N.Y., Democrat & Chronicle , gets it all down--the cat-and-mouse sales tactics, the relentless pressure, personal crises, family lives stretched to the breaking point. His taut narrative centers on sales manager Fred Thomas, whose disarming amiability conceals an obsession with making the sale and proving himself, and his wife Kathy, a homemaker avidly seeking more meaning in her life. Poor at communicating emotion, Fred fears Kathy's growing independence and her career interests. Based on the year Dorsey spent living with Xerox salespeople, this unusually candid probe reveals more about corporate life as a daily struggle for survival than a stack of how-to business manuals. First serial to Esquire; Fortune Book Club alternate; author tour.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Freelance journalist Dorsey offers an unsparingly detailed account of a year-long span in the professional lives of a four- man/three-woman group of high-caste hucksters who work out of Xerox Corp.'s district office in Cleveland. The author's thoroughly absorbing take suggests David Mamet and Arthur Miller may have pulled their punches. Dorsey's resonant title alludes not only to the seven-member major-accounts team headed by Fred Thomas, one of 67 regional sales operations, but also to the ultraconfident state of mind that can make a salesperson feel ``like an athlete playing in the zone.'' On the evidence of the author's anecdotal narrative--which follows Thomas and his crew as they attend staff meetings, take to heart the do-better lectures of superiors, call on clients, party among themselves, and entertain prospective machine buyers or lessors in carriage-trade watering holes--angst is the tie that binds sales reps at Xerox (and, in all likelihood, other major enterprises). Thomas, for example, worries constantly about meeting or exceeding budgeted revenue quotas, in large measure to win the approval of a manic boss he respects, while his materialistic subordinates fret about their commissions and such carrot/stick rewards as a three- day trip to Palm Springs. At a minimum, fear of failure appears to keep them focused, and they're obviously prepared to do whatever it takes to reach designated objectives. As it happens, a psyched-up Fred & Co. succeed in engineering enough consents to achieve virtually all individual and collective goals by year-end, albeit at no small cost to their personal relationships and peace of mind. At the close, most make the California cut, gain promotions, and otherwise get on with their rat-race careers. An acutely observed slice of commercial life that's consistently engrossing and ultimately depressing. Come May 18, Xerox Corp. could have second thoughts about the carte blanche given Dorsey. (First serial to Esquire; Fortune Book Club selection) -- Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Several years ago the Xerox regional sales office in Cleveland was floundering; its sales were stagnant and it ranked near the bottom among the company's districts. Frank Pacetta, a corporate troubleshooter, was sent in. With his dynamic management style and highly effective motivational techniques, sales shot up. That turnaround for the Cleveland office has already been the subject of one book: Don't Fire Them, Fire Them Up (1994), Pacetta's enthusiastic how-to guide to selling and motivating. Now Dorsey, a reporter who spent seven years covering Xerox for the Rochester (New York) Democrat & Chronicle, describes the same event, but his is a behind-the-scenes narrative told from the point of view of one of Pacetta's top salespersons. The story unfolds as Pacetta is sent in, determined to shake things up. Dorsey shows how the staff reacts and adapts to Pacetta's techniques, effectively conveying the personal and professional pressures, the daily successes and failures that weigh on those who sell for a living. David Rouse

The result of a year that Dorsey spent living with and talking to members of a Xerox sales team in Cleveland, Ohio, this work reads like "A Year in the Life of a Salesman." Dorsey wanted to show how a "top salesman-along with his team-attains certain goals over the course of a typical sales year, and what impact this effort has on the personal lives of the people involved." Fred Thomas, head of a major accounts team at Xerox, is the central figure in the book. Thomas tirelessly pursues the team's annual sales mark, and he grapples with issues such as how to advance his career without leaving sales and how to achieve a better balance between office and home life. Readers looking for a formula book on successful salesmanship will be disappointed; the book's strength lies in Dorsey's candid portrayal of the sales world. Recommended for public libraries.
--Mark McCullough, Ohio Northern Univ., Lib., Ada
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.