Sales Management Simplified (Book Summary)

First my summary, then a few comments about the book:

1. Build a high-performance culture with:
   1. Strong sense of purpose
   2. Accountability for results relative to goals
   3. Variable compensation that is truly earned
   4. Energy/Celebration
   5. Peer pressure and direct feedback
2. Manage your talent (4Rs)
   1. Right people in the right roles: Specialize your team into dedicated hunters, farmers (account managers), and sales managers
   2. Retain top producers: training, tools, and recognition
   3. Remediate or replace underperformers
   4. Recruit by spending dedicated time on referrals and asking for specific during interviews, including (i) details of a successful past deal & (ii) how they plan to approach the job
3. Lead productive sales team meetings covering:
   1. Sales results & outstanding individual/team performance
   2. Success stories
   3. Best practices
   4. Deal strategy brainstorming
   5. Training (esp. with role play)
   6. Business plan reviews covering: goals, strategies, proposed actions, expected obstacles, and professional development
   7. At the conclusion, have people share their biggest takeaway
4. Coach and mentor salespeople by:
   1. Conducting regular, results-focused 1:1 meetings by examining (IN ORDER!)
      1. Results relative to quota
      2. Pipeline (movement of existing opportunities; new opportunities added)

• Activity

1. Removing real obstacles (though beware of excuses)
2. Spending time in the field (or in side-by-sides for inside sales) covering:
   1. Pre-call planning (names, personalities, & meeting expectations of prospects; call flow; expected challenges; primary meeting goal)
   2. Post-call review, letting the salesperson share her impression first

• Generally getting to know salespeople’s motivations

5. Set the standard for effective sales calls. For example:
   1. Share the agenda and get buy-in
   2. Add value every time as a customer-issue-focused problem-solver
   3. Probe and listen (instead of leading with talking about the product) to determine if prospects are qualified and to write better proposals
   4. Hold a conversation rather than give a presentation
   5. Crisply articulate the “sales story” in a way that is succinct, compelling, and customer-issue focused
   6. Lead the customer rather than letting the customer lead you
6. Additional recommendations:
   1. Regularly assess territory strategy to ensure salespeople are targeting the accounts the highest-potential accounts. They should have enough accounts to work, but not too many to adequately work.
   2. Avoid negativity
   3. Be selfishly productive, proactivity calendaring all priority activities and saying no to reactive, non-results-oriented tasks & meetings
   4. Be careful not to avoid your high performers or focus too much on underperformers
   5. Demand (from finance/operations) accurate, timely, usable reports to monitor sales results and pipeline

Review comment: While the book has great content, it takes work to extract it since (a) the entire first half of the book is a long rant (b) the rant continues at times in the second half (c) there is a decent amount of repetition (d) the author is, at times, overly self-promotional (e) the organizing structure (culture, talent management, and process) is somewhat loose and intertwined with a second framework (1:1s, team meetings, and field work).