Management Skills

Sales isn’t about pushing products or being efficient; it’s about building the right systems to manage and empower your salespeople.

If you read nothing else on sales, read these 10 articles. We’ve combed through hundreds of Harvard Business Review; articles and selected the most important ones to help you understand how to create the conditions for sales success.

This book will inspire you to:

• Understand your customer’s buying center
• Integrate your sales and marketing operations
• Assess your business cycle and its impact on your sales force
• Transition away from solution sales
• Leverage the power of micromarkets
• Introduce tiebreaker selling and consensus selling
• Motivate your sales force properly

This collection of articles includes: “Major Sales: Who Really Does the Buying,” by Thomas V. Bonoma; “Ending the War Between Sales and Marketing,” by Philip Kotler, Neil Rackham, and Suj Krishnaswamy; “Match Your Sales Force Structure to Your Business Life Cycle,” by Andris A. Zoltners, Prabhakant Sinha, and Sally E. Lorimer; “The End of Solution Sales,” by Brent Adamson, Matthew Dixon, and Nicholas Toman; “Selling into Micromarkets,” by Manish Goyal, Maryanne Q. Hancock, and Homayoun Hatami; “Dismantling the Sales Machine,” by Brent Adamson, Matthew Dixon, and Nicholas Toman; “Tiebreaker Selling,” by James C. Anderson, James A. Narus, and Marc Wouters; “Making the Consensus Sale,” by Karl Schmidt, Brent Adamson, and Anna Bird; “The Right Way to Use Compensation,” by Mark Roberge; “How to Really Motivate Salespeople,” by Doug J. Chung; and “Getting Beyond ‘Show Me the Money,'” an interview with Andris Zoltners by Daniel McGinn.

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Put buyer experience and selling resources front-and-center to boost revenue

Sales Enablement is the essential guide to boosting revenue through smarter selling. A thorough, practical introduction to sales enablement best practices, this book provides step-by-step approaches for implementation alongside expert advice. In clarifying the sales enablement space and defining its practices, this invaluable guidance covers training, content, and coaching using a holistic approach that ensures optimal implementation with measureable results. Case studies show how enablement is used effectively in real-world companies, and highlight the essential steps leaders must take to achieve their desired sales results.  

Smarter buyers require smarter selling, and organizations who have implemented enablement programs attain revenue goals at a rate more than eight percent higher than those that do not. This book provides a 101 guide to sales enablement for any sales professional wanting to enhance sales and boost revenue in an era of consumer choice.

• Understand sales enablement and what it can do for your company
• Implement enablement using techniques that ensure sustainable, measureable performance impact
• Adopt proven best practices through step-by-step advice from experts
• Examine case studies that illustrate successful implementation and the impact of sales enablement on revenue

Consumers are smarter, more connected, and more educated than ever before. Traditional sales strategies are falling by the wayside, becoming increasingly less effective amidst the current economic landscape. Companies who thrive in this sort of climate know how to speak to the customer in their own terms, and sales enablement keeps the customer front-and-center by providing sales people with the resources buyers want. Sales Enablement provides a scalable, sales-boosting framework with proven results.

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Guide your sales force to its fullest potential

With a proven sales management and execution process, Sales Management For Dummies aids organizations and individuals in reaching the highest levels of success. Although selling products or services is a central part of any sales job, there’s much more to it. With this fun and accessible guide, you’ll go beyond the basics of sales to learn how to anticipate clients’ needs, develop psychologist-like insight, and so much more.

Because few people go to school to earn degrees in selling, sales talent is developed in the field. Unfortunately, most training efforts fail to reach their objectives, in large part because of the absence of any kind of reinforcement or coaching. This book is your one-stop guide to managing an existing or start-up sales force to succeed in every area of sales―from prospecting to closing.

• Shows you how to reach your fullest potential in sales
• Helps you effectively inspire great performance form any sales force
• Demonstrates how to prospect, recruit, and increase your organization’s income and success
• Teaches you how to manage sales teams to greatness

If you’re one of the millions of salespeople or sales managers worldwide looking for a fast, easy, and effective way to get the most out of your sales force, the tried-and-true guidance presented inside sets you up for success.

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Sales training doesn’t develop sales champions. Managers do. 

The secret to developing a team of high performers isn’t more training but better coaching.  When managers effectively coach their people around best practices, core competencies and the inner game of coaching that develops the champion attitude, it makes your training stick.  With Keith Rosen’s coaching methodology and proven L.E.A.D.S. Coaching Framework™ used by the world’s top organizations, you’ll get your sales and management teams to perform better – fast. 

Coaching Salespeople into Sales Champions is your playbook to creating a thriving coaching culture and building a team of top producers. This book is packed with case studies, a 30 Day Turnaround Strategy for underperformers, a library of coaching templates and scripts, as well as hundreds of powerful coaching questions you can use immediately to coach anyone in any situation.

You will learn how to confidently facilitate powerful, engaging coaching conversations so that your team can resolve their own problems and take ownership of the solution. You’ll also discover how to leverage the true power of observation and deliver feedback that results in positive behavioral changes, so that you can successfully motivate and develop your team and each individual to reach business objectives faster.

Winner of Five International Best Book Awards, Coaching Salespeople Into Sales Champions is your tactical, step-by-step playbook for any people manager looking to:

• Boost sales, productivity and personal accountability, while reducing your workload
• Conduct customer/pipeline reviews that improve forecast accuracy, customer retention and uncover new selling opportunities
• Achieve a long term ROI from coaching by ensuring it’s woven into your daily rhythm of business
• Design, launch and sustain a successful internal coaching program
• Turn-around underperformers in 30 days or less
• Build deeper trust and handle difficult conversations by creating alignment around each person’s goals and your objectives
• Coach and retain your top performers
• Collaborate more powerfully and communicate like a world-class leader

Training develops salespeople. Coaching develops sales champions. Your new competitive edge.

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The First Time Manager Series has sold over 500,000 copies and is a go-to guide for new and aspiring sales managers on what to expect and how to succeed.

The jump from sales superstar to sales manager has made or broken many a sales career.

As a top-performing sales professional, you know how to own your calendar, focus your energy, create opportunities, navigate the sales process, negotiate, and close deals. Yet, if you are like most new sales managers, there is still so much you don’t know and that can trip you up if you aren’t careful.

Luckily, Mike Weinberg knows the pitfalls to avoid and mindset changes needed to successfully make the leap. This powerful new resource contains candid guidance on how to master your expanded responsibilities like a pro:

• Know Your Role: You have been entrusted with the most critical job in your business.
• Cultivate the Manager Mindset: Your new role is very different from your old role, and it requires an all-new mindset.
• Lead Your Team: Bad things happen when you attempt to do your people’s jobs. It’s a habit many new sales managers fall into but it’s a lose-lose proposition. Learn how to lead, coach, and hold your salespeople accountable, instead of the unsustainable and unscalable approach of trying to do their jobs for them!
• Create a Winning Culture: Learn how to build a healthy culture that maximizes performance while connecting on a heart-level with your people.

Don’t let your promotion become a trial by fire. Turn to this book to hit the ground running.

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The USA Today bestseller by the star sales speaker and author of The Sales Blog that reveals how all salespeople can attain huge sales success through strategies backed by extensive research and experience.   Anthony Iannarino never set out to become a salesman, let alone a sales manager, speaker, coach, or writer of the most prominent blog about the art and science of great selling. He fell into his profession by accident, as a day job while pursuing rock-and-roll stardom.   Once he realized he’d never become the next Mick Jagger, Iannarino turned his focus to a question that’s been debated for at least a century: Why are a small number of salespeople in any field hugely successful, while the rest get mediocre results at best?    The answer is simple: it’s not about the market, the product, or the competition-it’s all about the seller. And consequently, any salesperson can sell more and better, all the time.   Over twenty-five years, Iannarino has boiled down everything he’s learned and tested into one convenient book that explains what all successful sellers, regardless of industry or organization, share: a mind-set of powerful beliefs and a skill-set of key actions, including…   ÛSelf-discipline: How to keep your commitments to yourself and others. ÛAccountability: How to own the outcomes you sell. ÛCompetitiveness: How to embrace competition rather than let it intimidate you. ÛResourcefulness: How to blend your imagination, experience, and knowledge into unique solutions. ÛStorytelling: How to create deeper relationships by presenting a story in which the client is the hero and you’re their guide. ÛDiagnosing: How to look below the surface to figure out someone else’s real challenges and needs. Once you learn Iannarino’s core strategies, picking up the specific tactics for your product and customers will be that much easier. Whether you sell to big companies, small companies, or individual consumers, this is the book you’ll turn to again and again for proven wisdom, strategies, and tips that really work.

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With humor, keen insight, and a fresh perspective, The New Model of Selling is an essential guide for sales professionals looking to sell the right way, implementing persuasive techniques aligned with human behavior.

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Leadership has become increasingly complex in recent years. The times are difficult, and it can be challenging to get people to work together. Businesses, government, families, communities, and teams are all crying out for good leaders to help them. This is where the principles outlined in The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership can help.

Based on the revised and updated 25th anniversary edition of the bestselling book, this workbook uses case studies, self-evaluation, and group discussion questions to help you boost your leadership skills. Included are stories and observations from the worlds of business, politics, sports, the military, and non-profits. Each law is like a tool, ready to be picked up and used to help you achieve your dreams and add value to other people.

Discover how these valuable principles can change your life―follow them and learn to lead―not just for yourself, but for the people who follow you.

Lessons:

1. The Law of the Lid
2. The Law of Influence
3. The Law of Process
4. The Law of Navigation
5. The Law of Addition
6. The Law of Solid Ground
7. The Law of Respect
8. The Law of Intuition
9. The Law of Magnetism
10. The Law of Connection
11. The Law of the Inner Circle
12. The Law of Empowerment
13. The Law of the Picture
14. The Law of Buy-In
15. The Law of Victory
16. The Law of the Big Mo
17. The Law of Priorities
18. The Law of Sacrifice
19. The Law of Timing
20. The Law of Explosive Growth
21. The Law of Legacy

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What are the beliefs and behaviors that set great teachers apart? In this internationally renowned bestseller, Todd Whitaker reveals 19 keys to becoming more effective in the classroom.

This essential third edition features new sections on why it’s about more than relationships, how to focus on a consistent, engaging learning environment, and the importance of choosing the right mode―business, parent, child―to improve your classroom management.

Perfect for educators at any level of experience, for independent reading or for schoolwide book studies, this practical book will leave you feeling inspired and ready to do the things that matter most for the people who matter most―your students.

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Don’t let destructive drama sideline your career.

Every organization has its share of political drama: Personalities clash. Agendas compete. Turf wars erupt. But you need to work productively with your colleagues―even difficult ones―for the good of your organization and your career. How can you do that without compromising your personal values? By acknowledging that power dynamics and unwritten rules exist―and navigating them constructively.

The HBR Guide to Office Politics will help you succeed at work without being a power grabber or a corporate climber. Instead you’ll cultivate a political strategy that’s authentic to you. You’ll learn how to:

• Gain influence without losing your integrity
• Contend with backstabbers and bullies
• Work through tough conversations
• Manage tensions when resources are scarce
• Get your share of choice assignments
• Accept that not all conflict is bad

  Arm yourself with the advice you need to succeed on the job, from a source you trust. Packed with how-to essentials from leading experts, the HBR Guides provide smart answers to your most pressing work challenges.

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Practical and hands-on strategies for breaking down silos and minimizing workplace politics

In yet another page-turner, New York Times best-selling author and acclaimed management expert Patrick Lencioni addresses the costly and maddening issue of silos: the barriers that create organizational politics. Silos devastate organizations, kill productivity, push good people out the door, and jeopardize the achievement of corporate goals.

As with his other books, Lencioni writes Silos, Politics, and Turf Wars as a fictional―but eerily familiar―story. The story is about Jude Cousins, an eager young management consultant struggling to launch his practice by solving one of the more universal and frustrating problems faced by his clients. Through trial and error, he develops a simple yet ground-breaking approach for helping them transform confusion and infighting into clarity and alignment.

In the book, you’ll find:

• Ways to recognize the devastating–and destructive–power of silos
• How to create an overarching thematic goal or rallying cry for your organization
• Strategies for employees to avoid the confusion that often accompanies working in matrix organizations

Perfect for executives, managers, and other business leaders, Silos, Politics, and Turf Wars will also earn a place in the libraries of consultants and other professionals who serve organizations of all sizes.

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THE BOLD NEW MEMOIR FROM SOUTH AFRICA’S DOUBLE WORLD CUP-WINNING COACH RASSIE ERASMUS

Rassie Erasmus has been called a genius. He’s been called reckless. All his life, he’s done things differently. Now, with his trademark candour, Rassie talks openly about his adventures and misadventures at the pinnacle of world rugby, both as player and coach.

From his role in Nick Mallett’s record-breaking Springbok team of the late 1990s, to the devastating injuries that cut short his playing career, to his revolutionary coaching career, Rassie is an essential window into one of the most successful figures of modern rugby.

When his teammates relaxed, Rassie preferred to watch hours of video and devise winning strategies. His coaching methods were initially laughed off – before being eagerly adopted when their success proved undeniable. He fought the rugby establishment at the Stormers, and later earned the grudging respect of Irish fans at Munster.

Most crucially, Rassie talks about his greatest contribution to South African rugby: appointing its first black captain, Siya Kolisi, without much fanfare or controversy. As his bold plans for effective racial transformation of the national team achieved immediate success, they culminated in glory at the 2019 Rugby World Cup. Here, that monumental period is recounted in vivid, insightful detail.

Entertaining and eye-opening, Rassie is full of behind-the-scenes revelations, telling the story of a towering figure in world rugby.

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