Customer Reviews

2007 Fall list: The Sales Manager's Success Manual

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is an enjoyable and easy to read book that opened my eyes to the key role sales management plays in successful companies and the difficulties faced by sales managers. Given the many potential issues that can go wrong, it is no wonder that the average tenure of sales managers is only a year.

The book is full of personal examples and interesting results from recent studies. Although I do not work in sales, the book provides many insights into management and work issues that I face. For example, the discussion in Chapters 3 and 4 on how to test the facts to determine when to spend money and time on a potential new project is extremely relevant to selecting new research directions and looking for external funding. Chapter 14 provides a graphical illustration that gathering more information when making decisions can sometimes be counter productive and the dysfunctional models of managers in Chapter 18 can probably be found at many companies.

I recommend this book to people like me who want to learn about issues faced by sales managers and to current sales managers looking for insight into management principles.

Thomas covers all the bases in this comprehensive review of what it takes to be a successful sales manager, incorporating principles from the fields of neuroscience, psychology, behavioral economics, and his own sales leadership experiences.

This is a one-stop shop for all sales managers!

Eric Kimble
National Sales Director, Cubist Pharmaceuticals

There are lots of books about sales management strategy. This book is detailed enough to help build a sales team and it generates practical ideas I feel confident I can use everyday. Thomas portrays a plan and path for direct execution of how to win the sale.

The Sales Managers Success Manual is appropriately named - a manual is meant to be a book that is kept close at hand in order to be referred to in times of need - this book has been a great source of insight to me in my busy and demanding work place environment. I found it to both affirm some of the sales strategies I had put in place within my team and challenge ones that needed updating or complete change. The examples are practical and the instruction is clear. This is one book you will refer to long after your first read!

The Sales Manager's Success Manual is the definitive work on sales and sales management for today's sales environment. Wayne Thomas gets it right through well placed vignettes and careful sales and business analysis. Wayne shows how to look deeper and with more precision through the misty veil of activity to get to "what is really happening" and how to deal with it.

Alex Walker,
President & CEO
Anvil Search Group

There are tons of books out there that are "go-to" resources for sales people who want to improve their skills and be more effective. There exist few, if any, quality "go-to" resources for sales managers that can provide them with the insights and answers to better do their jobs. Wayne Thomas' book, "The Sales Managers Success Manual", should be a must read for all those who ascend to the ranks of sales leadership. It anchors a ready spot in my office where I refer to it as I need. It shares head room with my copy of Napoleon Hill's "Law of Success" that gets re-read and referred to often.

There are a lot of books on selling that promote a particular point of view or singular set of experiences. However, Dr. Thomas doesn't provide just another book like those. Instead, his insights, stories, scenarios, etc. are all mosaics built using pieces of intelligence gathered from many successful leadership sources. This is not theory but practical experience based guidance. If you are a sales manager or leader and ask yourself "What am I providing my customer they can't get anywhere else?", this book will help you answer that. This is not an encyclopedia for memorization. It instead provides a context to understand your selling challenges and a guide to build your successful sales roadmap.

This delightfully written book, while directed as the title indicates towards the sales manager, also offers valuable insights to others in senior management who participate in creating sales policy but who have never been "out on the road selling". For such individuals as myself, I might suggest starting with the last chapter, "Frequently Asked Questions", which addresses numerous issues in interviewing and decision making that are valuable for anyone in business. Chapter 4, "Sales Controls and Policies", will remind any executive who has never made a living in the field in front of customers, of how much information they may not be considering as they create and evaluate policies that direct a sales rep's behavior and decisions. However, for shear reading pleasure, you can simply start with chapter one and enjoy the author's insights punctuated by endless historical examples. By the end of the book you will realize just how much sales management is neglected in our continuing business education programs for senior management.

The Sales Manager's Success Manual

By Wayne M. Thomas

Copyright 2008 by AMACOM Press

Price $24.95/ 228 Pages with index

First of all, let me tell you that this is definitely not just another sales book. What makes The Sales Manager's Success Manual stand out is that it deals first with the fundamentals, the very basics of what it takes to be a great sales manager. I cannot stress enough how important this book will be to a new sales manager. If you are a company president promoting someone to her first sales manager's position make sure you give her this book as a congratulatory gift. It will be the smartest move you can make.

Why? Because this book deals with the facts and reality of being a sales manager From the very beginning when Thomas takes the reader through a step by step tour of what it takes to be a sales manager then defining what it takes to be a great sales manager, this book will prove invaluable to anyone who aspires to be a successful.

The book is chockfull of information and advice that will chop years of a sales manager's experience curve; from understanding forecasting and how to do it, to a chapter of understanding statistics and how they can work against you...and for you, this book has it all.

I particularly enjoyed the chapter on intuition. Thomas teaches the reader how to use intuition, to understand how it works and how to even get good at it so that it can become your friend. I have to stop and ask here, what other sales book has even addressed the role of intuition in a sales manager's life...yet we all know that it is there, always.

Just a sampling of some of the other subjects covered in The Sales Manager's Success Manual.

Walk a mile in your CFO's shoes. Understanding the company's finances and what they mean to you as the sales manager
Mind games. How to deal with intangibles like biases, stress, and overconfidence.
The Brain of the Sales Manager: How to think like a sales manger and How to use, get this, Mr. Spock as your role model.
The CEO and the Sales Force Success: Understanding your CEO and what her performance does to a company and your job as sales manager of that company.
Perception Sticks Like Glue: How to understand and handle risks, and find and deal with the truth.

Heard enough? Can I be more positive? This is the one and only book you will ever need as a sales manager. If you are at all serious about being a great sales manager then run to the business section of your local book store, pick up The Sales Manager's Success Manual, read it, keep it, study it, dog-ear it to death, lend it to other guys on your team, (whatever you do don't give it to your competition) and become the best you can be.

I have had the great fortune to have worked with Wayne personally having engaged him both as a consultant as well as a personal coach and mentor. At both Inacom and Novell I was faced with some difficult challenges on not only how to restructure a sales organization but also how to better position sales in the construct of the business enterprise with executives who harbored many misunderstandings of the sales process and the ability of sales to produce results without the benefit of good marketing plans or well thought out product plans.

Wayne's book is much as he is in person: very direct, very factual and spot on when it comes to what needs to be done to be successful in sales and sales leadership. Wayne has walked the talk in his own career as a sales professional and has proven very effective in analyzing situations others have found themselves in (including myself) and helped provide clarity on the situation and what needs to be done to produce agreed to success. I specifically chose the term "agreed to success" as Wayne makes it very clear that sales can not be successful when facing unreal expectations and lack of support or misunderstanding of their mission.

I commend Wayne for creating a very readable and easy to understand manual for what I have experienced he has done in person as a consultant. Sales is a very misunderstood profession and Wayne helps demystify how to map a path to success and personal achievement whether as an individual contributor or running the entire sales organization.