Customer Reviews

ProActive Sales Management: How to Lead, Motivate, and Stay Ahead of the Game

5 star:		(23)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Managing salespeople is very hard. Contrary to coventional wisdom, being a successful salesperson has very little to do with being a successful sales manager. Too many organizations put good salespeople in management roles with little preparation, and then they wonder why the failure rate for new sales managers is so high.

"ProActive Sales Management" is an indispensable guide for any professional sales manager, from the newest to the most seasoned. This is a practical, actionable blueprint for building and managing a winning sales organization.

The core of "ProActive Sales Management" is a set of tools that can be immediately applied to a variety of sales management challanges, regardless of size of sales force, type of industry, or even geographic region. Our own organization has successfuly applied these methods in the US, Europe, Asia, Canada and Latin America.

The key strength of this book is its common-sense approach. This is not about dogma or ideology, as so many sales and sales management books are. This is about getting the job done, and doing it well. If you manage salespeople, or if you aspire to being a sales manager, you must read this book!

Good attempt at writing about sales management, and Skip makes some very solid points in the opening chapter. He points to the need for Leadership as a key element of a good sales manager. Unfortunately, I think Skip knows more about sales than leadership, himself, so he is not great at explaining HOW to be a good leader. He spends a lot of time on how to hire good people, which I agree is important. This might lead some rookie sales managers to fall back on the excuse of inheriting weak sales reps, and worry more about replacing them, than fixing them.
Read the first chapter in a book store somewhere, and save the $$$

Read this book twice. It is brilliant in its simplicity, yet deep in content. Whether you are a veteran sales manager, or new to the world of driving revenue through others, you will be taking notes and developing action plans for your sales organization.

ProActive Sales Management is the most effective, easy to implement structured approach I have seen yet. I would also buy this book for all your strong sales people. They'll gain valuable insight into what skills they need to succeed as an individual contributor, and you'll be developing your next manager as part of your succession plan.

Jim Zahka, Vice President of Sales, Knowledge Impact, Inc.

I always thought that all my years of sales success would transfer to my job as a sales manager -- well, it has been a 2 year roller coaster ride. Until, I read skip's book.....my game plan was to manage the people the way I used to sell, however, ProActive Sales Management showed me that you must "Manage the process, not just the People!" I love the fact that Mr. Miller uses "tools" in his book, so this way I am able to pick and choose the right tool for any given situation. Sales have been climbing since we started implementing these metrics and we are not looking back!

Hat's off to Skip! This is an excellent book that has tons of gold nuggets that can be implemented immediately. Skip puts together excellent steps on hiring, discipling and reviewing salespeople. Also, his approach to tracking the pipeline is very valuable, streamlined and pertinent.

Miller is right, "if you're going to fail...fail fast." I agree, in the early stages you have to establish a clear sales culture predicated upon success...this book should be every sales manager's handbook for success. As a Sales Director for a Fortune 50 company, I appreciate the tools we now have to manage "time and people." This book gives you all the tools to hire and maintain talented sales people, grow your top-line and eliminate those "C" reps. ProActive Sales Management is required reading for my sales managers!

Many sales managers I know are some of the hardest working people on earth. They don't have time to read theory and work over months or years to apply it.

This book gives a good, practical approach which can be used immediately - invaluable to newly promoted sales managers or veterans. It's the type of book which lets you read a chapter at lunch then use the idea that afternoon!

Miller's approach offers insight and forthright advice on the keys to success in managing sales people.

I found the book very good from someone who has done both sales and sales management. The thing I liked best about the book is the tool box concept. As a manger, you don't have to change what you're currently doing, but you may want to adopt some of Skip's tools.
As far as the comments of one reviewer, giving the impression that fixing a salesperson is better than replacing one doesn't seem to know much about management or people. 40 years of Gallup research shows that people don't get fixed and they don't change. As manager's of any kind, it's our duty to put people in the right positions, even if that means it's not sales.

Has chapters for the entire Sales Manager life cycle, from vision/culture to interviewing/hiring, to corrective action. Very basic and rudimentary rather than theoretical such as you'd find in sales management course texts. Maybe this is all that's necessary to gain the big picture rather than dealing with various minutia.

ProActive Sales Management takes a reactive sales manager and teaches them how to become ProActive. It provides basic guidelines to help sales managers focus on the most important things first. It also gives good specific examples to sales managers on what they should be doing and how they should be doing it. The book is a quick read and readily adaptable to any sales manager's situation.