Customer Reviews

The Road Warrior's Guide to Sales Management - Taking the Stress out of Managing Salespeople

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Highly informative, witty and a downright must read for success as a sales manager. Whether you are a sales manager or business owner, you will gain years of wisdom and insights by reading and following the author's unabashed straightforward, no nonsense, real world advice.

The author is an authentic veteran of the "sales profession" (as he insists it should be referred). He sites frank examples of what to do and what to avoid when selecting, training, coaching, developing, rewarding, and yes- leading some of the duds you hire to the exit.

There is no doubt that the author subscribes to and devotes attention to the process of selling. It is what, after all, made him a success. He is also candid about the failures he experienced, so you won't make the same mistakes.

A quick, pithy read. It is enough to jumpstart your thinking of new ways to motivate, inspire, reward, compensate, and champion an outstanding sales team and individual sales contribution.

If you want to raise the bar on your own strategies and that of your "road warriors," devote an evening or two in your hotel room on your next sales trip, and return to the office with a fresh and/or renewed focus on your goal to improved sales management.

Armchair Interviews says: Excellent book-a must read for all sales managers!

Refreshing to read an author that can make a difficult topic simple. Good use of humor to help the reader relate. No mumbo jumbo, just straight advice for sales people. Interesting for anyone in sales but more helpful for early-career folks who want to take a peak into the challenges they will likely face at some point along the road - and learn how to sidestep the pot holes. Would also be good for companies needing sales training to use as a discussion guide - maybe take a chapter a week and spend a few minutes in a sales meeting to discuss. Easy read - good advice.

With so many books on sales techniques, methods, and training, Tom Schaber provides us with a much-needed, realistic, and insightful book on Sales Management. There are 15 chapters of information and advice based upon his thirty years of experience with details and realistic examples.

Each salesperson is an individual. All of us use similar methods and techniques under certain circumstances at times, but each of us has our own personality and style and we have our strengths and weaknesses. This is ever so crucial, when it comes to sales management. Schaber notes the needed attention to our human nature.

Being in sales is often tough, even when you represent a great product, service, and company. You, have to be tough. Attitude and drive are one of the most important factors, after a salesperson learns his or her niche and style. We often need a strong, positive, and competent Sales Manager, too.

Schaber notes that there needs to be *motivation* for a sales-force. If that motivation is not high enough or is not structured properly, top salespeople leave your company and go elsewhere and the less driven ones, stay behind. Under these circumstances the results are often below what they should be.

This book is a quick read that's very comprehensive. You can use "Road Warrior" for businesses of all sizes. The author covers a lot of bases. Managing salespeople contains many processes. In addition to psychology and different personalities, there is advice on hiring. "Never trust a resume" is sacred advice in any and every industry. Timing of hiring, firing, and terminating with legal protections in place. This can take the stress out of managing sales people.

There is focus on the sales process and people in sales from top, middle, to bottom. As having worked in sales, I recall how different we salespeople were from the accountants, programmers, and account managers. We had our own section of the building where we could stay positive, encourage each other and say and do things the other departments would not understand. Sales managers need to understand their sales people as well.

This book is not only for Sales Managers but those just starting out in sales to get an overview of the field, and for those who want to tune in better about what they themselves, actually do.

All of the fifteen chapters are good. My favorites are: "Hiring, The Sales Myth, Creating Goals 'with' the Sales Person," and "so how do you exactly manage (connect with) salespeople?" Keep it on your shelf so you can go back to reference it when you need to. This is for managers and sales people.

The author clearly has put an adequate number of sales miles behind him to justify considering himself knowledgeable in the field of managing a sales staff. Sales is a stressful job, if your compensation is based on commission, then you will never know from month to month what your earnings will be. However, there is a class of adrenaline junkies for whom such jobs are their niche in the economic food chain. These people are very successful at sales and if you are a manager, it is your job to find, train and retain them.
While difficult, doing this is not impossible and Schaber gives you a lot of sound advice regarding how to do it. In my opinion, the best piece of advice in the book and one that a lot of executives should read, understand and implement appears on page 130.

"Salespeople should have the potential to earn more than the owner or president of the company!"

A moment's reflection will tell you that this is an intelligent win-win strategy. If someone in sales is making that kind of money, then their volume of sales must be enormous. Unless the company is doing something very stupid in the area of loss-leaders, the company is making a lot of money as well. The only way I would change this is to add the word "realistic" in front of potential.

The book is sub-titled "Taking the Stress Out of Managing Salespeople" and that's a great topic. Why? Because anytime you manage a group of people who have swelled egos and many insecurities, you are in for a ride.

This book helps you to easily get over the bumps in the road on your ride in dealing with these egos and insecurities.

It's a short book. So no one will have a chance to get bored. While I don't necessarily agree with some of the theories such as the right time to hire a salesperson or the "first salesperson", the theories are intriguing and pretty much based on actual experience and knowledge of selling and people.

This is what I would consider an undated book on dealing with people in the modern world --- a world in which people sue each other at the drop of a hat. In fact, in one section we discover how to fire someone without being sued.

An interesting read. Recommended.

I'll be upfront before I begin the review. Tom Schaber and I are friends. We go back nearly forty years to our Army days and have been in regular contact throughout that period. I can personally vouch for the fact that Tom has been very successful in sales and sales management. His success was not an accident. He devoted a lot of thought to what worked, what did not, and the reasons behind the difference. This book provides a summary of not only what he's learned that worked, but also what he learned from his mistakes.

My field is not sales; but I have worked in jobs where I had to provide support for the sales force, e.g., product management. In addition, my experience spans firms of every size, from start-ups to companies high up on the Fortune 500 listing. Although Tom targets this book at the small business owner, I believe, based on my experience, that there is something in here for executives of any size company. The book is compact, easy to read, and packed with useful, "hands-on" type information. If you have to initiate or organize a sales effort, or perhaps are just curious about what makes sales people tick, I would highly recommend this book.

I'm giving THE ROAD WARRIOR'S GUIDE TO SALES MANAGEMENT by Tom Schaber top billing because it deserves it, but I want to be specific about one thing. This book is NOT a sales training manual. If you are looking to teach a sales force selling techniques, you will be dissappointed.

On the other hand, if you are, looking for instruction on managing a sales team, this book is definately for you. Schaber's sales management experience shows through on every page. His book was specifically designed for small business owners who have their hands full just running their business and feel lost when it comes to managing sales people.

One of the things I really appreciated in this book is Schaber's use of creating within your business, a sales process. If you are familiar with the E-Myth by Michael Gerber, you'll know exactely what Schaber is referring to. If you're a small business owner and not familiar with what this means, get your hands on Gerber's book. It could save your business.

Non-sales people tend to have difficulty relating to sales people. That difficulty is proliferated when you have to manage them effectively! If that sounds like you, this book is a must read.

I liked this book. It is a sales guy's rendition of what sales and sales management is about. It is written in a conversational way, and I think it was well outlined. The author has well over 30 years of experience in the field (not profession) of sales. Professions have education requirements (i.e., degrees), certifications, special training, and usually a code of ethics. The field of sales has none of these. In fact, many salespeople are high school drop outs because the field is such a free-for-all. And probably my biggest beef with this book is how the author keeps trying to say that sales is a profession. The book has the following 15 chapters:

0. Introduction
1. The sales myth
2. When will you need to hire a salesperson?
3. Hiring
4. Addressing the gender and age questions when hiring
5. Interviewing
6. So you've go the right salesperson or sales people - now what?
7. Should you assume that this salesperson has a sales process?
8. Sales meetings and what to do in them
9. Creating goals "with" the sales person
10. Creating sales territories
11. How to get rid of a rep without losing your shirt
12. What should you do when working with a sales rep in the field?
13. Compensation
14. So exactly how do you manage (connect with) salespeople?
15. The wrap-up, some thanks, and remaining bits of wisdom

The author has worked as a salesman, as a sales manager, as a sales trainer, and now he works as a sales consultant. The author says he wrote this book because he has had a desire to write one much of his life and he has finally gotten around to writing one. However, this book smells much like a credibily book for a sales management consultant, which is what the author does these days to make a living.

The typcial career path for a salesperson is to begin by working a sales job in a lousy company that operates in a lousy industry with crappy profit margins. If that person exudes talent, then she will quit that job and take a better one where the company is better, the industry is better, and the profit margins are better. It's an up or out game. Salespeople that are good have to hop jobs a lot. I would have liked the book better if the author had devoted a chapter to explaining what I have just described. If he had, then he might have had to change some of his story in Chapter 6.

I would have liked the book better if Chapter 2 had been more of an essay rather than a string of examples. And I would have liked a chapter on how companies have sales plans, marketing plans, and business plans AND how these three plans interrelate. The goals of a salesman should be consistent with the goals the company has codified in its sales plan. And now that I have said this, it logically follows that I would have liked the book better if Chapter 9 had been different. Goals should not be tied to how much a salesperson wants to earn. Goals should be tied to the company sales plan. A good salesperson will earn what he wants by job hopping - not by trying to squeeze blood out of a turnip.

There is a lot of good content in this book. And I think it does a very good job of presenting one successful salesman's career experiences. I definitely think a small business owner or sales manager will get a lot from this book. And I highly recommend these two classes of people get a copy and read it. It's an easy read. Normally a book I like, but don't love, I rate as a 4-star. But I'm torn on this one. Part of me says 5 and part of me says 4. 4.5 stars!