Sales Management [Hardcover]

Robert J. Calvin (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 007136434X | ISBN-13: 978-0071364348 | Publication Date: December 12, 2000 | Edition: 1

A sales force is no better than its management—and Sales Management supplies the tools sales executives need to inspire their sales forces to increase productivity through improved customer service, equitable compensation plans, e-Commerce, sales force automation, and more. It explains how to make heroes out of a sales force by understanding and taking advantage of both the micro and the macro of sales and sales management and determining the best methods for organizing, deploying, and motivating today’s changing sales force.

Editorial Reviews

From the Back Cover

A One-Volume, MBA-Level Course of Building—and Motivating—an Award-Winning Sales Force

Successful sales management is not so much a program as it is a process; a number of essential components that, when designed carefully and assembled properly, work as a seamless unit to produce consistent sales excellence. Sales Management explains and presents a working model for tackling each important step. It then shows you how to use those models to excel in the changing business landscape where product/service life is shortening and sales cycles are lengthening and becoming more complex.

Sales Management covers everything today’s sales management executive needs to know about: * Strategy and objectives * Hiring o Training o Compensation * Organization * Deployment * Forecasts * Sales plans * Nonmonetary motivation * Sales force automation * Performance evaluations

As a sales manager, your career success depends on the success of your sales team. Let Sales Management show you how to recruit, train, and retain today’s top sales talent—and mold them into a top-performing, cohesive sales unit!

Look to the McGraw-Hill Executive MBA Series for straight-talking, technique-filled books, written by front-line executive education professors and modeled after the programs of top business schools. Other titles in the series include: * Finance & Accounting for Non-Financial Managers * Mergers & Acquisitions

Sales Management details the strategy, tactics, qualitative and quantitative knowledge, and hands-on instruction found in today’s finest business schools and executive education seminars, then outlines a step-by-step model for constructing and maintaining a superior sales organization. Sales managers, sales force team leaders, marketing executives, and other professionals can use its proven formulas for success, case studies, exercises, charts, checklists, and quizzes to discover how to: * Always look for new, better salespeople, and treat hiring as a proactive—rather than reactive—tool * Understand and use technology, sales force automation, customer relationship management, ecommerce, and the Internet to increase sales force productivity and capacity * Use probing interview questions and reference checking to build a compelling, accurate picture of each job applicant, allowing you to hire the best and reduce turnover * Test all salespeople—even those with years in the field—on products, competitors, customer knowledge, and selling skills. Use the results to create quarterly individual development plans * Use focused "ride-withs" to observe change adoption, and reinforce best practices * Expertly use proper channel choice, sales force architecture, targeting, deployment, sizing, and territory management to lower costs and increase revenues * Profile each salesperson as to needs, goals, aspirations, and problems, then use this knowledge to personalize your motivational strategies * Design compensation plans that reward salespeople’s actions and results that are most important for your company’s success * Develop quarterly appraisals, which not only evaluate salespeople’s results but also the skills, knowledge, action, and personal characteristics that drive those results

As a sales manager in today’s global marketplace you are faced with enormous challenges, from more aggressive, agile competition to an increasingly rootless sales force. Let Sales Management—a new and important component of the McGraw-Hill Executive MBA Series—show you how to meet and overcome each of these challenges and put together a sales force that is confident, competitive, and committed to meeting and exceeding its sales goals.

About the Author

Robert J. Calvin is president of Management Dimensions, Inc., an international consulting firm specializing in sales management training, sales training, marketing, and strategy for clients ranging from the Fortune 500 to the Inc. 100. Calvin is an adjunct professor at the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business, where he teaches sales force management in the MBA and executive education programs. As a popular teacher, busy consultant, successful entrepreneur, salesperson, sales manager, and executive, Calvin has rebuilt many sales forces. His previous books include the award-winning Managing Sales for Business Growth and Profitable Sales Management and Marketing for Growing Businesses.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 251 pages
• Publisher: McGraw-Hill; 1 edition (December 12, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 007136434X
• ISBN-13: 978-0071364348
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.2 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #765,045 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Highly Recommended!, August 15, 2001

By 

Rolf Dobelli "getAbstract" (Switzerland) - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Sales Management (Hardcover)

Companies of the old and new economies often suffer the same ailment: sales teams that dont produce. Writer Robert Calvin tells sales managers what they must do to cure this disease. Calvins book  which is as concise as an effective sales pitch  gives you a thorough blueprint for building or rebuilding your sales team. The book is filled with questionnaires and lists, including a sample performance evaluation and a rundown on what not to say to a potential hire. Calvin argues that managers often neglect training, which alone should take up 40% of their time. We [...] highly recommend this potential Bible for sales managers, which makes it clear that you must be more critical of your sales forces achievements in areas such as prospecting, closing and even personal demeanor. A word of warning: Calvin is as ruthless as The Weakest Link television show in asserting that poor performers must be eliminated and he doesnt even wink.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This is THE reference and guidebook, July 23, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: Sales Management (Hardcover)

Calvin succinctly packages sales and sales management processes into this book in a way that enables the reader to PUT IT TO USE!! The references, lists, worksheets, and key points will be invaluable to you. Keep it in your briefcase to refer to on a daily basis - it has so many key points and reminders that you will find relevant pages to earmark to make you more effective against your day-to-day sales goals.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent, especially compared with some of the other stuff out there, February 7, 2007

By 

Hilary A. Paprocki - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Sales Management (Paperback)

I've been reading a bunch of books on this topic lately, and this one is excellent (you wouldn't believe how bad some of them are).

It is fairly dense and not childish or cute at all. But it is very well-written, with each sentence saying what it says, and the next sentence saying the next thing that should be said.

Those of you looking for that rare book that is smart but accessible should give this one a try. I get the impression that if you got a sales management job, took a copy of this book to work, and just did what it says to do, every day, you'd be well above average at your job.

*******

Postscript to McGraw-Hill: The awful cover illustration probably cost you thousands of sales. This book is NOT about a guy with a tiny head standing at a cash register, glowing or otherwise. Your audience for Sales Management books is NOT guys with tiny heads standing at cash registers, glowing or otherwise.