Synopses & Reviews
Are you so pressured to make your numbers each quarter that you rarely think about the future of your organization? Do you spend a significant chunk of your time fielding requests from your weakest performers? Is there a steady flow of top talent OUT of your sales office?
If the answer is “yes,” you’re probably a reactive sales manager, ensnared in a daily barrage of messages, demands, and emergencies. But truly successful sales managers aren’t stuck in reactive mode. They’re proactive, with clear-cut goals, measures, strategies, and follow-through. They have their eye on the future, and they know how to get there.
ProActive Sales Management will completely transform the way you and your sales team work. This updated edition of the sales manager’s success manual is packed with hard-won insights into how to efficiently and effectively manage both the big-picture strategic decisions of your department and the day-to-day tactical operations, including hiring, motivating, forecasting, measuring, and performing sales reviews. Written by an experienced sales manager and seminar leader, and filled with original tools and useful examples and exercises, the book’s powerful, proactive approach helps you:
• Transition from making the sales to managing the sales team, and create a proactive culture where goals and objectives are clearly defined and communicated.
• Refocus your attention from the C players to the A players, turning them into A+ players who stay on board and drive revenue up.
• Break your addiction to phone calls, text messages, pagers, and other beeping devices, and devote thoughtful time to prioritizing and planning.
• Measure performance based on objective and subjective metrics that communicate exactly what you expect your salespeople to do and which skills they need to master.
• Hire the right person the first time by using tactics such as reading résumés vertically for telltale clues and treating the interview like a selling situation to evaluate the candidate’s sales abilities.
• Deploy your sales team strategically, and design highly effective long-term and short-term compensation plans.
In today’s high-pressure, complex sales environments, it’s easy to get caught in a panic mode, always jumping from one emergency to another. ProActive Sales Management helps you take control of the sales process and consistently achieve your revenue goals—with no more lost time and wasted effort!
William “Skip” Miller is president of M3 Learning, a sales and management development company, and an instructor for numerous AMA sales management training programs. He is the author of ProActive Selling and More ProActive Sales Management, Ultimate Sales Tool Kit, and co-author of Knock Your Socks Off Prospecting. He lives in Los Gatos, California.
Review
One of Selling Power Magazine's Ten Best Books to Read in 2010.
Review
ProActive Sales Management is jammed with useful ideas and worth the attention of a manager trying to overhaul the sales culture.”
— Globe & Mail (Toronto)
Synopsis
Today’s sales managers have to be quicker than ever, being more proactive about hiring the best performers and retaining them, multi-tasking, and managing complex sales processes in order to close more and more deals. This book provides readers with a proven method for managing the sales process as well as the salespeople. Packed with specific, field-tested techniques, ProActive Sales Management shows sales managers how to:
• motivate a sales team
• get their sales team to prospect and qualify
• create a proactive sales culture
• effectively coach and counsel up and down the sales organization
• reduce reports to one sheet of paper and 10 minutes a week
• forecast with up to 90% accuracy
• take A players to A+ levels
Packed with all new metrics and tactics for making the numbers in today’s sales environment, this is an important resource no sales manager should be without.
Synopsis
"All sales managers work like crazy, but few are true managers. That's because they tend to fall back on the skills that made them great at sales...instead of adopting the new skills that will make them great managers.
This essential book, which speaks their language, will turn them into management pros. It teaches a proven method for managing the sales process as well as the salespeople. Packed with specific, field-tested techniques, ProActive Sales Management shows sales managers how to:
* Regain control of their time
* Create a proactive sales culture
* Motivate a sales team
* Manage to simple yet powerful metrics
* Weed out failures quickly
* Effectively coach and counsel up and down the sales organization
* Measure not to revenue, but to the things that create revenue
* Reduce reports to one sheet of paper and 10 minutes a week
* Forecast more confidently
* Manage the sales organization the way it should be managed."
Synopsis
If you’re working harder and longer year after year to squeeze out your numbers, it’s time to do things differently. Instead of merely reacting to your permanently ringing cell phone, last-minute customer requests, and steady stream of employees who plop down by your desk to discuss their “issues,” it’s time to take control and become a proactive sales manager—one who effectively manages the limited resources of time and energy and leads the sales department with a clear, future-focused plan.
ProActive Sales Management is your one-stop guide to completely rethinking and rebuilding your sales department for success. From what questions to ask during an interview…how to conduct a sales meeting…how to motivate your sales team…to what metrics you should use, this all-in-one resource walks you step by step through every key area of responsibility, explaining how to use proactive strategies to do more, better and faster—and avoid common mistakes that derail your competitors.
Whether you’ve recently joined the management ranks from a frontline sales position, or you’re a long-time pro at organizing sales teams, the powerful strategies and original tools in ProActive Sales Management help you escape the time-draining and energy-sapping reactive mode and lead your organization to new heights of productivity and success—proactively!
About the Author
William “Skip” Miller (Los Gatos, CA) is president of M3 Learning, a sales and management development company, and an instructor for numerous AMA sales management training programs. He is the author of ProActive Selling (978-0-8144-0764-6), More ProActive Sales Management (978-0-8144-1090-5), and co-author of Knock Your Socks Off Prospecting (978-0-8144-7285-9).
Table of Contents
Contents
Acknowledgments
Preface
Chapter 1 ProActive Sales Manager—Defining the
New Breed of Sales Manager
What Is the Actual Role of the Sales Manager?
What Makes a Successful Salesperson?
What Makes a Successful Sales Manager?
What Are the Similarities Between the Two Skills?
What Tasks Does the Sales Manager Perform on a
Day-to-Day Basis?
What Expectations Are Placed on the Sales
Manager?
Manage the Process, Not Just the People
The First Tool—Think Three to Six Months into
the Future
The Second Tool—Be ProActive
The Third Tool—Develop Objectives—M2O/t
The Fourth Tool—Call for Help
The Fifth Tool—Have Your People Effectively
Manage Themselves
How Do I Know Whether I Am an Effective
Leader?
Grenade Walls
Two Rules of Leadership
Creating a Sales Culture Is Job
Chapter 2 Sales Cultures and the Ability to
Communicate Them
The Pygmalion Effect
Thinking ProActively—Thinking in the Future
Current Sales Culture
Current Company Culture
Sales Team Culture Nine to Twelve Months Out
Creating the Culture ProActively and
Implementing It
Rule 1: Be the Future
Rule 2: Think Culture Before Tactics
Rule 3: Go Backward
Rule 4: Create and Communicate Your M2O/t’s
Rule 5: The Value Pyramids—Advanced
FutureVision Workshop
You Can’t Ride the Bus
Chapter 3 Manage the Right Things—Time and
People
Managing Time
Maximize and Invest
The Sales Manager 80/20 Rule
Managing the A Players
Show Me the Money—An Insurance Policy
Planning—Focus on Tomorrow; Today Is Over
PowerHour
Measure It—Setting Measurable Objectives That
Work
Revenue Numbers Are Reactive
Revenue Numbers Measure the Wrong Thing
Subjective and Objective Measurements
The Skip Miller Sales Management Success
Formula
Frequency
Competencies
Miller 17
Chapter 4 Finding and Recruiting the Best Sales
Team
How to Interview and Hire the Right Salesperson
the First Time
The Law and the Interview
Questions You Cannot Ask
The Hiring Process
The Three Perspectives
Initial Homework
View Your Current Organization and Culture
Objective Sales Team Culture Assessment
Where to Find the Good Ones
Distribution Channels for Candidates
Recruiting
Advertising
Prepare for the Interview
Objective and Subjective Measurements
The Interview Process
The A-B-C Interview Process
The Twenty-Minute Interview Process
A Simple But Effective Interview Process:
Connect-Draw-Give-Close
Interview—Sales Call
Tools for the Sales Interview
Who Closes Whom
Characteristics of a Great Salesperson
ProActive Reference Checks
The Offer That Works 122
The Subjective Interview: The Final Assessment
Celebrate Success: Closing the Deal
Chapter 5 Corrective Action
Starting a Corrective Action Process
The Corrective Action Process
Counseling
Written Warning
Use of Metrics
Final Written Warning
Termination
Termination Guidelines
It’s Not Your Responsibility
Coaching and Counseling Through the Process
Final Thoughts
Chapter 6 ProActive Management Skills
Coaching and Counseling: How to Be a Master
Communicator in Any Organization
Coaching and Counseling
The Coaching/Counseling Wheel
The Coaching Sales Call
The Coaching Call
The Joint Sales Call
The Unexpected Sales Call
Focus on the A Players
Coaching and Counseling Your Boss Effectively
Motivation—Know Why People Do What They Do
and Be One Step Ahead
Praise
Reward and Recognition
Learn-and-Grow Challenges
Motivational Direction
Using Technology to Communicate
Chapter 7 If You Can’t Measure It, Why Do It?
Track the Maybes
Keep the Insurance
Manage to One Sheet of Paper: The 30-60-90 Report
30-60-90 Rules
The 30-60-90 Report
Effective Reports in Ten Minutes a Week
Getting Reports in on Time
What Kind of a Manager Are You?
Expense Management
Chapter 8 Territory Planning, Compensation, and
Rewards
Strategically Deploying the Sales Team
The ProActive Sales Matrix
Dead Zone
Maintain Zone
Red Zone
Compensation
Strategic vs. Tactical Compensation
ProActive Compensation Guidelines
Compensation and Territory Timing
The Law of Compensation Plan Timing
The Revenue Curve
Stack Rankings
Sales Training
The Five Sales Competencies
Create Leverage—Rewards and Praise
Stay Focused or Pay Free Money
Chapter 9 Sales Meetings
When and How to Have Successful Sales Meetings
Agenda Planning
Time Planning
Content Planning
Optional Meetings
Chapter 10 Create the ProActive Action Plan
The Coaching Wall of Principles
Setting Goals and Making Them Work
Short-Term vs. Long-Term Goals
Measurable Goals
Communication
Go and Make a Difference
The A-B-C Bell Curve Applies to Managers as
Well
The Support Structure Back at the Office
Chapter 11 The Technology of Sales
Decreasing Order Time
Increasing the Salesperson’s Ability to Sell
Increasing Breadth and Depth
The New Process
The New Dashboard
Getting Things Done in a Team Sell
Getting Things Done with Your Customers
Discipline and the Will to Change
Index