Visionary Sales Leadership: How Senior Executives Can Erase Status Quo Myths and Build Superior Sales Organizations
Visionary Sales Leadership: How Senior Executives Can Erase Status Quo Myths and Build Superior Sales Organizations
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Manufacturer: Heritage Associates, Inc.
Author: Don McNamara
Binding: Paperback
Publication Date: 2006-01-23
Publisher: Heritage Associates, Inc.
Label: Heritage Associates, Inc.
Number Of Pages: 144 Features:
Editorial Review:
Visionary Sales Leadership is a no-holds-barred look at 10 of the most common myths, also called mistakes, about sales organizations as viewed by executives. It provides insight into how they may be corrected through a pragmatic examination of what can go wrong in a sales organization, and how to be proactive in resolving issues before they arise. Each chapter spotlights the myth being perpetuated in several companies regardless of size or product offering. Beyond just highlighting these mistakes, there are at least one or two alternatives for overcoming each myth and enabling senior executives to modify or correct them before they negatively affect the success of a sales group. This is a glimpse into mistaken thinking and a chance to reshape it. This book is written specifically for presidents, CEOs, COOs and senior executives who are responsible for making final decisions about their sales organization. While their scope of work is far wider than sales alone, these final decisions are influenced by all of the following: sales culture, hard - and soft - skills requirements of their sales management team, as well as the sales representatives themselves. Specific standards include compensation, sales plan creation, territory and market segment differentiation, key account coverage, interviewing, selection and hiring, staff performance evaluation, training and orientation. No candy coating or pretensions here. To many this is going to be a controversial look at sales organizations. If you are looking for reading about selling and how to lead a sales organization that energizes your soul, you can find tons of material on positive thinking. You won't find hyped sales messages or sales tips and what to do's about selling, bookshelves are filled with books on those subjects. Pollyanna beliefs and mentality are not here. What is here is a pragmatic look at the reality of successfully leading a sales organization. This book may be one of a very few specifically addressing the sales management role and its influence on a company. It is a practical guide to leading a top-notch sales force. . Being objective and recasting a sales organization which is well-tuned and delivers the promise of the enterprise objectives takes real courage. Moving from prevailing opinion to reinvention of the sales organization, especially if your sales processes, policies, programs, procedures and practices are stale, can be one of the toughest turn-around initiatives executives tackle. The author stipulates that closing a sale depends on successfully implementing the 7 P's - policies, practices, procedures, programs, processes, prices and products of your company. His skills in sales and sales management were learned through experience not from books. While many of the finest books on selling and management exist today, he failed to identify one with a focus on why a sales group succeeds or that guides management to ponder and establish as guiding principles and execute for sustained sale increases. If after reading Visionary Sales Leadership the reader is motivated to evaluate his sales team or conduct an audit, then the purpose of this book was served. It's highly likely this review will expose deficiencies but also reveal opportunities to make the sales organization even stronger than it is today. Quite likely as the reader plans long-term strategy, the sales team strategy will be required to adjust as the company positions itself for the future. Overall this book will define how any sales department can be supervised and held accountable to achieve tangible and meaningful results that correlate with overall company goals and ADDS VALUE to the enterprise. Cached date: AWS Called=true You may also be interested in these products:
The best book for sales execs who like to think 2007-05-01 If you are looking to lead a sales driven organization, company or team and are more effective in selling when you have a deep understanding of what you are doing and why it makes sense, you will not find a better, more grounded or more solid book than Don McNamara's "Visionary Sales Leadership."
- Mark Goulston "Leading Edge" FAST COMPANY magazine and author, Get Out of Your Own Way at Work... and Help Others Do the Same : Conquering Self-Defeating Behavior on the Job
Very insightful!! 2007-04-30 It is an easy to read insightful book that should remain in your bookshelf for years to come."
Most Excellent 2006-07-04 He hits the nail on the head! Corporate leaders need to read this book so they can understand and manage their sales operation. The myths he exposes are widely held beliefs that are totally false. Highly recommended.
Debunking Sales Myths 2006-04-19 Don McNamara in Visionary Sales Leadership exposes traditional sales myths. In their place he provides an objective approach to evaluating your sales strategy. This is a book about building a sales leadership team based on integrity, product knowledge, and skilled salesmanship.
Consideration is given to compensation based performance, top-down sales forecasting. The author asks hard questions, such as, what are the consequences of in-house promotions? What safeguards must be taken when hiring from the competition. Who sets the standards for the team leader? What are the by-products of proactive learning?
Two unique features of the book are "The Bottom Line" and the "Observations and Notes" pages. The bottom line sums up the material covered in the chapter in a succinct paragraph. This is followed with a page for the reader to record personal notes and action steps for follow up.
McNamara is a true professional. He has developed innovative insights drawn from personal observations and experience gained from a successful career in sales, sales management, training, and consulting.
I highly recommend this book for company presidents, top line management, CEO's, and all those who make up a part of the team making final decisions relating to the sales organization.
This is a book to be read, reread and studied. The material can then be incorporated in staff training for both the management and sales leadership team members.
Superb!
Myth busters for your Sales Team 2006-03-01 A colleague afforded me the honor of reviewing his new book prior to publication. Don McNamara and I have gotten to known each other over the past four years through several professional organizations - The Association of Professional Consultants, the Institute of Management Consultants, The Professional Speakers Association, and our own Mastermind Group. My own background includes extensive periods of time in sales leadership positions in some of the world's largest semiconductor companies. Based on my experiences in sales as well as other functions within these organizations, I can heartily endorse the work McNamara has done in this new book.
The subtitle for this book is "How Senior Executives Erase Status Quo Myths and Build Superior Sales Organizations." McNamara then goes on to present ten typical myths surrounding the sales functions in many (if not all) organizations. These myths, if you buy into them, will indeed manage to hold back your organization's growth and evolution. McNamara explains in a clear, straight-from-the-shoulder style exactly how each Myth manifests itself in an organization, what business processes aid and abet the Myth, and how to break out of the destructive pattern.
This book is not a "how to sell" book. Bookstore shelves are filled to overflowing with many such books. Instead, McNamara points to the critical issue of how the sales function is viewed by and integrated into a healthy company. Properly aligning the sales function (or Demand Generation as some companies refer to the sales function) is critical to our success in the new global economy, and this book will provide a good starting point for a comprehensive program of change initiation and management. It is likely that your company, as a whole, does not suffer from ALL ten of these Myths; yet I am willing to wager that all ten are represented by individual leaders within your company. And some of these Myths are known to many sales leaders who have simply not figured out how to change the status quo. Reading and understanding the ten sales Myths and implementing remedial actions found in Visionary Sales Leadership will better position your company for the hyper-competitive ever changing global market of the new world.
2006-03-01