All Star Sales Teams

Book description

“All Star Sales Teams brings to light the critical elements necessary to ensure not only the successful design of a powerful sales reward system, but also its effective implementation.”

- Vern Stevenson, president, MetricTest

“All Star Sales Teams brings Dan Kleinman’s comprehensive perspective into clear focus. It is a perspective that should resonate with any CEO or Head of Sales concerned about building a vibrant structure that will contribute to a company’s ongoing success.”

- David Suliteanu, CEO, Sephora USA/Canada

All Star Sales Teams focuses on molding the sales team into an organization’s most productive nucleus. This book uniquely integrates critical development, organizational, and compensation concepts into practical, day-to-day processes. It also answers eight key questions that define successful sales and reward structures:

* What methods most clearly communicate sales objectives?

* How do you make sure that new products or services reinforce the organization’s vision, strategy, and operating style?

* What critical information does management need about how the marketplace rewards comparable delivery teams?

* What tactics boost the effectiveness of sales rewards?

* How can leaders maximize sales management strengths and neutralize weaknesses?

* How does a company fully engage its sales representatives?

* What functional areas ought to participate in designing sales rewards?

* How can an organization minimize design complexity?

This comprehensive book benefits anyone who manages a sales force, influences their company’s strategy and staff productivity, or is critical in sustaining the culture of selling throughout an organization. It also provides a needed blueprint for achieving a dynamic sales environment and a satisfied and productive team of selling all-stars. Since 1990, Dan Kleinman has been an independent consultant for a broad spectrum of regional, national, and international companies, providing an integrated package of performance, organizational planning, and reward-system design services. While his client list includes Fortune 500 companies, Kleinman focuses most of his attention on offering support to small and mid-sized organizations that form the bulk of the business community. Prior to consulting, he spent 20 years managing a variety of human resource functions for Wells Fargo, AT&T, and Charles Schwab. He has taught compensation principles for the American Compensation Association (now World at Work) and the American Banking Association’s graduate school, written for and interviewed by trade journals and INC. magazine, and remains a sought-after presenter at various regional and national industry associations.

Table of contents

  1. Copyright Page
  2. Table of Contents
  3. Title Page
  4. Dedication
  5. Introduction
  6. 1 - Clarify Your Sales Objectives: Planning for Change
    1. Planning Pitfalls
    2. Putting Everyone on the Same Page
    3. Rubber Chickens
    4. Meeting Structure
    5. Team Building
    6. The Big Picture
    7. The Professional Perspective
    8. The Eight Key Questions About the Eight Key Issues
    9. The Three Categories of Response
    10. The Short Answers to Sales Success
    11. Recap
  7. 2 - Align Goals, Values, and Rewards: Tailoring a Compensation Plan
    1. Observations of an Urban Tracker
    2. The Mission Behind the Mission
    3. Purpose for Being
    4. Focused Vision/Compatible Values
    5. 5 Values
    6. Design Is All About Purpose
    7. Alignment, Alignment, and Then More Alignment
    8. And What of Jed?
  8. 3 - Put Market Data Into Perspective: Getting What You Need
    1. The Need to Know
    2. Source Data
    3. Grains of Salt
    4. Without “N” There Is No Survey Business
    5. The Typical Scenario
    6. A Moving Target
    7. How Can One Rationally Approach Pay Data?
    8. What Are Your Own Pay Principles—30 Thousand Feet?
    9. Drawing Market Data From the Right Pools Pool #1—The Job Pool
    10. How to Best Obtain Data
    11. The Trusted Compensation Professionals
    12. Trusted Recruiters
    13. Recent Hires
    14. Production Surveys
    15. The Basics Market Data Should Tell You
    16. Beyond Basics
  9. 4 - Provide Realistic Sales Rewards: Controlling Expectations
    1. Getting It Right
    2. Putting Compensation in Perspective
    3. It Takes 30 Minutes to Stop an Aircraft Carrier
    4. Choosing Carefully
    5. Forms to Choose From
    6. Pop and Its Evil Stepbrother Entitlement
    7. Compensate Selling: Not the Sale
    8. False Expectations
    9. Aligning Selling Focus With Compensation Reinforcement
    10. Team
    11. Controlling Expectations by Establishing Parameters
    12. Preparing the Sales Staff for Bounce Back
    13. Marketing Expectations
    14. Goal Setting Dialogues
    15. Managing Ongoing Expectations
    16. What It Is
  10. 5 - Motivate Sales Managers: Capitalizing on Their Strengths
    1. From Whence
    2. The Wrong Whence
    3. The Right Whence
    4. Maximizing Motivation
    5. I Let Them Manage
    6. To Sell or Not to Sell—There Is No Question
    7. Information Overload
    8. Compensating Sales Managers
    9. The Comfort Zone
    10. No Sales Manager Is an Island
  11. 6 - Involve Your Sales Staff: Keeping Them Engaged
    1. Fully Engaged
    2. Conditions That Influence
    3. Being True to Your Operating Style—Context Revisited
    4. Go to the Core—How You Reflect What Is Important to You
    5. Has the Engagement Table Been Set?
    6. Collaboration Is Fine, but Designing Compensation?
    7. The Forgotten Step
    8. Perspective
    9. Engaging the Wider Audience
    10. Stand Alone Documentation
    11. Putting All the Pieces Together
  12. 7 - Cultivate an Inter-Functional Community: Putting the Company First
    1. The Unlucky 13
    2. Starting the Design Project Off on the Right Foot
    3. Whose Plan Is It Anyway?
    4. Design Management
    5. Sequence of Events
    6. Points Worthy of Emphasis
    7. Coming to the Table
    8. Keeping Universal Issues in Mind
    9. Intergroup Collaboration
    10. Communication
    11. Show Time
    12. Conclusion
  13. 8 - Strive for Simplicity: Streamlining Your Design Strategy
    1. So, What’s Wrong With Complexity?
    2. Complexity Is Rarely Accidental
    3. The Design Umbrella
    4. Design Elements
    5. The 10 Rubber Chickens of Sales Design
    6. Selecting the Message Driver—Commission, Incentive, Bonus, and Contest Pay Programs
    7. Team Compensation
    8. Defining the Event
    9. Measuring for Focus and Change
    10. On Being an Air Farmer
    11. Territorial Symmetry Is to Measurement as Gold Is to Tuna
    12. It Could Be a 4- or 40-Foot Fall
    13. Communicate, Communicate, and Then Communicate Some More
    14. Design Isn’t Easy, but It Doesn’t Have to Be Complicated
  14. Conclusion
  15. Appendix: - Rubber Chickens
  16. About the Author

Product information

  • Title: All Star Sales Teams
  • Author(s):
  • Release date: March 2008
  • Publisher(s): Career Press
  • ISBN: 9781564149916