Seven Steps to Success for Sales Managers: A Strategic Guide to Creating a Winning Sales Team Through Collaboration

Seven Steps to Success for Sales Managers: A Strategic Guide to Creating a Winning Sales Team Through Collaboration

by Max F. Cates
Released June 2015
Publisher(s): Pearson
ISBN: 9780134211152

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Book description

Master today’s breakthrough strategy for developing and sustaining high-performance sales teams! Long-time sales team leader Max Cates shows how to go far beyond "old school," "command and control" sales management, unleashing the full power and energy of your salespeople through a participatory management approach that works. Drawing on 36+ years of sales and sales management experience, Cates presents proven tactics for:

  • Developing your own mental toughness, emotional intelligence, strategic thinking, and promotability

  • Becoming a true servant leader in sales: providing the right structure, challenges, respect, involvement, and support

  • Hiring more effective and productive salespeople – including expert tips for interviewing, recruiting, reading body language, using data, and choosing amongst candidates

  • Building winning teams that meet sales objectives and delight customers

  • Empowering sales reps and teams in decision-making that increases sales productivity

  • Measuring individual and team performance towards objectives

  • Keeping people on target without micro-managing them

  • Promoting team growth and continual improvement

  • Leveraging Six Sigma and the Deming Cycle to sustain success, morale, and performance

  • And much more

    • Seven Steps to Success for Sales Managers presents proven sales management tactics in a "bulletized" format that’s easy to read – and just as easy to use. Cates combines decades of in-the-trenches experience with cutting-edge research on the latest sales trends and tactics. Whether you’re a working sales manager, VP of sales, account team leader, executive MBA program participant, or aspiring sales manager, this guide will help you build an outstanding team, empower it, and lead it to sustained success.

    Table of contents

    1. About This eBook
    2. Title Page
    3. Copyright Page
    4. Contents
    5. About the Author
    6. Introduction
    7. 1. First Step: Manage Yourself
      1. Self-Management Question Number One: Are You a Trusted Leader?
        1. Care Is a Vital Part of Trust
        2. Integrity Provides the Foundation for Trust
        3. Competency Fortifies Trusting Relationships
        4. What’s the Most Important Trust Factor?
      2. Self-Management, the Rest of the Story
        1. 1. Are You Advancing or Retreating?
        2. 2. Are You Stuck in a Rut?
        3. 3. Are You Really Using Your Brain?
        4. 4. Speaking of Adaptability, Are You an Adaptive Leader?
        5. 5. Are You Aware Enough to Be Self-Aware?
        6. 6. Are You Mentally Tough Enough?
        7. 7. Do You Have Bad-Boss Characteristics?
        8. 8. Are You a Sales Narcissist?
        9. 9. Have You Put Your Ego on Hold?
        10. 10. Can You Empathize?
        11. 11. Do You Have EQ? Are You Teaching It?
        12. 12. Are You Intoxicated by Power?
        13. 13. Are You the Smartest Person in the Room?
        14. 14. Have You Found Your Style?
        15. 15. Do You Have a Black Bass Strategy?
      3. Fourteen Aids to Self-Manage Successfully
        1. 1. Reverse Appraisals Make Smarter Leaders
        2. 2. Manage Your Expectations
        3. 3. Best Practices Help Stimulate Success
        4. 4. It Takes More Than Money to Motivate
        5. 5. Get Out of the Way and Let It Flow
        6. 6. Grab the Tool Kit; a Hammer Just Won’t Do
        7. 7. Stop Selling, Start Managing
        8. 8. Don’t Try to Sell a Salesperson
        9. 9. Develop an Effective Sales Culture
        10. 10. If You Want Followers, Lead by Example
        11. 11. Knowing Your Reps Builds Understanding
        12. 12. Understand Your Customers’ Needs
        13. 13. Shhhh...Are You Listening?
        14. 14. Make Yourself Promotable
    8. 2. Second Step: High-Performance Teams Begin with Hiring
      1. First Goal: Hire Those You Know
      2. Recruitment: The First Step to Success
        1. Daily Contacts: Finding Diamonds in the Rough
        2. Networking Can Yield Top Job Prospects
      3. The Science of Selection
      4. Don’ts of Hiring
      5. Hire for Traits, Not Skills
      6. Who’s Your Best Candidate—Extrovert, Introvert, or Ambivert?
      7. Personality Analysis: Leave It to the Pros
      8. The Big Five as It Applies to Salespeople
      9. Which Traits Make the Best Salespeople?
      10. The Sixth Dimension
      11. The Best Predictors of Sales Success in Rank Order
      12. Body Language Helps Identify Success Traits
      13. Seven Tiebreakers
      14. Red Flags to Consider
    9. 3. Third Step: Building a Winning Team
      1. Teamwork Begins with Partnership
      2. Filling the Wheelbarrow
      3. Teamwork Becomes More Important with Millennials
      4. The Unseen Team Will Make You or Break You
      5. What Makes an Effective Team Leader?
      6. Five Ways to Set the Stage for Team Building
      7. Building Team Momentum
      8. Values Help Create a Successful Sales Culture
      9. Creating a Learning Environment
      10. Best Practices Emphasized
      11. Teamwork Expected
      12. Finally, Set Ground Rules
      13. Forming, Storming, Norming, Performing
      14. Your First Meeting
      15. Understanding Team Dynamics
      16. Tips for Team Building
      17. Three Ways Sales Teams Enhance Managers’ Success
      18. Things to Expect from a High-Performing Team
      19. The By-Product of Teamwork Is Better Sales
      20. Care and Feeding of the Sales Team
        1. Give and Get Respect
        2. Engage Your People
        3. The Power of Asking
        4. Limitless Selling
        5. Tolerate Cockiness
        6. Build Team Confidence Through Ego Affirmation
        7. Prevent Sales Burnout
        8. Humor Can Facilitate Managerial Success
        9. Spouses Are Your Number One Support Group
        10. Beyond the Basics
        11. Is Your Gratitude Showing?
        12. Remember, Team Building Begins One Rep at a Time
        13. Teaching Moments Are Best One-on-One
        14. Training Beyond the Basics
        15. Create a Mentor Program
        16. Insist on Honesty, Not Positivity
        17. Encourage Your Reps to Vent
        18. Don’t Wait for Me
        19. Daily Assessment Keeps Everyone in the Loop
        20. Get Close to the Action
        21. Make Sales the Priority
        22. Be a Heat Shield
        23. Remember the Law of Opposite Results
        24. Carefully Criticize Your People
        25. Listen to What Is Not Said
        26. Selling Is an Art and a Science
        27. Make Pressure Work for You
        28. Positive Reinforcement Works
        29. Look for Reasons to Celebrate Success, and Then Step into the Shadows
        30. Beware of Unintended Consequences
        31. Great Results Might Not Be So Great
        32. “War Stories” Are Their Moment
        33. Don’t Let Failure Get in the Way
        34. Letting Go: When Change Is Necessary
        35. What’s Your Legacy?
    10. 4. Fourth Step: Becoming a Successful Servant Leader
      1. Custom-Made Team Building
      2. The Inverted Pyramid
      3. Ethics and Servant Leadership
      4. Top Leaders Have High Expectations
      5. Leading with Grace Under Fire
      6. The Servant Leader as a Problem Solver
      7. Communication Is Vital to Servant Leaders’ Effectiveness
      8. Servant Leaders Create Flow
      9. Servant Leadership Improves Productivity
      10. Servant Leaders Improve Sales Retention Rates and Customer Engagement
    11. 5. Fifth Step: Sales Empowerment, Beginning with Ownership
      1. Step One: Give Control to Get Control
      2. Step Two: Develop Buy-In
      3. Step Three: Empowering Your Team to Success
      4. The Benefits of Empowerment
      5. Empowerment Means Better Decision Making
      6. Fundamentals of Developing a Self-Managed Sales Team
      7. How Teamwork Facilitates Self-Managed Salespeople
    12. 6. Sixth Step: Success Through Performance Measurement
      1. Daily Measures to Prevent Micromanagement
      2. First Priority, This Is a People Thing
      3. Types of Key Performance Metrics
        1. Output Measures
        2. Activity Measures
      4. Using the Numbers—Aha versus Gotcha
      5. Stretch Your Objectives, but Don’t Overstretch
      6. Selling Smart with Sales Opportunity Metrics
      7. Red-Flagging Your Database
      8. Sales Segmentation Is a Team Effort
    13. 7. Seventh Step: Continuous Improvement, Maintaining Success
      1. Achieving Success with Six Sigma
      2. Using the Deming Cycle for Improved Sales
      3. Sales Excellence Is the Core Value of Continuous Improvement
      4. Tips for Implementing Continuous Improvement
        1. Think Deep and Wide
        2. At the Same Time, Think Small
        3. Avoid “It’s Not My Job” Thinking
        4. Invite Others to the Process
        5. Make It Your Own System
    14. Conclusion: Leadership, the Sales Management Buffet
    15. References
      1. Chapter 1
      2. Chapter 2
      3. Chapter 3
      4. Chapter 4
      5. Chapter 5
      6. Chapter 6
      7. Conclusion
    16. Index

    Product information

    • Title: Seven Steps to Success for Sales Managers: A Strategic Guide to Creating a Winning Sales Team Through Collaboration
    • Author(s): Max F. Cates
    • Release date: June 2015
    • Publisher(s): Pearson
    • ISBN: 9780134211152