We've all heard of the sales prevention department. That part of the company that just makes selling as difficult and cumbersome as possible. The people or group that makes the sales organization jump through hoops to deliver things that have nothing to do with making the sale or don't approve the most basic requests that could help the sale close. We've all experienced a sales prevention department at least once in our careers.
What many of us don't know is that far too often, sales has its own sales prevention department. Smack dab in its own ranks, there are people unknowingly sabotaging sales people's ability to meet quota and drive revenue.
Who are the culprits around us? Who are these dastardly villains impeding our efforts to make our number and exceed plan?
The perpetrators are sales leadership.
Mike Weinberg has written an impassioned, blunt, rant filled book blasting sales leadership for its incompetence and the debilitating impact sales leadership has had on sales organizations. And unfortunately, I agree with Mike. This book needed to be written. Too often sales management has been its own sales prevention department.
. . . sales teams underperform because sales leaders ignore or botch the very fundamentals of sales management.
Sales Management Simplified does a masterful, yet simplistic job, of calling out sales leadership's shortcomings which are all too present in today's sales organizations.
Sales Management Simplified is broken into two parts, what's wrong with sales leadership today and how to fix it. The first 101 pages are dedicated to common, yet rarely addressed sales leadership challenges such as; poor goal-setting and accountability, burdening sales people with too much non-selling crap, player coaches or sales managers that sell and manage, inability to address underperformers, poor comp plans, anti-sales cultures and more. Sales Management Simplified holds little back in it's no compromise attack on the issues and problems sales leadership causes in its organizations.
The author is a seasoned sales consultant, and you can hear the exasperation in his voice as he lays out the impact these sales gutting mistakes have on organizations. You can tell he's seen it too many times and just had to let it out. Like a doctor describing the adverse health effects of smoking to a lifelong smoker, Weinberg is impassioned, frustrated, accurate, exasperated and yet hopeful. He prods the reader to take heed and to let go of their destructive habits. He challenges, scolds, reprimands and educates. Weinberg and Sales Management Simplified are on a mission to rid the sales world of the frequent leadership mistakes that choke the life out of what could be successful sales organizations.
Thankfully, and at just the right time, Weinberg exhales, and his rant like dissection of sales leadership issues segues into an articulate and easy to follow how-to guide. Starting on page 105 Sales Management Simplified becomes an instruction manual, walking readers through the steps to avoid the sales leadership mistakes described in Part 1.
Weinberg provides interchangeable frameworks that sales leaders can apply across any sales organization. He provides readers with actionable, insights they can implement immediately to counter any propensity or tendency to engage in the debilitating sales management no-no's described earlier.
New Sales Management Simplified reads like a what not to do when you're a sales manager. A new sales manager should read this book before they do anything else. The minute they find themselves in a sales management role, they need to go home, buy this book and read it cover to cover. If you're a newbie, don't call your first meeting, don't meet with your team, just read this book and don't do any of the things in it. Don't let the bad habits settle in. Stay pure and clean.
If you're a wily veteran, use this book as a guide, as a personal assessor. Ask yourself, "Do I do any of these things?" Let the ideas settle in and be objective. The book was written for you.
Sales Management Simplified does what few sales books do, it points out the problems and the impacts of the problems and then actually prescribes what to do about it.
Sales Management Simplified is a timely book. It's prescriptive, contextual and accurate. If the statement; As goes the leader, so goes the organization is accurate, then this book should be required reading.
