More ProActive Sales Management: Avoid the Mistakes Even Great Sales Managers Make -- And Get Extraordinary Results

235 Pages·2009·2.33 MB·English

MORE PROACTIVE SALES MANAGEMENT
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More ProActive Sales Management
Avoid the Mistakes Even Great Sales Managers Make—
and Get Extraordinary Results
WILLIAM “SKIP”MILLER
AMERICAN MANAGEMENT ASSOCIATION
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Miller, William, 1955–
More proactive sales management : avoid the mistakes even great sales managers
make—and get extraordinary results / William “Skip” Miller.
p. cm.
Includes index.
ISBN-13: 978-0-8144-1090-5
ISBN-10: 0-8144-1090-1
1. Sales management. 2. Selling. I. Title.
HF5438.4.M5425 2009
658.8'1—dc22
2008044717
© 2009 William Miller
All rights reserved.
Printed in the United States of America.
This publication may not be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system,
or transmitted in whole or in part, in any form or by any means, electronic,
mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written
permission of AMACOM, a division of American Management Association,
1601 Broadway, New York, NY 10019.
Printing number
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
C O N T E N T S
PREFACE ix
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS xi
INTRODUCTION xv
1
PA R T
INTERNAL TEAM DECISIONS
MISTAKE #1
We Are a Prospecting Machine! 3
MISTAKE #2
It’s All About Luck 12
MISTAKE #3
Salespeople Are Self-Motivated 23
MISTAKE #4
I’ll Focus on My B and C Players and
Make Them Better 33
MISTAKE #5
Salespeople Are Motivated by Money 40
MISTAKE #6
I Am the Team Leader 48
v
vi Contents
2
PA R T
UPWARD DECISIONS
MISTAKE #7
My Management Lets Me Do My Job 57
MISTAKE #8
I’m the Boss 61
MISTAKE #9
Things Are Always Tough at the
End of the Quarter 68
MISTAKE #10
It’s All About Revenue 77
3
PA R T
SALES DECISIONS
MISTAKE #11
My Team Needs Me for This Important Deal 91
MISTAKE #12
Sell, Sell, Sell . . . Right? 97
MISTAKE #13
I’ll Show Them How to Do It 105
MISTAKE #14
I’m Superman 113
Contents vii
4
PA R T
INFRASTRUCTURE DECISIONS
MISTAKE #15
It’s Their Territory 121
MISTAKE #16
I Have a Sales Process . . . I Think 128
MISTAKE #17
Metrics and Dashboards Are for Rookies 142
MISTAKE #18
Forecasting to 60 Percent Accuracy 154
MISTAKE #19
The Stack Ranking Behind Hire and Fire Decisions 168
5
PA R T
SELF DECISIONS
MISTAKE #20
Culture? I Already Have One, Thanks 183
MISTAKE #21
The More I Work, the Better the Example 192
MISTAKE #22
I’m the Manager, Right? 200
EPILOGUE AND CALL TO ACTION 207
INDEX 209
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P R E F A C E
A man of genius makes no mistakes. His errors
are volitional and are the portals of discovery.
—JAMESJOYCE(1882–1941)
Sales management is one of the most important and skillful professions in
business today, and yet we still don’t get it right. We spend years in sales, do
it well, get promoted, and then realize that what we did to become great
salespeople has nothing to do with being great sales managers.
So, if you overcame these issues, learned new skills, and became good at
this management thing, congratulations. Now it’s time to get even better at it.
How? Here is a book that tells you what not to do and how to avoid bad
decisions—the stuff you wish you had never gotten into. This booked is based
on lessons from hundreds of sales managers who modeled ideas, tried ideas,
implemented ideas, and flopped!
Who’s going to argue with that quote above from James Joyce? Mr. Joyce
must have been a smart cookie. Here is another phrase—a mantra for the
sales and sales management world.
In sales, everyone agrees you end up learning more
from your losses than your victories.
The lessons learned from your sales and sales-management mistakes are
ones you remember, right? So, it’s time to learn from other sales managers
who have made some mistakes and want to pass them on to you. There are
some big mistakes as well as some small ones that ended up having quite a big
impact on these managers. There are mistakes you have probably made your-
self, or are in the middle of making, or are about to make but you don’t know
it yet. Scary thought, eh?
This is not to say that just because something goes wrong you shouldn’t
ix