Post Link: 6 Great Books for Sales Managers

6 Great Books for Sales Managers

Have you heard of decision fatigue? The more decisions you make throughout the day, theharder it gets to make each one. Being in the information age with so many facts just a fewmouse clicks away doesn’t help.

Sales managers aiming to improve their teams’ performance have it particularly tough. Salesgurus tend to be good at selling and especially good at selling themselves. There arethousands of books on sales, and deciding exactly what route to take (let alone leading yourteam along it), can be a major investment of time and energy.

We can’t give you energy, but we can save you time. We’ve selected some of the best booksavailable for sales managers from sales leaders who walk the walk as well as talk the talk. Theydo a great job of synthesizing a world of information into something that can make sense (andmoney) for your team.

6 Great Books for Sales Managers

1. Cracking the Sales Management Code

by Jason Jordan

A carefully designed and managed sales process. Jordan’s key premise in this book is thatsales managers can’t manage results. Instead, they can build, manage, and measure thebusiness processes that lead to the results they want. This book is a well-organized andstraightforward blueprint on how to connect the dots between processes and results. Itsemphasis on metrics is particularly relevant in today’s data-soaked world, where implementingdata-driven systems requires more focus than ever before.

2. The Ultimate Sales Machine

by Chet Holmes

A set of 12 fundamentals. Holmes distills years of experience into a set of 12 key areas wheresales managers can make the most difference. He is a salesman at heart but does a good jobdescribing how a tactical marketing program can set the stage for more, better, and easierdeals to be closed by your sales team.

3. Taking Charge of Distribution Sales

by Gary Moore

A set of 9 fundamentals. Moore’s set of fundamentals closely resembles Holmes’. The realvalue of this book, however, is seeing how the fundamentals can be applied specifically towholesale distribution sales. Moore has years of in-the-trenches experience in wholesale salesmanagement and includes tips and resources aimed directly at this audience. Each chapterends with a “real world experience” case study.

4. Topgrading for Sales

by Brad Smart

A results-oriented hiring strategy. This book is a more specific version of Topgrading by thesame author that focuses solely on building sales teams. Topgrading is a human resourcesevaluation framework designed to identify the “A” candidates for a given role. It relies less ontraditional methods like reading CV’s and more on a variety of practical assessment formats.Read this book and our blog post from sales expert Nancy Bleeke to lay a solid, strategicfoundation for building a high-caliber sales staff.

5. Who: The “A” Method for Hiring

by Geoff Smart and Randy Street

A comprehensive hiring process. Geoff Smart is Brad Smart’s son and in many ways, this bookis a practical answer to the theories in his father’s book, Topgrading. It presents a hiringprocess called the “A Method” which consists of multiple S’s: Scorecard (make a detailed jobdescription), Source (find candidates, usually through networking), Select (this is whereTopgrading comes in), and Sell (make sure the candidate chooses your offer). This book brings

the whole hiring story together into something immediately understandable and usable.

6. You Can’t Teach a Kid to Ride a Bike at a Seminar

by David Sandler and David Mattson

A consultative sales method. David Sandler’s approach to sales is that it’s a two-way streetwhere the seller’s decisions are just as important as the buyer’s. Lead qualification is essentiallya mutual decision to proceed down the path towards an eventual sale with the salespersonadvising and guiding the buyer along the way. Many sales managers are familiar with Sandler’smethods but it is worth reading the new updates by David Mattson for the 21st centurylandscape.

Sales is all about people, and every sales team looks a little different as a result. These salesgurus will not give you a magic bullet, but they will give you a head start on designing theparticular system and team that will get you where you need to go.Post originally located at: https://www.handshake.com/blog/6-great-books-for-sales-managers/

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