Building Your Sales Team

Diane Updyke and her colleagues present valuable tips, value statements, and learnings that every businessperson can benefit from. For a thorough understanding of how to build and execute an effective sales team, get your hands on Diane Updyke's Building Your Sales Team today.

First-line sales managers (FLMs) play a key role in helping a sales organization drive profitable revenue growth in an ever-changing business environment. But although directly responsible for managing and driving sales force performance, FLMs often don't get enough time, attention, and resources from sales leaders. "Building a Winning Sales Management Team" shows just how important FLMs are to sales organizations--and what happens when companies underinvest in these key players. Authors of four previous books on sales management, Zoltners, Sinha and Lorimer show in "Building a Winning Sales Management Team" just how companies can nurture successful FLMs and improve sales force productivity. The book has dozens of real-life examples of how investing in first-line management paid off in a big way. In developing the book, the authors collaborated with leaders from some of the world's top companies. The authors also draw on their cumulative experience as sales and marketing consultants, faculty members at Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management, and business speakers and writers to produce fresh, completely original insights on sales force effectiveness. "Building a Winning Sales Management Team" shows in detail exactly how companies can improve FLM performance. The authors reveal eight key drivers for defining, creating and enabling a successful first-line sales management team, and show how FLMs are critical facilitators of change. The book also includes a self-assessment tool to help organizations determine the right priorities to start improving sales management team performance.

What's the secret to sales success? If you're like most business leaders, you'd say it's fundamentally about relationships-and you'd be wrong. The best salespeople don't just build relationships with customers. They challenge them. The need to understand what top-performing reps are doing that their average performing colleagues are not drove Matthew Dixon, Brent Adamson, and their colleagues at Corporate Executive Board to investigate the skills, behaviors, knowledge, and attitudes that matter most for high performance. And what they discovered may be the biggest shock to conventional sales wisdom in decades. Based on an exhaustive study of thousands of sales reps across multiple industries and geographies, The Challenger Sale argues that classic relationship building is a losing approach, especially when it comes to selling complex, large-scale business-to-business solutions. The authors' study found that every sales rep in the world falls into one of five distinct profiles, and while all of these types of reps can deliver average sales performance, only one-the Challenger- delivers consistently high performance. Instead of bludgeoning customers with endless facts and features about their company and products, Challengers approach customers with unique insights about how they can save or make money. They tailor their sales message to the customer's specific needs and objectives. Rather than acquiescing to the customer's every demand or objection, they are assertive, pushing back when necessary and taking control of the sale. The things that make Challengers unique are replicable and teachable to the average sales rep. Once you understand how to identify the Challengers in your organization, you can model their approach and embed it throughout your sales force. The authors explain how almost any average-performing rep, once equipped with the right tools, can successfully reframe customers' expectations and deliver a distinctive purchase experience that drives higher levels of customer loyalty and, ultimately, greater growth.

Use data, technology, and inbound selling to build a remarkable team and accelerate sales The Sales Acceleration Formula provides a scalable, predictable approach to growing revenue and building a winning sales team. Everyone wants to build the next $100 million business and author Mark Roberge has actually done it using a unique methodology that he shares with his readers. As an MIT alum with an engineering background, Roberge challenged the conventional methods of scaling sales utilizing the metrics-driven, process-oriented lens through which he was trained to see the world. In this book, he reveals his formulas for success. Readers will learn how to apply data, technology, and inbound selling to every aspect of accelerating sales, including hiring, training, managing, and generating demand. As SVP of Worldwide Sales and Services for software company HubSpot, Mark led hundreds of his employees to the acquisition and retention of the company's first 10,000 customers across more than 60 countries. This book outlines his approach and provides an action plan for others to replicate his success, including the following key elements: Hire the same successful salesperson every time — The Sales Hiring Formula Train every salesperson in the same manner — The Sales Training Formula Hold salespeople accountable to the same sales process — The Sales Management Formula Provide salespeople with the same quality and quantity of leads every month — The Demand Generation Formula Leverage technology to enable better buying for customers and faster selling for salespeople Business owners, sales executives, and investors are all looking to turn their brilliant ideas into the next $100 million revenue business. Often, the biggest challenge they face is the task of scaling sales. They crave a blueprint for success, but fail to find it because sales has traditionally been referred to as an art form, rather than a science. You can't major in sales in college. Many people question whether sales can even be taught. Executives and entrepreneurs are often left feeling helpless and hopeless. The Sales Acceleration Formula completely alters this paradigm. In today's digital world, in which every action is logged and masses of data sit at our fingertips, building a sales team no longer needs to be an art form. There is a process. Sales can be predictable. A formula does exist.

Break your revenue records with Silicon Valley’s “growth bible” “This book makes very clear how to get to hyper-growth and the work needed to actually get there” Why are you struggling to grow your business when everyone else seems to be crushing their goals? If you needed to triple revenue within the next three years, would you know exactly how to do it? Doubling the size of your business, tripling it, even growing ten times larger isn't about magic. It's not about privileges, luck, or working harder. There's a template that the world's fastest growing companies follow to achieve and sustain much, much faster growth. From Impossible to Inevitable details the hypergrowth playbook of companies like Hubspot, Salesforce.com (the fastest growing multibillion dollar software company), and EchoSign—aka Adobe Document Services (which catapulted from $0 to $144 million in seven years). Whether you have a $1 billion or a $100,000 business, you can use the same insights as these notable companies to learn what it really takes to break your own revenue records. Pinpoint why you aren’t growing faster Understand what it takes to get to hypergrowth Nail a niche (the #1 missing growth ingredient) What every revenue leader needs to know about building a scalable sales team There’s no time like the present to surpass plateaus and get off of the up-and-down revenue rollercoaster. Find out how now!

The Ultimate Sales Framework for Achieving Business Success Sales enablement is no longer the new kid on the block. Having grown rapidly in recent years, it’s now considered a best practice at many sales organizations. But there’s little alignment across the sales profession on what sales enablement is or how to achieve it, nor is there a formalized strategy on what a sales enablement practice is or requires. In his new book The Building Blocks of Sales Enablement, sales enablement expert Mike Kunkle addresses these issues and presents a proven approach that both supports sales talent and achieves true business results. Kunkle lays out an easy-to-follow structure through the concept of building blocks, interconnected by systems thinking and supported by a consistent cadence of training, coaching, and content. Comprehensive and versatile, this book is for senior sales leaders and sales enablement leaders who are starting or evolving a sales enablement function as well as for struggling sales practitioners to use as a diagnostic tool and road map. Chapters detail how to use each building block, with reflective questions and guidance for creating your own analysis and tools. The book also includes a chapter on sales onboarding, separate chapters on how to integrate communication and support services, and recommended resources. Impactful sales enablement projects are basically change management initiatives in disguise. Use the building blocks framework to navigate challenges, measure successes, and determine a path forward to improving business outcomes.

Inside sales is the fastest growing sales channel due to its cost effective nature. An inside sales rep can handle far more contacts on a daily basis than their field sales counterpart. If you are a “C” level executive with responsibility for delivering revenue, you cannot afford to overlook the rules contained in this fast-paced, powerful, book. ‘42 Rules for Building a High-Velocity Inside Sales Team: Actionable Guide to Creating Inside Sales Teams that Deliver Quantum Results’ will help you and your team understand:

• The key elements required to build a high-velocity inside sales team that will accelerate your revenue.
• The different types of inside sales teams you can leverage, how and where to staff them, and the types of tools that are required for them to operate effectively.
• The importance of a common sales language, consistent processes and clearly defined weekly metrics.

With the popularity of inside sales skyrocketing, so is the demand for inside sales talent. Lori Harmon and Debbi Funk prepare you with the info you need to make smart choices when building a high-velocity inside sales team; This includes recognizing the specialized skills required to manage and lead an inside sales team, understanding the skills required of an ideal inside sales rep, and quantifying the cost of a bad hire. Pick up this book and see for yourself the value that these rules will help you bring to your organization.

With a foreword by Alex Osterwalder. The future of work is already here. Customers are adopting disruptive technologies faster than your company can adapt. When your customers are delighted, they can amplify your message in ways that were never before possible. But when your company’s performance runs short of what you’ve promised, customers can seize control of your brand message, spreading their disappointment and frustration faster than you can keep up. To keep pace with today’s connected customers, your company must become a connected company. That means deeply engaging with workers, partners, and customers, changing how work is done, how you measure success, and how performance is rewarded. It requires a new way of thinking about your company: less like a machine to be controlled, and more like a complex, dynamic system that can learn and adapt over time. Connected companies have the advantage, because they learn and move faster than their competitors. While others work in isolation, they link into rich networks of possibility and expand their influence. Connected companies around the world are aggressively acquiring customers and disrupting the competition. In The Connected Company, we examine what they’re doing, how they’re doing it, and why it works. And we show you how your company can use the same principles to adapt—and thrive—in today’s ever-changing global marketplace.