Sales Management That Works: How to Sell in a World that Never Stops Changing

As the no-nonsense title of this book suggests, it's aimed mainly at managers of salespeople. But that group may be bigger than you think. More than 10 percent of the U.S. labor force is listed as salespeople. And that figure doesn't include the content marketers, data analysts, business developers, and many execs who don't have "sales" in their job title, but very much work in that domain. It's even estimated that "sweet talk" – or the practice of persuasion – accounts for a quarter of the total labor income of the United States.

But others can benefit from this book too. It promises to help salespeople respond to market challenges, to help investors get more bang for their buck, and help those in the C-suite better understand their customers. And, according to the author, it can help anyone better understand why effective selling is a social responsibility.

So, keep listening to find out how the sales funnel may be leading you down the wrong track, why many leaders are out of touch with customers, and why you might want to stop trying to recruit sales "stars."

Whatever industry you work in, you're probably familiar with the sales funnel. It's a common slide in PowerPoint presentations that shows how a prospect moves from the awareness to the buying stage. It's linear.

But Cespedes says this is out of date. Rather than follow a predictable path, today's consumers are savvy and think for themselves. A car buyer, for example, will research automotive websites, check features on a manufacturer's site, then visit a dealer to sit behind the wheel. They'll go away to scroll through comparison sites, read trade magazines, and dip into online forums. Then they'll go back to a dealership, armed with information to haggle for the best price. And they may repeat this process several times over, in a different order each time.

Today, salespeople must identify and interact with customers as they navigate these "streams" – or places where they encounter brands. And despite what many sales books tell you, Cespedes says there's no shortcut to doing it. New selling methods, "challenging" the customer, or data analytics can't do it on their own. Effective selling is a process, which this book outlines.

It's organized around five core principles, all starting with "P" – people, processes, pricing, partners, and productivity. And just like a customer's buying journey, these principles often overlap.

Part one focuses on people. Here, Cespedes covers hiring, training and development, performance management, and coaching. And off the bat, he debunks many common sales tactics, such as poaching "stars" from other companies.

Cespedes points to a study that found that less than half of job performance stems from individual capabilities. The rest comes from organizational factors such as training, knowledge, and team chemistry.

What's more, sales tasks are determined by your sales strategy and target customers, which new hires may not know. It's why they often fail to hit the ground running, and why corporate execs often flounder in small start-ups. For Cespedes, performance isn't abstract; it's rooted in context.

That's why you should hire for the task, not the title. Rather than post a boilerplate job description, calling for a "people person" with a BA degree, et cetera, you should really take time to clarify the specific skills and behaviors you need for your particular sales role. Then articulate them in your job post.

Like the B2B software firm, Splunk. To hire for a field sales role, it identifies skills such as forecast accuracy, and behaviors like interacting well with others and not feeling entitled to special treatment. It uses interviews, assessments, and onboarding programs to highlight the required mindsets and expectations.

This process helps Splunk create sales profiles, to improve hiring and develop salespeople. They become crib sheets to help sales managers coach new hires in desired skills and behaviors, and form the basis for quarterly reviews that assess how well managers are passing on information. Splunk tracks training and coaching effectiveness as closely as it tracks its sales figures.

There are only so many stars out there, but effective recruitment and training like Splunk's can create a network of talented salespeople – which means more referrals and more good hires. Splunk is an example of how effective selling requires its different stages to "click." Here, recruitment and onboarding, training and development, and performance management all work together.

This book is crammed with case studies. They range from vignettes to dissections, big-name brands to small start-ups. Some names have been disguised, at the request of the companies. This shows that Cespedes isn't just re-hashing case studies that he's read about. He's actually going out to interview execs, asking tough questions, and making a diagnosis they're not always comfortable sharing publicly.

With some books, you get the feeling the author has retrofitted examples to support their argument. But the way Cespedes works through his case studies, you sense he's really learned from the evidence, and used the findings to form his thinking.

And he asks readers to do the same. Each chapter of this book ends with what he calls a "diagnostic" – a list of questions to help you reflect on the topic and how it relates to you, your team, and organization. What's more, they help you put theory into practice.

Cespedes likens the diagnostics to a pilot's checklist. They help reduce mistakes and keep key ideas front of mind when you're busy. And he doesn't just leave these interactive parts to the end of the chapter. You'll find checklists and reflective questions throughout, as well as sample emails, surveys, and sales conversations you can apply to your role.

In part two, Process, Cespedes covers sales models, compensation, and incentives. It includes a four-page worked example of a buyer persona. These are profiles of archetypal customers drawn from research, designed to help you sense-check and adapt your sales model to the current buyer landscape.

Cespedes' example includes role responsibilities, pain points and needs, buying criteria, market drivers, and where buyers get their information from. It goes further than many personas you might have seen, and includes the purchase process people might follow – and a salesperson's role at each stage.

But Cespedes is careful to highlight the limitations of buyer personas. To work, they need sales reps trained in the interviewing and active listening skills he discusses earlier in the book. And at best, a persona only offers a snapshot of a target buyer, and as we've seen already, customers never stand still. For what Cespedes calls the "motion picture" of their movements, you need to see the buying journey, or the process they go through to choose and use a product or service.

To help you map this journey, Cespedes includes sample questions to better understand the awareness, consideration, and decision-making stages of buying. These answers will help you keep a prospect's needs, desires, and opinions about your product central to your selling efforts.

These worked examples, sample questions, and diagnostics are useful learning tools. They give you a taste of the process you'll have to go through to build or reconstruct your sales model.

They also help you reflect on the often complex topics Cespedes covers. But if you do the legwork, big ideas reveal themselves. Like the way sales models don't just show you where customers are – but where you can lead them. They can actually drive markets, like the way successful disruptors focus on specific areas of a buying journey and add value that incumbents overlook.

And great businesses keep disrupting by continually reconstructing their sales model. Just look at Apple and its iPhone. As rivals caught up with tech capabilities, and consumers agreed on the winning designs, Apple used its phones to generate a services market, accessories, and a payments business.

Part three, Pricing and Partners, looks at customer value, price testing, and managing a multichannel approach.

To sell, you may have to build and manage multiple channels. For example, Amazon merchants may sell on eBay, from their own website, through other brands' sites, and in bricks-and-mortar stores.

Choosing and managing the right channels – or ways to get your product or service to market – is complex. For example, your sales force may have to work with resellers, wholesalers, distributors, retailers, and social media influencers. Just for starters!

The diagnostics and case studies in this book help make the path clearer – as does Cespedes' writing style. He's plain talking and direct, and brings humor to potentially dry subject matter.

For example, he writes that people don't buy two-inch drill bits. They buy two-inch holes. Seeing the difference between features and benefits is a good starting point to help you choose the right channels.

The book's conclusion brings together themes and helps you see connecting threads. It's aimed at top leaders and titled, "What Senior Execs Should Know About Sales," but it invites all readers to reflect on the social aspect of effective selling.

Cespedes argues that leaders don't just have an obligation to their shareholders, but to society as a whole. Hiring and training salespeople affects the lives of millions of people. And their productivity, in turn, helps drive economic growth and create opportunities for millions more.

This all leads to a better standard of living, which isn't just about what you buy. Its value extends to society, politics, and even our moral character. That's why Cespedes urges CEOs to improve their sales for profits, yes, but also for investment in the economy, and to help improve the lives of millions of people.

They can start by better understanding the sales process. For Cespedes, there's a gap between the C-suite and customer-facing employees. It's widened because a more complex business world has led to a need for specialists, who make their mark within firms. These experts may then be promoted to leadership roles, but crucially, without hands-on, customer-facing experience.

On the flip side, surveys show that less than half of employees know their firm's business strategy. Without dialog between the C-suite and sales teams, leaders don't hear about the insights and experiences of customers. And salespeople don't know which USPs to push.

No wonder, then, that the book's final diagnostic is a walkthrough of a best-case scenario, with practical tips to reduce the gap. In a fictional company, leaders talk with frontline staff to identify selling behaviors that really show customers the value of their service.

Working with sales managers, leaders create a new sales model that clarifies these desired skills and behaviors. They build training courses around them, giving salespeople the opportunity to practice over time.

Sales managers brush up on their coaching skills, so they can steer performance-management conversations around desired behaviors. And a new compensation plan incentivizes "walking the walk," to bake in behaviors.

So what's our last word on "Sales Management That Works"?

This book lives up to its no-nonsense title, and to Cespedes' promise that there's no easy answer to effective selling. But he breaks complex topics down with crunchy diagnostics and other interactive elements. These sections help you retrace your steps, revisit advice, and gage your progress. His easy-going writing style and dry sense of humor also help you through some head-scratching theory.

If we're being critical, we could say Cespedes telegraphs his punches. Most chapters swirl around one central idea: that effective sales is a process of aligning selling with buying behaviors. And despite the claim that this book stands out from toothless literature on sales, you may spot similarities with writing on continuous improvement. Indeed, Cespedes says that sales strategies are like engineering know-how. They're error-tested for specific purposes.

And hammering home a central idea doesn't make it easy to implement. It's a little like the Toyota factory tours Cespedes writes about: visitors confuse the machinery they see on the shop floor with the system itself. A quick read of this book will reveal Cespedes' central theme, but you'll need to re-read and work through the diagnostics to really learn and implement its lessons. And we recommend that you do!

"Sales Management That Works: How to Sell in a World That Never Stops Changing," by Frank V. Cespedes, is published by Harvard Business Review Press.

That's the end of this episode of Books Insights. Thanks for listening.