The Sales Manager's Guide to Greatness: Ten Essential Strategies for Leading Your Team to the Top Hardcover – March 28, 2017

This book lives up to its title in every way. You'll find detailed instructions on how to do your challenging job, as well as reasoned judgment on why Mr. Davis's recommendations are the way to go. Here are characteristics of the sales culture that you'll build when you follow this guide:• Formality• Thoroughness• Performance-based• Mentorship• Coaching• Preparation• DevelopmentalThese qualities, therefore, make the book conducive to a vigorous, thriving sales culture, especially the emphasis on the Sales Manager as Leader and Developmental Coach. Sales teams thrive in a collaborative, coaching culture, not a bureaucratic top-down culture. But few sales managers have much training or experience in how to behave as a coach. This book shows you how to fulfill that role and offers lots of anecdotes along the way.Davis lays out a model in which every salesperson will have the optimal chance to be successful, but at the same time slackers will be discouraged and either find their own way out or be dismissed without much trouble. It sounds like a high performance, low drama operation in which it's easy to learn exactly what's expected of you, and support for your learning is plentiful.The most original part of the book is “the buying focused sales model,” which the author fully explains and illustrates as a playbook integrated inside the CRM. It’s a way of understanding your sales process, naming the steps and stages and activities, completely in terms of the buyers’ perceptions rather than those of the seller. This section alone should be required reading for your entire company, not just the sales manager! Many sales gurus talk about being customer-focused, but I've never seen such a detailed, thoughtful approach to how you would go about teaching salespeople to implement a sales process completely based on the buyers' activities rather than your own. Brilliant!Kevin Davis moved up through the ranks of sales person to sales leader, which is a tough transition. If you're the sales manager, you ought to have this book. If you aspire to sales management, get it now to make yourself ready. If you're the CEO or Sales VP of a big company, make sure all of your sales managers have this book and use it in their daily practice.This is one of the best sales books I’ve read, ever. It’s one of the best leadership books I’ve read, ever. It's not grandiose and it's not driven by motivational jargon. Rather, it's a thorough, detailed guide, with step-by-step explanations of what you should do and how you should do it in order to lead a sales team “to the top” as the subtitle promises.

5 out of 5 starsBy: John Janis, April 3, 2017Format: HardcoverI consider myself well read on the subject of Sales Management Effectiveness and have been fortunate to have grown several Company’s by $200 - $400 million by applying many of the proven strategies and practicing tips that Kevin has put into his book - Sales Manager’s Guide to Greatness.Kevin’s content within the 10 Chapters is relevant with special attention to the importance of:• “priority” time management• hiring the right talent• defining expectations/accountability• improving CRM as a buying focused model• strategic account planning process• dealing with demotivated performers• AND MOST IMPORTANT - The Number 1 Priority of Sales Management is COACHING to develop your people.My greatest appeal to the book is that it is truly a “GUIDE” for Sales Managers as the title indicates. What makes Kevin’s book unique is that he more than any other author provides in- depth “how to’s” from cover to cover, which is a great teaching aid versus just telling sales managers what they should be doing.The Sales Manager position is one of the most challenging, and is the fundamental link between strategy and effective execution. As a result Kevin has taken the time to show Sales Managers specific “how to’s” throughout his book by providing 26-CHART examples on the subject material previously mentioned. These Charts designed by Kevin are simplistic tools to help sales managers become more effective.I strongly suggest to any sales manager (regardless of time-on-the-job), that you read this book and to put into action Kevin’s proven strategies and tips.

Very insightful book that provides a fresh perspective on selling. "Buyer Focused" selling puts you in the customer's chair and allows you to more easily think in terms of the customer's processes and timelines. Also provides great insights into managing a sales team that so many sales managers overlook during their daily grind.

Extremely well written and a handy reference guide which should be read multiple times. There are so many things that we know we can improve as sales managers but we fail to do so. We either get caught up with tactical "urgent" deal stuff or try to use "gut instinct" to guide ourselves through the deal close process. Neither of these of course scale and we all know this. This book gave us a step by step methodology which provided our sales force with a standard language with defined tools and processes. The sales methodology also allowed us to hire a wider spectrum of sales execs; and bring them up to speed on our market and technology faster. We previously had to hire from a smaller pool who were already familiar with our industry and technology. This was getting very limiting. Highly recommend both the book and the author [he provides some great training programs also] to anyone trying to grow their sales team or make their existing sales team more efficient.