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

by Frank V. Cespedes

Named to the longlist for the 2021 Outstanding Works of Literature (OWL) Award in the Sales & Marketing category In this smart, practical, and research-based guide, Harvard Business School professor Frank Cespedes offers essential sales strategies for a world that never stops changing. The rise of e-commerce. Big data. AI. Given these trends (and many others), there's no doubt that sales is changing. But much of the current conventional wisdom is misleading and not supported by empirical data. If you as a manager fail to separate fact from hype, you will make decisions based on faulty assumptions and, in a competitive market, eventually fall behind those with a keener grasp of the current selling environment. In this no-nonsense book, sales expert and Harvard Business School professor Frank Cespedes provides sales managers and executives with the tools they need to separate the signal from the noise. These include how to: Brimming with fascinating examples, insightful research, and helpful diagnostics, Sales Management That Works will help sales managers build a great sales team, create an optimal strategy, and steer clear of hype and fads. Salespeople will be better equipped to respond to changes, executives will be able to track and accelerate ROI, and readers will understand why improving selling is a social as well as an economic responsibility of business.

Genres: Business, Leadership

352 pages, Hardcover

Published February 23, 2021

About the author

Frank Cespedes teaches at Harvard Business School. He has written for numerous publications, and is the author of six books including Aligning Strategy and Sales (Harvard Business Review Press) which was cited as “the best sales book of the year” (Strategy & Business), “a must read” (Gartner), and “perhaps the best sales book ever” (Forbes). His newest book is Sales Management That Works: How to Sell in a World That Never Stops Changing (Harvard Business Press, 2021).

Reviews

[Greg · Rating 5 out of 5]

For the past several years alone, there have been several remarkable changes in the world of business. The digital revolution brought about by artificial intelligence, cloud computing, blockchain technology and many more practically reinvent the business models of many organizations.

Due to this, we’ve seen some ways on how companies adapt particularly in its selling function. However, there are some who still rooted to the old selling paradigm.

This book provides practical and comprehensive advice on how to establish sales management function that truly reflects the current dynamic of the business world. It has full of insights, examples, and illustrations that will help sales managers and executives understand the current challenges and effectively deal with them.

This book will be a great contribution to the business literature of this time.

[Tim Hughes · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Sales Management that works – how to sell in a world that never stops changing” is a book by the Harvard Business School lecturer, Frank V. Cespedes. In it he takes a modern look at sales and sales leadership covering the subject areas; People, Process, Pricing, Partners and Productivity.

Most sales books take a “it is so, because I say so” approach to the way they are written and you end up reading an opinion and not fact. Frank takes a different approach which is, here is the research, this is the conclusion, based on data and here is a real-life case study to back this up.

Great advice around, recruiting sales people, training sales people, sales models, compensation and incentives, pricing and building a channel / partner model.

Highly recommended.

[Darya · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is easy to read and very comprehensive on the promise of creating sales structure that delivers results. It drives you from the moment of hiring to the point of creating an efficient multi channel sales department. Plenty of examples and ideas to start deploying from day one. I'd recommend reading for startups and for big companies who are looking to improve sales structure.

[Charles Krouse · Rating 3 out of 5]

I learned a lot about marketing and sales from this book, but that’s primarily because I was ignorant about these topics. For me, it was a good introduction to sales and marketing and the considerations that need to be made in these areas. At times, I lost track of the acronyms that Frank used; I think that a table inside the front cover with all of the acronyms would have been helpful. There were not many concrete recommendations about how to improve sales; instead, the author provided questions that sales teams should consider, and he also provided some examples of sales and marketing models in other companies. If you are a sales manager or sales person, and you are interested in improving your performance, then I think that this book is a good book for you. For me, the questions and considerations posed in this book were not directly applicable, but they were a good introduction to the world of sales. I enjoy learning about new topics, and “Sales Management that Works” was something new for me.

[Luciano Lisiotti · Rating 2 out of 5]

Personally, a book that didn’t give me any idea. Any true value.

Switching to a manager role, I was looking for a new book in sales for managers. Nothing interesting for me.

I don’t recommend it