The Perfect Salesforce Lib/E: The 6 Best Practices of the World's Best Sales Teams

by Derek Gatehouse

How any company can build an incredibly effective salesforce by learning from the best in the world  

Despite billions spent every year on personality profiling, sales training, motivational experts, coaches, and incentives, there’s never been a proven formula for building a salesforce of top performers. Finding such a “holy grail” of sales has been Derek Gatehouse’s obsession for decades. 

To identify what makes a top-producing salesperson—the kind who sells four times more than everyone else—and why some sales teams have a high percentage of top producers, he interviewed more than two thousand executives in many different industries. His findings challenge the conventional wisdom about hiring, training, managing, and rewarding a sales team. 

Gatehouse has tested virtually every personality assessment tool, sales process, training methodology, and management system available, only to conclude that the vast majority of those systems don’t raise performance in a lasting way. Instead, the world’s greatest sales teams share six simple but critical practices. For instance, they
The book features dozens of anecdotes and clear lessons for any company seeking dramatic improvement in its sales performance.

Genres: Business, Management

Audio CD

First published November 8, 2007

Reviews

[MaKensie Tully · Rating 4 out of 5]

I like how he focuses on the true psychology behind these best practices. The sensitivity to change management hit home. A strong handed leader is of the past, employees want to feel heard and appreciated. Sales isn’t just numbers, it’s qualitative factors and data that needs to be reassessed. Very much enjoyed this approach. I build the databases and automation behind these practices for marketing and sales teams so I wanted to learn more about the world I’m supporting. Wasn’t too useful for that aspect but it’s the PERFECT book for those starting from scratch or newer companies trying to acquire talent and figure things out from pay plans, team structure and more

[Thomas Lehto · Rating 4 out of 5]

A book to all the sales managers out there

[Donn Lee · Rating 5 out of 5]

I work in the sales operations / sales effectiveness world, with most of what I knew about sales having come on the job. What this book did was to open my mind to the many "whys" of the things we do, and how we could do them better (quotas, pay plans, hiring practices, management, etc.). It's certainly opened my eyes to many possibilities my company has left unexplored, and provided lots of practical advice (always good if you're in a position to influence).

What I especially found refreshing was the emphasis on "natural born talent", that everyone has an inclination for a certain sales type (e.g. there are prospectors, closets, advisers and more), and that a great salesperson can become a poor one because of a bad job-talent fit.

This reinforces exactly what I am reading in Steven Pinker's The Blank Slate, talking about the nature vs. nurture debate (spoiler: he leans toward nature). Before these two books I'd have been 75% confident that nature plays a small role; I have revised that estimate to 30% now. Nurture could well have been overrated in my mind due to the host of raa-raa self improvement books I used to devour.

[Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

A must-read for anyone involved in bringing revenue into an organization, and an excellent book for people involved in hiring as well. Smart and well argued, this is a book that rises above the mass of over-hyped business books.

[Flavil Hampsten · Rating 5 out of 5]

My favor sales management book. Learn how to hire, motivate and retain top employees.