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: Hire and deploy the right talent Pay and incentivize your sales force Improve ROI from your training programs Create a comprehensive sales model Set and test the right prices Build and manage a multichannel approach 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.

You invest considerable time and money in managing your sales force. And if your company’s like many, you’re finding it increasingly difficult to ensure handsome returns on your investment in sales. This concise volume gives you the insights you need—from the preeminent thinkers whose work has defined the field, to the rising stars who will redefine the way we think about business

"The best sales book of the year" — strategy+business magazine That gap between your company’s sales efforts and strategy? It’s real—and a huge vulnerability. Addressing that gap, actionably and with attention to relevant research, is the focus of this book. In Aligning Strategy and Sales, Harvard Business School professor Frank Cespedes equips you to link your go-to-market initiatives with strategic goals. Cespedes offers a road map to articulate strategy in ways that people in the field can understand and that will fuel the behaviors required for profitable growth. Without that alignment, leaders will press for better execution when they need a better strategy, or change strategic direction with great cost and turmoil when they should focus on the basics of sales execution. With thoughtful, clear, and engaging examples, Aligning Strategy and Sales provides a framework for diagnosing and managing the core levers available for effective selling in any organization. It will give you the know-how and tools to move from ideas to action and build a sales effort linked to your firm’s unique goals, not a generic selling formula. Cespedes shows how sales efforts affect all elements of value creation in a business, whether you’re a start-up seeking to scale or an established firm looking to jump-start new growth. The book provides key insights to optimize your firm’s customer management activities and so improve selling and strategy.

NEW from the bestselling HBR’s 10 Must Reads series. Stop pushing products—and start cultivating relationships with the right customers. If you read nothing else on marketing that delivers competitive advantage, read these 10 articles. We’ve combed through hundreds of articles in the Harvard Business Review archive and selected the most important ones to help you reinvent your marketing by putting it—and your customers—at the center of your business. Leading experts such as Ted Levitt and Clayton Christensen provide the insights and advice you need to: • Figure out what business you’re really in • Create products that perform the jobs people need to get done • Get a bird’s-eye view of your brand’s strengths and weaknesses • Tap a market that’s larger than China and India combined • Deliver superior value to your B2B customers • End the war between sales and marketing Looking for more Must Read articles from Harvard Business Review? Check out these titles in the popular series: HBR’s 10 Must Reads: The Essentials HBR’s 10 Must Reads on Communication HBR’s 10 Must Reads on Collaboration HBR’s 10 Must Reads on Innovation HBR’s 10 Must Reads on Leadership HBR’s 10 Must Reads on Making Smart Decisions HBR’s 10 Must Reads on Managing Yourself HBR’s 10 Must Reads on Teams

Sales isn't about pushing products or being efficient; it's about building the right systems to manage and empower your salespeople. If you read nothing else on sales, read these 10 articles. We've combed through hundreds of Harvard Business Review articles and selected the most important ones to help you understand how to create the conditions for sales success. This book will inspire you to: Understand your customer's buying center Integrate your sales and marketing operations Assess your business cycle and its impact on your sales force Transition away from solution sales Leverage the power of micromarkets Introduce tiebreaker selling and consensus selling Motivate your sales force properly This collection of articles includes "Major Sales: Who Really Does the Buying," by Thomas V. Bonoma; "Ending the War Between Sales and Marketing," by Philip Kotler, Neil Rackham, and Suj Krishnaswamy; "Match Your Sales Force Structure to Your Business Life Cycle," by Andris A. Zoltners, Prabhakant Sinha, and Sally E. Lorimer; "The End of Solution Sales," by Brent Adamson, Matthew Dixon, and Nicholas Toman; "Selling into Micromarkets," by Manish Goyal, Maryanne Q. Hancock, and Homayoun Hatami; "Dismantling the Sales Machine," by Brent Adamson, Matthew Dixon, and Nicholas Toman; "Tiebreaker Selling," by James C. Anderson, James A. Narus, and Marc Wouters; "Making the Consensus Sale," by Karl Schmidt, Brent Adamson, and Anna Bird; "The Right Way to Use Compensation," by Mark Roberge; "How to Really Motivate Salespeople," by Doug J. Chung; and "Getting Beyond 'Show Me the Money, '" an interview with Andris Zoltners by Daniel McGinn.

Most company's change initiatives fail. Yours don't have to. If you read nothing else on change management, read these 10 articles (featuring “Leading Change,” by John P. Kotter). We've combed through hundreds of Harvard Business Review articles and selected the most important ones to help you spearhead change in your organization. HBR's 10 Must Reads on Change Management will inspire you to: Lead change through eight critical stages Establish a sense of urgency Overcome addiction to the status quo Mobilize commitment Silence naysayers Minimize the pain of change Concentrate resources Motivate change when business is good This collection of best-selling articles includes: featured article "Leading Change: Why Transformation Efforts Fail" by John P. Kotter, "Change Through Persuasion," "Leading Change When Business Is Good: An Interview with Samuel J. Palmisano," "Radical Change, the Quiet Way," "Tipping Point Leadership," "A Survival Guide for Leaders," "The Real Reason People Won't Change," "Cracking the Code of Change," "The Hard Side of Change Management," and "Why Change Programs Don't Produce Change."

Stop pushing products. Start empowering your salespeople cultivating relationships with the right customers. In today's economy, companies are fighting tooth and nail for their customers' attention. Hyper-informed buyers with more options are making purchasing decisions faster than ever. How can you optimize your marketing operations and sales teams and so your offerings can get through and rise to the top? HBR's 10 Must Reads for Sales and Marketing Collection offers the ideas and strategies to help you get there. Included in this set are HBR's 10 Must Reads on Sales, HBR's 10 Must Reads on Strategic Marketing, HBR's 10 Must Reads on Communication, HBR's 10 Must Reads on Negotiation, and HBR's 10 Must Reads on Public Speaking and Presenting. This compilation offers insights from world-class experts on the topics including enhancing the joint performance of sales and marketing; motivating your sales force; getting a clear view of your brand's strengths and weaknesses; setting the stage for a successful negotiation; and communicating with clarity and impact. It includes fifty articles selected by HBR's editors from renowned thought leaders such as Andris Zoltners, Theodore Levitt, and Deborah Tannen, and features the indispensable article "How to Give a Killer Presentation" by Chris Anderson. It's time to establish, sustain, and extend your next groundbreaking sales and marketing initiative. HBR's 10 Must Reads for Sales and Marketing Collection will lead you there. HBR's 10 Must Reads paperback series is the definitive collection of books for new and experienced leaders alike. Leaders looking for the inspiration that big ideas provide, both to accelerate their own growth and that of their companies, should look no further. HBR's 10 Must Reads series focuses on the core topics that every ambitious manager needs to know: leadership, strategy, change, managing people, and managing yourself. Harvard Business Review has sorted through hundreds of articles and selected only the most essential reading on each topic. Each title includes timeless advice that will be relevant regardless of an ever‐changing business environment.

This book helps managers recognize hidden gems in the workplace and learn how to utilize them for their greatest impact. Think you can spot the leaders in your company? Don’t assume that you can identify them by their positions. What about those employees who consistently step up: the field agent who solves a previously intractable problem; the service rep who thinks outside the box and creates unshakeable customer loyalty. These are more than “good employees”, these are “hidden leaders” and they are critical to an organization’s long-term success. Managers today need to make the most of all their resources—and The Hidden Leader shows them how to identify and cultivate these talented but under utilized employees, who: Demonstrate integrity Lead through authentic relationships Focus on results Work from clear customer purpose Fulfill the value promise of the company Don’t settle for the traditional feedback that tells you these are “good employees” who deserve a pat on the back and a 3 percent increase at the end of the year. These hidden leaders will soon be pulled out by another organization giving them the opportunity they deserve. Supported by real-world examples of hidden leaders in action--and QR codes readers can scan for instant access to online assessments--The Hidden Leader helps managers discover these secret saviors and enable them to deliver even greater value to customers.

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.

The one primer you need to develop your managerial and leadership skills. Whether you’re a new manager or looking to have more influence in your current management role, the challenges you face come in all shapes and sizes—a direct report’s anxious questions, your boss’s last-minute assignment of an important presentation, or a blank business case staring you in the face. To reach your full potential in these situations, you need to master a new set of business and personal skills. Packed with step-by-step advice and wisdom from Harvard Business Review’s management archive, the HBR Manager’s Handbook provides best practices on topics from understanding key financial statements and the fundamentals of strategy to emotional intelligence and building your employees’ trust. The book’s brief sections allow you to home in quickly on the solutions you need right away—or take a deeper dive if you need more context. Keep this comprehensive guide with you throughout your career and be a more impactful leader in your organization. In the HBR Manager’s Handbook you’ll find: - Step-by-step guidance through common managerial tasks - Short sections and chapters that you can turn to quickly as a need arises - Self-assessments throughout - Exercises and templates to help you practice and apply the concepts in the book - Concise explanations of the latest research and thinking on important management skills from Harvard Business Review experts such as Dan Goleman, Clayton Christensen, John Kotter, and Michael Porter - Real-life stories from working managers - Recaps and action items at the end of each chapter that allow you to reinforce or review the ideas quickly The skills covered in the book include: - Transitioning into a leadership role - Building trust and credibility - Developing emotional intelligence - Becoming a person of influence - Developing yourself as a leader - Giving effective feedback - Leading teams - Fostering creativity - Mastering the basics of strategy - Learning to use financial tools - Developing a business case