Building a Winning Sales Force: Powerful Strategies for Driving High Performance

Publisher Marketing: A high-performance sales force is one of the most critical components of any successful organization. But it is also a complex organism that is difficult to understand-and therefore extremely challenging to develop and lead. Building a Winning Sales Force is the most comprehensive and practical book ever written on the subject of designing, building, and driving a superior sales team. The book combines the wisdom and advice of three renowned sales experts whose experience ranges from the university classroom to the boardrooms of more than 400 sales organizations around the world. With this book as your guide, you will learn the changes to implement now that will immediately enhance the performance of all your sales professionals while also building new customer relationships, and, of course, driving your top and bottom line results-all without disrupting your current sales progress. Specifically, you'll learn how to: Develop sales strategies that build competitive advantage by demonstrating real value to customers * Structure your sales force to better exploit market opportunities * Use top-notch recruiting strategies that attract the best of the best * Arm your sales force with the best information and tools available * Design sales compensation programs that motivate for maximum effort * Set high but fair and consistent goals that every member of your sales force will want to exceed every period * Integrate sales and marketing strategies to create the ultimate customer-facing organization * Eradicate the "silent killer" of sales force effectiveness-complacency * And more. Practically every company can dramatically improve sales revenues by implementing the right effectiveness initiatives," the authors demonstrate, using numerous examples from their own client relationships-and they reveal how to achieve such elusive goals as more revenue, increased productivity, improved customer perception, and sales force retention. Contributor Bio:  Sinha, Prabhakant Andris A. Zoltners is a professor emeritus of marketing at Northwestern University s Kellogg School of Management and a cofounder of ZS Associates. He has personally consulted for more than 200 companies in over 20 countries. He has spoken at numerous conferences and has taught sales force topics to thousands of Executive, MBA and PhD students. He is co-author of numerous academic articles and a series of books on sales force management. He received his PhD from Carnegie-Mellon University. Prabhakant Sinha is a co-founder of ZS Associates and a former Kellogg faculty member, who continues to teach sales executives at the Indian School of Business and the Gordon Institute of Business Science in South Africa. He has helped over 200 firms improve sales force strategy and effectiveness. He is co-author of many academic articles and a series of books on sales force management. He received his PhD from the University of Massachusetts and graduated from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur. Sally E. Lorimer is a business writer. She is a co-author of numerous academic articles and books on sales force management. As a former principal at ZS Associates, she has helped clients in a range of industries implement strategies for improving sales effectiveness and performance. She has an MBA from Northwestern University s Kellogg School of Management and is also a graduate of the University of Michigan.