Sales Management That Works

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.

Frank V. Cespedes is the MBA Class of 1973 Senior Lecturer of Business Administration at Harvard Business School. He has run a business, served on the boards of corporations as well as startups, and consulted to companies around the world. He is the author of six books, including Aligning Strategy and Sales, which was cited as "the best sales book of the year" by strategy+business. He has also published numerous articles in Harvard Business Review, the Wall Street Journal, MIT Sloan Management Review, California Management Review, and other prominent publications.

You can find Frank Cespedes at frankcespedes.com.