Topgrading for Sales: World-class Methods to Interview, Hire, and Coach Top Sales Representatives

A concise extension of the business classic Topgrading, targeted to sales managers

Brad Smart?s Topgrading has sold more than 150,000 copies since 1999, making it the definitive book for executives who want to hire, coach, and retain top talent. Now Smart has teamed up with Greg Alexander, who used Topgrading to radically improve his sales force at EMC.

In Topgrading for Sales, they have boiled down the key Topgrading ideas to a pithy 112 pages while focusing on the unique needs of sales managers and sales directors.

Great sales forces don?t just depend on strategies? they depend on hiring the best possible reps. But surveys show that about half of all hires and promotions put an underqualified person in the wrong job. No wonder the average tenure for sales managers is only nineteen months.

Topgrading for Sales takes the guesswork out of hiring by teaching readers how to interview systematically for A-level talent instead of relying on hunches and prejudices. It also shows how to coach B-level reps to turn them into A-players and how to weed out C-players before they do too much damage.

Bradford D. Smart, Ph.D., is the president of Smart & Associates, Inc., based in the Chicago area. A well-known industrial psychologist and consultant with nearly thirty-five years in practice, he has worked with dozens of major companies, including General Electric, Bank of America, and John Deere.