First-line sales managers (FLMs) play a key role in helping a sales organization drive profitable revenue growth in an ever-changing business environment. But although directly responsible for managing and driving sales force performance, FLMs often don t get enough time, attention, and resources from sales leaders. Building a Winning Sales Management Team shows just how important FLMs are to sales organizations and what happens when companies underinvest in these key players.

Authors of four previous books on sales management, Zoltners, Sinha and Lorimer show in Building a Winning Sales Management Team just how companies can nurture successful FLMs and improve sales force productivity. The book has dozens of real-life examples of how investing in first-line management paid off in a big way. In developing the book, the authors collaborated with leaders from some of the world s top companies. The authors also draw on their cumulative experience as sales and marketing consultants, faculty members at Northwestern University s Kellogg School of Management, and business speakers and writers to produce fresh, completely original insights on sales force effectiveness.

Building a Winning Sales Management Team shows in detail exactly how companies can improve FLM performance. The authors reveal eight key drivers for defining, creating and enabling a successful first-line sales management team, and show how FLMs are critical facilitators of change. The book also includes a self-assessment tool to help organizations determine the right priorities to start improving sales management team performance.

This helpful guide develops an effective, innovative framework for evaluating and improving the performance of any sales force. Every firm's sales force combines the distinctive personalities of its members with the complex issues of size, pay structure, incentives, performance evaluation, and effective uses of new technology. While underrepresented in most marketing texts, the success of the sales force is a major component in the overall success of most companies. The Complete Guide to Accelerating Sales Force Performance develops an effective, innovative framework for evaluating and improving the performance of any sales force. This book identifies and describes the key factors for creating a fast-track, go-to-market strategy. It's loaded with proven ideas for improving such "success drivers" as: culture sales force structure hiring sales manager selection training compensation technology sales territory design goal setting performance management Packed with valuable insights and real-life examples, The Complete Guide to Accelerating Sales Force Performance is an excellent source of practical ideas for sales and marketing managers in all industries.

Sales experts Andy Zoltners, Prabhakant Sinha, and Sally Lorimer provides you with innovative yet practical tips for success by offering solutions to many of the most common issues faced by today's sales organizations. Sales force effectiveness drives every company's success, but keeping a sales organization at the top of its game is a constant challenge. As experts in the field, the authors have helped sales leaders around the world perfect their sales strategy, operations, and execution. Drawing on their strategic insight and pragmatic advice, Building a Winning Sales Force shows you how to: assess how good their sales force really is; identify sales force improvement opportunities; implement tools and processes that have an immediate impact on sales effectiveness; attract and retain the best salespeople; design incentive compensation plans; set goals; manage sales performance; and motivate the sales force. Filled with practical advice and case studies of companies that have conquered even the most challenging obstacles, Building a Winning Sales Force will enable your team to drive sales and help your company stay competitive.

Designing an incentive plan to turn sales reps into sales superstars! If you're like most sales leaders, your incentive program is a constant challenge, as you try to jumpstart sales, energize a geographically dispersed and autonomous workforce, and motivate salespeople to achieve ambitious revenue goals. And sometimes it seems like you just don't know what works; your products and markets are changing, the incentive program that was so successful last year no longer produces the desired results, or perhaps the generous incentive program you created has yielded a corps of highly paid salespeople who spend most of their time on existing clients and minimal time generating new business -- and threaten to walk away with your customer base if you scale back paychecks! Incentive programs are seductively powerful but complicated instruments. Without careful planning and implementation, they can be too stingy to motivate, too complex to understand, too quick to reward mediocre results, and too difficult to implement. But a well-designed and implemented incentive program is an essential tool for building a motivated, highly effective sales force that delivers the results you need. The Complete Guide to Sales Force Incentive Compensation is a practical, accessible, detailed roadmap to building a compensation system that gets it right by creating motivating incentives that produce positive outcomes. Packed with hundreds of real-life examples of what works and what doesn't, this important guide helps you: Understand the value of building an incentive plan that is aligned with your company's goals and culture. Avoid the common trap of overusing incentives to solve too many sales management problems. Measure the effectiveness of your current incentive program, employing easy-to-use tools and metrics for pinpointing its weak spots. Design a compensation plan that attracts and retains successful salespeople, including guidelines for determining the correct pay level, the best salary incentive mix, the proper performance measures, and the right performance payout relationship. Select an incentive compensation plan that works for your organization -- then test the plan before it is launched. Set territory-level goals that are fair and realistic, and avoid overpaying the sales force because goals are too easy, or demoralizing salespeople by having goals that are too difficult or not fairly assigned. Create and manage sales contests, SPIFFs (Special Performance Incentive for Field Force), and recognition programs that consistently deliver the intended results. Manage a successful transition to a new compensation plan and build efficient administration systems to support your plan. Every year, corporations spend $200 billion compensating their sales forces, with extremely mixed results. Make sure every dollar you spend is helping to achieve your goal of creating an empowered, effective sales force that drives your company's success. Packed with ready-to-use formulas and assessment tools and a wealth of insights from frontline sales managers and executives, The Complete Guide to Sales Force Incentive Compensation is your hands-on, easy-to-read playbook for crucially important decisions.