Extracted from Introduction and Foreword:
“There’s only a handful of strategic books to help sales managers cope with the complexity of today’s sales challenges. This is one of them.”
“You’ll find your eye skimming over facts and figures; you’ll see charts and diagrams; you’ll find strategic models. That’s the kind of book we need. Thank you, Beth Rogers, for writing it.”
Neil Rackham
From his foreword to “Rethinking sales management”.
It is hard to imagine anything more fundamental to the economy than selling. It is about time that salespeople and sales managers had equal esteem with other professionals. Despite many years of marketers trying to sideline the sales function as operational, tactical and in decline, in fact the sales profession is thriving in terms of quantity and quality. Nevertheless, sales has been the Cinderella of the management world for a long time. Yet what could be a more worthy topic of discussion than the way in which a company makes its revenue?
Many businesspeople say to me that the strategic management of supplier/customer relationships is “the next big thing” that companies needs to address. In studies going back many years, chief executives have recognized that the sales managers’ responsibility for handling the customer interface can be the most important thing in generating company success. With inspired leadership and the right application of skills and systems, strategic relationship development can deliver competitive advantage. Companies are starting to realize that they cannot manage customers or even key accounts because the power of customers gives them the means to “manage” back. So where do they go?
They go back to the drawing board and take a good hard look at ”the art of the possible”. Supplier strategy cannot drive customers, but there are pathways for mutual gain. The greatest advocates for strategic sales management companies who are designing those pathways are their customers. Whether they long for low-touch, remote and transactional relationships with particular suppliers for particular goods and services, or whether they want joint venture with others, customers appreciate the suppliers who understand their needs and develop the capabilities to meet them.
This book is a summary of “state-of-the-art” strategic sales management thinking, designed for practitioners who recognize that a bit of knowing can accelerate the success of a lot of doing. It is based on extensive consultation with sales management professionals, employers, sales management experts and professional institutions. It is short and succinct because sales managers are busy people with limited time to read. But sales managers travel a lot too, so consider this knowledge a travelling companion you can dip into when your plane is delayed or the freeway is gridlocked.
Beth Rogers
Author
- Publisher’s comments
This book is a new and innovative addition to our sales collection. As with any innovation, we thought hard about taking it on, and subjected it to rigorous independent review. We decided that it was an exciting opportunity. Few authors in the world have the breadth of experience of the sales management function as Beth Rogers, who has been immersed in it as a practitioner, a consultant, a trainer, teacher, researcher and writer; and held high office in both a professional institution for sales and a public governing body for sales. Not only is she respected in the sales profession, but purchasing professionals also consult her. Her approach is unique. The content is informative, interesting, thought-provoking and useful. It is enhanced with examples from the research of many of the world’s experts on sales, best practice companies and organizations from around the world.
- Author comments
You can miss out on a lot when you write a book in your spare time. You miss out on social events, football matches and TV. The house and garden become untidy. And it takes a long time. I took a very long time to work out what I could do that would be different from the other worthy books on sales management. I am very grateful to the reviewers and colleagues who facilitated that process.
What do I think is different about it? I unashamedly focus on sales management as a STRATEGIC FUNCTION, in defiance of the received wisdom of some marketing academics who assert that it is operational. I’ve done marketing too, and without sales involvement in strategy formulation, it won’t go very far. I also take on the topics that many sales books avoid – dealing with customers who don’t have the same view of the business relationship as you do, ending business relationships, and tackling ethics, leadership, processes and working with marketing. Risky perhaps, but now that it is done I look forward to feedback from readers….and the odd night out, of course.
