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, Andy Zoltners and Prabha Sinha have helped sales leaders around the world perfect their sales strategy, operations, and execution. Combining strategic insight with pragmatic advice, Building a Winning Sales Force provides current and aspiring sales leaders with innovative yet practical solutions to many of the most common issues faced by today’s sales organi­za­tions. The book shows readers how to: assess how good their sales force really is • identify sales force improvement opportunities • implement tools and processes that have immediate impact on sales effec­tive­ness • attract and retain the best salespeople • design incen­tive compensation plans • set goals • manage sales perform­ance • motivate the sales force With practical advice and case studies of companies that have conquered even the most challenging obstacles, Building a Winning Sales Force will enable every company to drive sales and stay competitive.

To boost your sales group's performance, give your salespeople very specific assessments and instructions, as per authors Andris A. Zoltners, Prabhakant Sinha and Greggor A. Zoltners. The trouble here is that the instructions are not only detailed, they are highly technical. You have to see sales as a science to make the best use of the graphs, charts, lists, diagrams and formulas. If you can make your way through the academic writing, you'll find some useful hard data, such as statistical evidence that backs the need for precise sales performance assessments. Despite its lengthy retelling of some very basic sales principles, getAbstract.com recommends this manual to the audience its authors suggest, "sales managers, top managers, salespeople who want to advance professionally, divisional presidents and business owners" plus business school students. If you're going to be academic, you might as well learn something.

Written by over 20 thought leaders from ZS Associates, Inc., The Power of Sales Analytics shares strategic insights, pragmatic advice, and illustrative case studies and approaches for using analytics to support sales force decisions and drive results. The authors describe how leading companies have successfully used analytics to improve key sales force effectiveness drivers such as customer targeting, sales process design, sales force size and structure, territory design, talent management, incentive compensation, goal setting, and performance management. The book also has a blueprint for implementing critical analytic capabilities cost-effectively by assembling the right combination of internal and external resources. The Power of Sales Analytics is edited by the founders of ZS Associates, Andris A. Zoltners and Prabhakant Sinha, who have personally consulted with more than 200 companies in over 20 countries, and business writer Sally E. Lorimer. As experts in the field of sales analytics, the editors have helped the sales leaders of Fortune 500 companies, as well as smaller entrepreneurial businesses, tap into the power of analytics to enable smarter sales strategies, support more efficient operations, facilitate more effective execution, and ultimately drive results. They are also coauthors of numerous academic articles and books on sales force management, including Building a Winning Sales Force, Accelerating Sales Force Performance, Sales Force Design for Strategic Advantage, The Complete Guide to Sales Force Incentive Compensation, and Building a Winning Sales Management Team. In addition to cofounding ZS Associates, Zoltners is a professor emeritus of marketing at Northwestern University s Kellogg School of Management, and Sinha is a former Kellogg faculty member. Both continue to teach sales executives Zoltners at Kellogg and Sinha at the Indian School of Business and the Gordon Institute of Business Science in South Africa. ZS Associates is a global leader in sales and marketing consulting, outsourcing, technology, and software. For more than 30 years, ZS has helped companies across a range of industries deliver greater impact through their sales and marketing investments and operations.

Sales leadership essentials for an era of rapidly advancing digital technology. Managing an effective sales organization is key to revenue generation, customer satisfaction, and business results. But whether you're a sales manager or leading a large sales force, it's increasingly challenging to balance success today with driving the digital sales transformation that will position your team for the future. With actionable insights and examples from many industries worldwide, the HBR Sales Management Handbook provides the resources you need to build value for your company, your customers, and your sales teams. The book covers the fundamentals every sales manager needs to know and explores today's most challenging issues around digital: bringing value to informed and self-sufficient customers while managing the business; hiring, developing, and retaining the best talent; managing sales in the remote, multichannel world; using AI and analytics to support critical decisions; navigating change with continuous improvement; and building the next generation of sales information hubs. Your job as a sales leader is vast and dynamic. This handbook is a collection of proven and forward-looking ideas to help you, your salespeople, and your customers win. HBR Handbooks provide ambitious professionals with the frameworks, advice, and tools they need to excel in their careers. With step-by-step guidance, time-honed best practices, and real-life stories, each comprehensive volume helps you to stand out from the pack—whatever your role.

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. 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. 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 or demoralizing salespeople by having difficult goals 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. Filled 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.

The future of AI is here. The world is stunned and transfixed by the marvel (and possible menace) of ChatGPT and other generative AI tools. It's clear that they will transform the business landscape--exactly when and how much remain to be seen. Meanwhile, your smartest competitors are already navigating the risks and reaping the rewards of this new technology. They're trying out new business models around generating text and code at astonishing speed. They're automating customer interactions in ways that were never before possible. And they're augmenting human creativity to innovate in new ways. How can you take advantage of generative AI and avoid having your business disrupted? Generative AI: The Insights You Need from Harvard Business Review will help you understand the potential of this new technology, pick the right generative AI projects, and reinvent your business for the new age of AI. Business is changing. Will you adapt or be left behind? Get up to speed and deepen your understanding of the topics that are shaping your company's future with the Insights You Need from Harvard Business Review series. Featuring HBR's smartest thinking on fast-moving issues--blockchain, cybersecurity, AI, and more--each book provides the foundational introduction and practical case studies your organization needs to compete today and collects the best research, interviews, and analysis to get it ready for tomorrow. You can't afford to ignore how these issues will transform the landscape of business and society. The Insights You Need series will help you grasp these critical ideas--and prepare you and your company for the future.

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.

The future of AI is here. The world is stunned and transfixed by the marvel (and possible menace) of ChatGPT and other generative AI tools. It's clear that they will transform the business landscape--exactly when and how much remain to be seen. Meanwhile, your smartest competitors are already navigating the risks and reaping the rewards of this new technology. They're trying out new business models around generating text and code at astonishing speed. They're automating customer interactions in ways that were never before possible. And they're augmenting human creativity to innovate in new ways. How can you take advantage of generative AI and avoid having your business disrupted? Generative AI: The Insights You Need from Harvard Business Review will help you understand the potential of this new technology, pick the right generative AI projects, and reinvent your business for the new age of AI. Business is changing. Will you adapt or be left behind? Get up to speed and deepen your understanding of the topics that are shaping your company's future with the Insights You Need from Harvard Business Review series. Featuring HBR's smartest thinking on fast-moving issues--blockchain, cybersecurity, AI, and more--each book provides the foundational introduction and practical case studies your organization needs to compete today and collects the best research, interviews, and analysis to get it ready for tomorrow. You can't afford to ignore how these issues will transform the landscape of business and society. The Insights You Need series will help you grasp these critical ideas--and prepare you and your company for the future.