Additional information
by Chris Lytle (Author)
Key skills to make sales managers better developers of salespeople
Get out of the firefighting business and into the business of developing the people who develop your profits. Successful salespeople rightfully become sales managers because of superior sales records. Yet too often these sales stars get stuck doing their old sales job while also trying to juggle their manager role, and too often companies neglect to train their sales managers how to excel as managers. That's the "sales management trap," and it's exactly what The Accidental Sales Manager addresses and solves.
Full of helpful steps you can apply immediately?whether you're training a sales manager, or are one yourself?this practical guide reveals step-by-step methods sales managers can use to both learn their jobs and lead their teams.
- Get tactics to stop burning time and exhausting yourself, while taking effective actions to use time better as a leader
- Discover how to integrate learning into leading and make sales meetings an active conversation on what works and what doesn't
- Author has a previous bestseller, The Accidental Salesperson
Don't get caught in the "sales management trap" or, if you're in it, get the tools you need to escape it. Get The Accidental Sales Manager and lead your team to do what you do best: make sales, drive profits, and get winning results.
Front Jacket
You outsold your colleagues and put your company ahead of the competition, so you've just been rewarded with a big promotion to sales manager. Congratulations! Now for the rub: You've gone from being an expert salesperson to an incompetent manager--and on top of that, you may be stuck doing your old sales job while you transition to your role as sales manager. Your team (you outsold them all, remember?) can't put out their own fires, and you're the last one to leave every night. Your superiors grunted something about management classes at the local college, which don't start until next semester. In other words, you're a rookie again, and you're on your own, kid.
The Accidental Sales Manager explains the "sales management trap," where you spend your days exhausting yourself with middling tasks, losing out on sales, and suffering under a team of people who lack accountability and leadership. Drawing from the experiences of scores of sales managers, this book delivers immediately applicable ideas for coaching and developing a team of accomplished salespeople who manage themselves. Understand how to communicate up and down the chain of command, so that you know what's expected of you and your subordinates become better salespeople who raise company profits. You'll learn:
- The seven roadblocks that keep B players from becoming A players
- How to find out what is actually happening with your employees, and then manage the gap to lead salespeople from lagging sales to hitting their targets
- How to recruit the best people by asking the right questions and hiring for traits rather than skill sets
- How to lead for commitment instead of managing for compliance
- How to conduct sales meetings that elicit desire changes in behavior and measurable gains in revenue
Once you escape the sales management trap, you'll find the same level of achievement as a manager that you enjoyed as a salesperson. You drove yourself to success--now lead your sales team to record profits.
Back Jacket
"Chris Lytle has vast sales experience and insight that can help any sales manager rise to the challenge and succeed. Read The Accidental Sales Manager if you want actionable ideas that will make you a better leader and help your salespeople sell more." --Mark Sanborn, author of The Fred Factor and You Don't Need a Title to Be a Leader
"A must-read for new and seasoned sales managers and CEOs." --Robert S. Tramburg, CEO of VP Holdings Corporation
"Chris Lytle is the quintessential manager's manager. His insights and understanding are enduring. This is a book of best practices, not to be shelved after reading once, but to be referenced over and over." --Joe Koff, Director of Sales Training and Development, Sinclair Broadcast Group
"The Accidental Sales Manager is a thoughtful and practical tutorial on becoming a high-performance sales leader. It will help all sales managers reflect upon and refine their leadership style and philosophy." --Philip Marineau, retired President and CEO, Levi Strauss & Co.
"Accidental sales managers are an endangered species. This book is their survival guide!" --Jill Konrath, author of SNAP Selling and Selling to Big Companies
"Chris Lytle acknowledges the challenges that take the fun out of your promotion and navigates you through your new sales manager terrain with straightforward advice and a clear picture of what your priorities should be." --Rebecca Dopart, Director of Membership and Corporate Support, Wisconsin Public Radio
"As a struggling entrepreneur, I read The Accidental Salesperson and was inspired to tackle the world. I gave your book to every salesperson I hired, and we were wildly successful. I wish I had The Accidental Sales Manager back then. I could have REALLY blown the roof off the place. This book is awesome!" --Marge Johnsson, former CEO, The Johnsson Group
"Chris Lytle's book will show you the right moves to make now in your sales management career. The working sales managers he has interviewed offer voices of experience and give valuable advice that you will grasp at once. Actionable ideas on every page." --Dr. Denis Waitley, author of The Psychology of Winning
"The Accidental Sales Manager provides both solid insights combined with 'real world' ideas for helping today's sales manager connect better with their sales teams." --John Davis, President, High Gear Training Systems
Author Biography
CHRIS LYTLE is the President/Product Developer at Sparque, Inc. He has conducted more than 2,100 live seminars worldwide. Now he delivers his sales advice in easily digestible knowledge bites on his website, Fuel. His automatic sales improvement process revolutionizes the way sales managers develop the people who grow their profits. He is the author of The Accidental Salesperson. Learn more at sparquefuel.com
