If you’ve ever been a sales manager, or if you work for a sales manager, or if a sales manager reports to you, or if you’re the manager of operations or finance or marketing or customer service or R&D or human resources at a company that has a sales manager, please buy this book, read it right away, and start handing out copies to everyone in your company who ever expresses an opinion about the performance of the sales team.
It’s directed to the sales manager, but that guy or gal lives inside a culture with a lot of other culprits as well, so pass it around.
I’m not usually a fan of books that spend a lot of time documenting the problem. Too often they’re collections of cheap shots by someone who just wants to show off. But this is a rich collection of stories about how poor sales management causes trouble for your company, organized into 16 sales management flaws and the specific kinds of trouble that they cause.
Honestly, if you only read Part One, “Blunt Truth from the Front Lines,” and swear out loud “I’ll never do THAT again!” after each chapter, you’d make great progress. But to be safe, I recommend you go ahead with Part Two, which is all the practical help.
Mike has a great voice—rich experience and insight delivered with the punch of a stand-up comic. You can’t make this up. And he didn’t. It’s all real, all the way through.
For all of you Whale Hunters out there, this is an absolute MUST READ.
