Cracking the Sales Management Code: The Secrets to Measuring and Managing Sales Performance

by Jason Jordan, Michelle Vazzana

Cracking the Sales Management Code is a groundbreaking book for sales managers and executives who want greater control over sales performance. Based on new research into how world-class sales forces measure and manage their sellers, it provides a best practice approach to identify and implement the critical activities and metrics that drive business results. It is not a book on organizational leadership, nor is it a book on interpersonal coaching.  It is a book on how to effectively manage a sales force .

Neil Rackham (bestselling author of SPIN Selling ) states in his foreword, "There's an acute shortage of good books on the specifics of sales management.  Cracking the Sales Management Code is about the practical specifics of sales management in the new era, and it fills a void."

This book is effectively an operating manual for the sales force. It identifies the 5 fundamental sales processes that can be managed to create desired business outcomes, and it helps readers choose which of the processes are needed to achieve their own strategic objectives. It also provides examples of actual tools and frameworks for sales managers to use, and it gives straight-forward advice on how to change sales force behaviors while avoiding common pitfalls. This book will further help sales forces maximize the usefulness of CRM by defining 3 distinct levels of sales metrics - those you can directly manage, those you can influence, and those that you can only hope to change.

Cracking the Sales Management Code is written in an engaging and narrative way that brings to life the extensive research and practical insights contained within its pages. It is a must-read for anyone in sales management or sales operations who wants to clarify the task of sales management and put in place the strategies, processes, tools, and metrics to proactively manage sales performance.

Genres: Business, Management, Leadership, Nonfiction, Entrepreneurship, Buisness, Unfinished

272 pages, Hardcover

First published September 20, 2011

Reviews

[Akshay · Rating 4 out of 5]

I wish someone had given this book to me several years ago. The authors start with thinking about metrics that can be used to bring more rigor to sales and classify the ~300 most commonly used sales metrics into Results Metrics, Objectives Metrics, and Activities Metrics. They posit that managers/management can only affect Activities Metrics but spend the majority of their time on Results metrics. They outline a framework in which managers can create metrics for each part of the sales process and bring more rigor to their sales process and avoid expensive mistakes. There's a lot in it for sales managers and analysts to learn, and I've started doing things differently even as I read the book. Excited to implement more of what it outlines.

[Paul Stout · Rating 3 out of 5]

A typical example of a full-length book that could have been covered in a 15-page paper. The first three chapters were great and provided an excellent system for improving sales management. But then they ran out of interesting or valuable ideas, and it felt like watching paint dry. The Cliff notes on this book (if there are any) would be much better.

[Paul Faguet · Rating 5 out of 5]

Bible of sales management. Concise, practical, holistic - this book lays out a coherent sales operations framework which can be deployed in virtually any sales-driven environment to maximize sales force productivity.

[Pavel Annenkov · Rating 5 out of 5]

Наконец то есть книга, где процесс продаж разложили на составляющие и показали, что продажи - это не искусство, а наука.

[Angela · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book has a good framework for not just sales, but for all kinds of teams. I'm now inspired to interrogate my metrics for my teams

[Limesh Parekh · Rating 5 out of 5]

Undoubtedly, the best book on Sales Management that I have read till now.

I have also conducted lots of training sessions that are based on this book. I strongly recommend this book to all business owners and sales managers.

This book first discusses what is wrong with the conventional wisdom of Sales Management. and then goes ahead and discusses the ways to manage your sales team in a very scientific (rational and reasonable) way.

Since I work as a CEO of a CRM company, we have to give guidance and consultancy to many of our Clients on how to manage their sales team in the best possible way. I have recommended this book to more than 500 people.

[Ruben Miller · Rating 2 out of 5]

Good start with key insights, but it looses traction after a couple of pages.
The rest of the book is rather boring and not providing real value.

Jason does not provide real story examples - just hypothetical stories that looses the impact.
Also only provide high level brush of the sales management code, leaving you with no real tools and tactics to implement.

It seems like they wanted to tell you about their approach to sales management, and need to reach out to them to help you implement..... a bad approach to write a book.

[Jamie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Direction + Effort = Results.

Dont say "Where's the results".. instead ask "What creates the results we are looking for?" and "Are we spending our time in that area?".

Manage that, and you'll get those results.

A great framework to leverage for all management role, not just sales.

Top 3 management books of all time 👏

[Mike Moore · Rating 5 out of 5]

There's something remarkable about finding a management book that's actually about management, rather than leadership, time-management, self-actualization, or just being confident. It makes me realize just how vapid some of the other stuff I've subjected myself to has been.

This is a nuts and bolts book about how to actually manage a sales force using metrics. The focus is on those metrics, building and recognizing relationships between them to enable managers to affect things they can't directly control (like revenue growth) through related activities that are in their direct purview (like call volume and account management).

[Wolfgang · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good start, then a more difficult read

In the first part of the book where it’s about setting the scene I found myself highlighting section after section.
That quality was not maintained when it moved into the ‘now what’ (paraphrased) part. Quite theoretical and hardly any practical examples. The examples given are constructed and don’t use real names.
Still a valuable read, but quite dry after the first part.

[Renato Sitnik · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’ve read a couple books on management sales. Most of them talk about it abstractly. They will teach you concepts but not really how to apply them. This book is practical from beginning to end. Its a complete
MBA in sales management. It will help you with the basics and how to link day to day activities to strategic objetives. How to identify which sales process to use and how to implement them. A must read for sales managers struggling to boos results.

[Ryan · Rating 5 out of 5]

As sales leaders, we should always be questioning our KPIs. It’s not as simple as “are we hitting our metrics” but, “are we telling our teammates to do the right things?”

This book laid out a process to get there and work backwards from desired outcomes. There are actions items I’ll be moving forward on immediately.

[Dave Applegate · Rating 5 out of 5]

Stellar book on not only sales management but how to think of business metrics & results as a whole. Jordan's book made me ask am I measuring this for a reason? If so, what metric pulls the strings to make sure I accomplish the business objective.

[Scott Wozniak · Rating 4 out of 5]

The content of this book was great--specific and insightful, even important for the sale manager role. It was all about metrics. Yeah, not the most exciting, but this is where the actual work of management often takes place.

I got lots of notes from this book, but they took a long time to make each point, walking through every step in their thinking process, and the style was formal business writing, which made it dry (and it was already a book about metrics).

But the value of the conclusions was worth the slog. Here are some of the big ideas from it:

It used to be that the key to success was selection, strategy, and skills. But in the New World, the key to success is management (especially front line management), metrics and methodology.

If you don't first turn around the manager, it doesn't matter if you try to turn around the teams performance.

When managing through metrics, don't confuse visibility with control. Just because you can see what is going on doesn't mean you are actually tracking or engaging in ways that make things better. It's like watching a child on the edge of the stairs about the fall, you might be able to fully see the whole experience, but you need to get in position to actually prevent bad things.

A good sign that you have visibility but not control is if your answer to solving the problems is just to do more.

The sales manager is the key leverage point, it's even more important to train sales managers than it is to train sales people.

Activities can be managed, outcomes cannot. Have your sales managers focus on upstream activities.
Overall strategy: First, make sure you have enough selling effort to consistently cover your target markets. Second, develop a salesforce capable of effectively selling your products/services. Third, focus them on the right types of customers. Fourth, provide them on guidance on what types of products to sell.

If you just tell your sales team to increase sales, you will likely create chaos as each sales manager (or salesperson) makes up their own strategy on how to get there. Work harder? Sell the higher margin product more than than one? Target different companies? You have to give them direction and metrics on where to focus if you want an aligned effort.

There are five measures to track if your managers are actually improving the sales process.
1. Call management - activities to improve what happens on the sales call (the right conversation)
2. Opportunity management - activities to make sure reps are thoughtfully pursuing individual deals (the right products)
3. Account management (if you do multiple deals with each customer) - measure number of touches and percentage of account plans completed
4. Territory management- total activity in the territory by type and company
5. Sales force enablement - percentage of time coaching reps, training investment per FTE

When you set your strategy, you create a set of metrics for them. But it's really important that you let go of the old set of metrics that went with the old strategy. We've seen too many companies who haven't ever accumulating list of metrics that they track for their sales teams. Stick with what's most important.

[Craig Almon · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thank you so much!

30 years of selling in a competitive and complex market with much success, yet there were many unsolved and frustrating failures related to getting the most out of our team!

This book “randomly” dropped in my lap and from the beginning it was giving me clues and answers that heretofore had escaped me.

From one sales professional to another, thank you for your hard work and insights. Your input has already made a difference for us, with great things undoubtedly to come as we assimilate your findings into our culture.

Many thanks and well wishes! Craig

[Pedro · Rating 4 out of 5]

In business, it's key to have managers be able to know the activities they're doing (or the members of their team are doing) make some kind of impact on the business. That said, managers don't always have that knowledge. This book helps people make that connection between activities, objectives, and results. If you're not into that sort of thing, this book is amazingly boring.

[Mike Childs · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book felt like a failed project. While the message was clearly portrayed, it was bogged down by too much detail and buzz words designated by the authors. Your time would be better served reading the summary pages at the end of each chapter. The inability to go into specifics and the necessity of generalizing really made this book hard to relate to. Do not reccomend.

[Jeremy · Rating 3 out of 5]

As usual, very accurate in what it points out as issues in current sales techniques and management. As usual, plodding in its providing of solutions. These solutions are least worth a bit of a read, and a bit more forgiveable than the usual televangelists that saturate the sphere of business literature.

[Sebastian · Rating 5 out of 5]

Unlike other endeavors such as accountings, law or sciences, sales and sales management indeed have a more of a "wing it" feeling. This book tackles just that. It attempts and succeeds in standardizing the processes. While there is no 100% guaranteed players handbook for sales success, this book achieves the closest thing possible. This is a must read.

[Kirill · Rating 5 out of 5]

Clear and concise!

I’ve never learned the Sales Management and never realized how simple yet powerful Sales Management can be before
reading this book which made it clear to me. This book has been among my best investments of time reading!

[Areen AlAli · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent book !

As a previous sales manager , this book really cracks the code of sales management!
If you manage any business pipeline, that book would be your friend for the next couple of days .

[Bianca · Rating 4 out of 5]

Insightful and practical. Having cause-and-effect applied in management makes a lot of sense. But this could have been better if there were case studies on real life organizations that took that approach. Without that, the book seemed too intuitive.

[Jonathan · Rating 5 out of 5]

A sophisticated and comprehensive approach to engineering and setting up an effective sales management system. I particularly liked the idea of narrowly focusing roles, processes, and activities, based on which sales objective is most likely to achieve the desired business results.

[Rachel Moffitt · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really solid sales management book that gives you a process to follow for managing metrics, which sales needs. Desperately. Great troubleshooting guide in the back to help you find the spot in the book that addresses particular problems. Definitely one I'll be referring back to.

[Ignacio Ortiz · Rating 5 out of 5]

Si eres líder o parte de un equipo comercial es un libro que no te puedes perder.

Resultado de una gran labor de investigación sobre situaciones reales, los autores nos comparten un poderoso sistema que nos ayudará a impactar los resultados de los equipos de ventas.

[Marcin Siech · Rating 3 out of 5]

good ideas, far too long

[Alberto Espinoza · Rating 5 out of 5]

Uno de los mejores libros de gerencia de ventas

Un libro que todo gerente de ventas de mercados B2B no puede dejar de leer. Sigue tan vigente como cuando fue publicado...

[Edouard Kieffer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well structured and good insights on people management and pupliene management.

[Karen Hodges · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book has given me a different way to get the results I want and structure my teams activities. Unlike other books, I know I can and will put a lot of what I've read into practice.

[Jim · Rating 4 out of 5]

Gave me a new perspective on what we’re even trying to do (in detail)!