Andris Zoltners and his partner Prabha Sinha have created the largest and most successful sales consulting company in the world. ZS Associates is the go-to address that’s passed on from one Fortune 500 sales leader to another. Andris and Prabha have recently published the most comprehensive sales management guide of the decade entitled: Building a Winning Sales Force (Available on Amazon).
Although the book is heavy and intimidating at first, it’s actually very accessible. It gives sales leaders a framework for thinking about what a winning sales organization looks like. The book also serves as a decision guide for mission critical issues such as hiring, training, coaching, motivating, compensating and terminating salespeople.
In this seven minute video interview, Andris and Prabha share a healthy slice of their vast experience designed to stretch your thinking about your own sales organization. As I was conducting this interview; a very vivid image came to my mind from an old black and white Humphrey Bogart Movie, The African Queen.
In my mind, the boat in the movie represents the sales force. The African Queen encounters many obstacles, and Bogart struggles to keep the steam powered boat running. In one scene the boat runs a set of rapids with soldiers shooting at them, blowing two bullet holes in the top of the boiler and causing one of the steam hoses to disconnect, which causes the boat’s engine to stop running. Bogart manages the reattach the hose just in time as he approaches another set of rapids. The boat rolls and pitches, and begins to flood. Isn’t this what you see happening in your own sales force every day?
Building a Winning Sales Force is like rebuilding the boat and stopping the leaks while it plows through the roughest economic waves. Building a Winning Salesforce isn’t easy, but this new book makes you want to do it a lot sooner.
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