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Named to the longlist for the 2021 Outstanding Works of Literature (OWL) Award in the Sales & Marketing categoryIn this smart, practical, and research-based guide, Harvard Business School professor Frank Cespedes offers essential sales strategies for a world that never stops changing.The rise of e-commerce. Big data. AI. Given these trends (and many others), there's no doubt that sales is changing. But much of the current conventional wisdom is misleading and not supported by empirical data.If you as a manager fail to separate fact from hype, you will make decisions based on faulty assumptions and, in a competitive market, eventually fall behind those with a keener grasp of the current selling environment.In this no-nonsense book, sales expert and Harvard Business School professor Frank Cespedes provides sales managers and executives with the tools they need to separate the signal from the noise. These include how to:Hire and deploy the right talentPay and incentivize your sales forceImprove ROI from your training programsCreate a comprehensive sales modelSet and test the right pricesBuild and manage a multichannel approachBrimming with fascinating examples, insightful research, and helpful diagnostics, Sales Management That Works will help sales managers build a great sales team, create an optimal strategy, and steer clear of hype and fads. Salespeople will be better equipped to respond to changes, executives will be able to track and accelerate ROI, and readers will understand why improving selling is a social as well as an economic responsibility of business.

'The best sales book of the year'— strategy+business magazineThat gap between your company's sales efforts and strategy? It's real—and a huge vulnerability. Addressing that gap, actionably and with attention to relevant research, is the focus of this book.In Aligning Strategy and Sales, Harvard Business School professor Frank Cespedes equips you to link your go-to-market initiatives with strategic goals. Cespedes offers a road map to articulate strategy in ways that people in the field can understand and that will fuel the behaviors required for profitable growth. Without that alignment, leaders will press for better execution when they need a better strategy, or change strategic direction with great cost and turmoil when they should focus on the basics of sales execution.With thoughtful, clear, and engaging examples, Aligning Strategy and Sales provides a framework for diagnosing and managing the core levers available for effective selling in any organization. It will give you the know-how and tools to move from ideas to action and build a sales effort linked to your firm's unique goals, not a generic selling formula. Cespedes shows how sales efforts affect all elements of value creation in a business, whether you're a start-up seeking to scale or an established firm looking to jump-start new growth. The book provides key insights to optimize your firm's customer management activities and so improve selling and strategy.