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Seven Steps to Success for Sales Managers, 1st edition

Published by Pearson FT Press (January 18, 2018) © 2015

  • Max F. Cates
$29.59

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Seven Steps to Success for Sales Managers gives you a breakthrough strategy for developing and sustaining high-performance sales teams.

Long-time sales team leader Max Cates shows how Total Quality Management (TQM) practices can significantly improve sales productivity. Going far beyond “old school,” “command and control” sales management, Cates helps you unleash the full power and energy of your salespeople through a participatory management approach that works. Drawing on 36+ years of sales and sales management experience, Cates presents proven tactics for: 

  • Developing your own mental toughness, emotional intelligence, strategic thinking, and promotability
  • Hiring more effective and productive salespeople – including expert tips for interviewing, recruiting, reading body language, using data, and choosing amongst candidates
  • Building winning teams that meet sales objectives and delight customers
  • Becoming a true servant leader in a sales environment
  • Empowering sales reps and teams in decision-making that increases sales productivity
  • Measuring individual and team performance towards objectives
  • Keeping people on target without micro-managing them
  • Promoting team growth and continual improvement
  • Leveraging Six Sigma and the Deming Cycle to sustain success, morale, and performance
  • And much more

Build and lead an outstanding sales team: hire the best people, and empower them

  • Breakthrough sales management tactics — in a “bulletized” format that’s easy to read and use
  • Develop yourself as a sales manager: build mental toughness, emotional intelligence, strategic thinking, and promotability
  • Become a true servant leader in sales: provide the right structure, challenges, respect, involvement, and support
  • Measure individual and team performance, promote continual improvement, and sustain high-performance selling
  • Reflects recent university research findings on crucial trends in sales management
  • Packed with realistic examples drawn from the author’s 36 years of experience in the trenches as a salesperson and sales manager

Introduction     1
Chapter 1  First Step: Manage Yourself     9
Chapter 2  Second Step: High-Performance Teams Begin with Hiring     69
Chapter 3  Third Step: Building a Winning Team     121
Chapter 4  Fourth Step: Becoming a Successful Servant Leader     213
Chapter 5  Fifth Step: Sales Empowerment, Beginning with Ownership     229
Chapter 6  Sixth Step: Success Through Performance Measurement     257
Chapter 7  Seventh Step: Continuous Improvement, Maintaining Success     277
Conclusion     289
References     293
Index     303

Max Cates received a bachelor of science from Missouri State University and a master of arts from the University of Missouri School of Journalism. He began his professional career with United Telecommunications (America’s third-largest telecommunications company at the time) as Advertising Coordinator. After three years, he joined AT&T and served for 10 years in progressively responsible corporate leadership positions in advertising, corporate communications, and marketing management.

Cates’s next leadership position was with Associated Electric Cooperative, a $2 billion electric power utility. After two promotions there, he became the youngest Division Director in its history, reporting to the CEO. His responsibilities included leading marketing, advertising, and corporate communications, as well as directing consumer sales strategy. During his tenure at Associated, he also completed Executive Development at the Wharton School of Business, University of Pennsylvania.

After 11 years with Associated and a number of national awards, Cates returned to AT&T, serving in sales and sales management positions, progressing from Internet Sales Manager to Telemarketing Sales Manager, to Area Sales Manager. Following an award-winning career with AT&T, which included the prestigious CEO Club Award, Cates joined Access Media, where he managed the sales force. He also served as a sales management professor at Webster University.

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