Soar Despite Your Dodo Sales Manager

Book reviews > Soar, Despite Your Dodo Sales Manager

Salz. L.B. (2007). Soar Despite Your Dodo Sales Manager, El Monte, CA: WB Books

Although to many of us, this may seem like a strange name to a book, to many sales people it will bring a familiar smile, because the sad truth is that there are plenty of sales folks who do not see eye-to-eye with their managers.

The job of a sales manager, as any manager, is to help their people succeed. Sales managers should thus be coaches and cheerleaders, not whip-cracking lion-tamers. Not that it's always their fault: the company above them often does not provide the resources needed.

Given the reality that sales people face, Salz sets out to be the coach that the sales manager may not be.

In 'Finding the right place to hang your hat', his first advice is in getting a job that fits with your style and personality. He then continues by helping you define the 'sales architecture' that builds the structure by which you can consistently succeed and managing your time for this.

With regard to selling, he shows how the buying process seeks to make sellers look the same (to help decisions) and advises on how you can stand out within this, navigating and facilitating the buying processes within customer companies. Four players in the buying company are identified: the Wizard, the Mentor, the Saboteur and the Beneficiary, and how to work with these to make the sale.

Sales trainer Salz should have some idea how to do it, and this is indeed good advice, whether your sales manager is helpful or not.

If I were a sales manager, I'd read this book too. If you could coach your people like this, they would be more successful and so would you.