In 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 talent
• Pay and incentivize your sales force
• Improve ROI from your training programs
• Create a comprehensive sales model
• Set and test the right prices
• Build and manage a multichannel approach

Brimming 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.

Frank Cespedes is Senior Lecturer in the Entrepreneurial Management Unit. He received his B.A. from the City College of New York, M.S. from M.I.T. and Ph.D. from Cornell University.

At Harvard, he has developed and taught a variety of MBA and executive courses, led the Strategic Marketing Management program for senior executives, and was co-lead of the Sustainable Market Leadership program for CEOs and their leadership teams. He currently teaches the elective Entrepreneurial Sales and Marketing (ESM) course in the MBA program as well as modules in the Owner President Management (OPM) executive program and he heads the executive program on "Aligning Strategy and Sales."

Before joining the faculty, he was a Research Associate at Harvard and worked at Bain & Company, an international strategy consulting firm. From 1995 to 2007, he was Managing Partner at the Center for Executive Development (CED), a firm that won awards in the United States and Europe for its work with companies worldwide.  He has consulted to companies in many industries, is affiliated with private-equity investors, and has been a Board member of Evenflo, HALO Industries, start-up firms, and the Education for Employment Foundation (EEF), which provides career training in skills linked directly to job placement with companies in the Middle East and North Africa.

He is the author or co-author of six books, including Aligning Strategy and Sales: The Choices, Systems, and Behaviors that Drive Effective Selling (Harvard Business Review Press, 2014), Concurrent Marketing: Integrating Product, Sales and Service(Harvard Business School Press) and Going to Market: Distribution Systems for Industrial Products (Harvard Business School Press); as well as articles in Harvard Business Review, Wall Street Journal, Strategy and Business, Business Horizons, California Management Review, International Encyclopedia of Business and Management, Journal of Managerial Issues, Journal of Personal Selling & Sales Management, Marketing Encyclopedia, Organization Science, Sloan Management Review, and Strategy & Business. He has also written more than 40 case studies about companies and numerous technical notes on various business topics.

Source: Harvard Business School