Revenue growth requires strategy AND execution.  Yet despite over 5,000 business schools in the USA, there are fewer than 300 courses on sales. Dr. Frank Cespedes of the Harvard Business School has been closing that education gap for over 20 years, as an academic and leader of a services firm focused on sales process improvement.

Successful sales improvement requires hiring good people. But that is not enough. Success is highly context specific, and the “right” person fits the marketplace, the solution, and the sales support system to close more deals.  Too often C-level execs think only of the people, and not enough of the strategy and sales management process that is required to support sales. Get either of the last 2 wrong and even the best people won’t be able to move the dial.

Very, very few CEOs were trained in sales.  Most have backgrounds in Finance or Operations.  No wonder sales is so misunderstood. Yet good sales management is vital to success.  And the greatest entrepreneurs of our time are all salespeople – Jobs, Branson, Bezos, Musk.  Listen or watch this podcast to obtain a much deeper and better understanding of what you need to do to improve your sales success in support of your strategy.

Thinking points:
- Do you really understand how your customers buy?  Their purchasing processes?
- Do you know what customers value most in your sales process, and what they could care less about?
- Have you thought through your sales process and identified how it supports your growth strategy?
- Do you measure your cost of sales, and your cost of lost sales?
Buy “Sales Management That Works” Harvard Business Review Press, Dr. Frank Cespedes, 2021 at this link {link}

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