Book Review – The TOP Sales Leader Playbook: How to Win 5X Deals Repeatedly Kindle Edition by Lisa Magnuson
The Dirty Little Secret About Sales Leaders
Would you like to know a dirty little secret about sales leaders? The VP of sales position is a high-turnover position. The average tenure of a sales VP is about 18 months. Why is that? The reason is that the roll of sales manager is one of the hardest roles there is. It is extremely difficult to create long-term, sustained success. That is why I was so excited to see Lisa Magnuson‘s new book The TOP Sales Leader Playbook: How to Win 5X Deals Repeatedly.
I have managed both large and small sales teams over the years and what I can tell you is that closing more, and larger deals is not a numbers game. It is much more than targeting higher and increased frequency of efforts. It is strategic. There are major differences between managing small opportunities and large opportunities and applying your small opportunity process to large accounts typically leads to embarrassment and failure.
A Playbook for Managers That Actually Works
When I started looking through Lisa Magnuson’s book I thought, “Holy smokes. Here’s something that has never existed – a playbook for managers that actually works.”
What’s in The Book?
The TOP Sales Leader Playbook contains 16 key plays broken down into four categories:
- Sales Leadership Plays (5 plays)
- Sales Methodology Plays (3 plays – Play 6 itself is broken down into 11 parts)
- Sales Execution Plays (4 plays)
- Sales Culture Plays (4 plays)
There are also 3 valuable appendixes as well.
Scope & Utility
The focus of the book is to give you a step-by-step process to close opportunities that are five times your current average sale size (that’s the “5X”) and make that process repeatable and predictable. Inside that goal is a set of focused and detailed step-by-step instructions for proven strategies to achieve that aim. Frankly, the value of this cannot be understated. Without a process you are going to have streaky performance at best. And if you’re tired of streaky performance then what you need is a process. And certainly, one could work that process out via trial and error and the school of hard knocks, but as noted above you don’t have time for that. What you have here is the process demystified – a proven set of steps you can follow right from day one. It tells you who the players are and exactly what to do. It even tells you what to do when things go wrong.
Source Data
This might be a good time to mention that these plays came from Lisa Magnuson’s research and the real-world experience of 41 successful sales VPs which are referenced throughout the book. While some of the plays were new to me, I can personally vouch for the effectiveness of these strategies. What you have here is huge shortcut to success targeting large enterprise accounts. It is a comprehensive approach to winning large opportunities and driving big-time revenue growth.
Target Audience
I would say that the target audience for this book is sales VPs and managers. Having said that, I think CEOs and anyone aspiring to sales leadership would also benefit greatly by reading this book. Honestly, it would make a great curriculum for a college course on this subject. It’s for sales leaders who want to focus on landing the biggest accounts.
Final Thoughts
There are very few good books on sales leadership and there is nothing else like The TOP Sales Leader Playbook anywhere. It is unique. I would also say that it is a gift. What you have in front of you is – literally – a step by step playbook for closing the kind of deals that make a massive difference for companies, reps and managers. And then making that process predictable and repeatable. Every sales leader should read and apply this book. I highly recommend it.
You can get The TOP Sales Leader Playbook : How to Win 5X Deals Repeatedly at AMAZON.
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Until next time!
James
Get the #1 Book on closing sales now at Amazon.