A concise extension of the business classic Topgrading, targeted to sales managers Brad Smart's Topgrading has sold more than 150,000 copies since 1999, making it the definitive book for executives who want to hire, coach, and retain top talent. Now Smart has teamed up with Greg Alexander, who used Topgrading to radically improve his sales force at EMC. In Topgrading for Sales, they have boiled down the key Topgrading ideas to a pithy 112 pages while focusing on the unique needs of sales managers and sales directors. Great sales forces don't just depend on strategies-they depend on hiring the best possible reps. But surveys show that about half of all hires and promotions put an underqualified person in the wrong job. No wonder the average tenure for sales managers is only nineteen months. Topgrading for Sales takes the guesswork out of hiring by teaching readers how to interview systematically for A-level talent instead of relying on hunches and prejudices. It also shows how to coach B-level reps to turn them into A-players and how to weed out C-players before they do too much damage.

Smart, the author of the bestselling "Topgrading," has teamed up with Alexander to teach sales managers how to conduct interviews in order to gain the best talent for their sales force.

Great companies don’t just depend on strategies—they depend on people. The more great people on your team, the more successful your organization will be. But that’s easier said than done. Statistically, half of all employment decisions result in a mishire: The wrong person winds up in the wrong job. But companies that have followed Bradford Smart’s advice in Topgrading have boosted their successful hiring rate to 90 percent or better, giving them an unbeatable competitive advantage. Now Smart has fully revised his 1999 management classic to reintroduce the topgrading concept, which works for companies large and small in any industry. The author spells out his practical approach to finding and managing A-level talent—as well as coaching B players to turn them into A players. He provides intriguing case studies drawn from more than four thousand in-depth interviews. As Smart writes in his introduction, “All organizations, all businesses live or die mostly on their talent, and any manager who fails to topgrade is nuts, or a C player. . . . Those who, way deep down, would sooner see an organization die than nudge an incompetent person out of a job should not read this book... Topgrading is for A players and all those aspiring to be A players.” On the web: http://www.topgrading.com/

In this instant New York Times Bestseller, Geoff Smart and Randy Street provide a simple, practical, and effective solution to what The Economist calls “the single biggest problem in business today”: unsuccessful hiring. The average hiring mistake costs a company $1.5 million or more a year and countless wasted hours. This statistic becomes even more startling when you consider that the typical hiring success rate of managers is only 50 percent. The silver lining is that “who” problems are easily preventable. Based on more than 1,300 hours of interviews with more than 20 billionaires and 300 CEOs, Who presents Smart and Street’s A Method for Hiring. Refined through the largest research study of its kind ever undertaken, the A Method stresses fundamental elements that anyone can implement–and it has a 90 percent success rate. Whether you’re a member of a board of directors looking for a new CEO, the owner of a small business searching for the right people to make your company grow, or a parent in need of a new babysitter, it’s all about Who. Inside you’ll learn how to • avoid common “voodoo hiring” methods • define the outcomes you seek • generate a flow of A Players to your team–by implementing the #1 tactic used by successful businesspeople • ask the right interview questions to dramatically improve your ability to quickly distinguish an A Player from a B or C candidate • attract the person you want to hire, by emphasizing the points the candidate cares about most In business, you are who you hire. In Who, Geoff Smart and Randy Street offer simple, easy-to-follow steps that will put the right people in place for optimal success.

In his classic book, The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, Patrick Lencioni laid out a groundbreaking approach for tackling the perilous group behaviors that destroy teamwork. Here he turns his focus to the individual, revealing the three indispensable virtues of an ideal team player. In The Ideal Team Player, Lencioni tells the story of Jeff Shanley, a leader desperate to save his uncle’s company by restoring its cultural commitment to teamwork. Jeff must crack the code on the virtues that real team players possess, and then build a culture of hiring and development around those virtues. Beyond the fable, Lencioni presents a practical framework and actionable tools for identifying, hiring, and developing ideal team players. Whether you’re a leader trying to create a culture around teamwork, a staffing professional looking to hire real team players, or a team player wanting to improve yourself, this book will prove to be as useful as it is compelling.

The essential tool kit to achieve breakthrough sales performance improvements. Numbers don’t lie: 40 percent of all salespeople miss their targets each year. How can sales managers ensure their teams are doing everything possible? The key lies in benchmarking, which is not new for finance or manufacturing but rarely gets applied to sales. Making the Number will teach executives to embrace data-driven decision making and rely less on gut instinct. Comparing a sales force to those of relevant peers leads to many opportunities to improve performance. The authors take readers through their five-step methodology for sales benchmarking, showing how to select metrics; gather, compute, and compare internal and external data; and then actually use the data. Making the Number includes case studies of sales benchmarking in action. For example, find out how Discover Financial Services plays David to the Goliaths of MasterCard and Visa. Whether you’re a sales rep, a manager, or a CEO, this book will show you a better way to make your number.