The Sales Boss

Foreword

I am pleased to be introducing you to the book you hold in your hands, The Sales Boss: The Real Secret to Hiring, Training, and Managing a Sales Team, as I have experienced first-hand the financial results possible when an organization’s sales team is led by a skilled person operating at the highest level of sales management. My hope is that after you read the book you’ll understand all of the nuances involved in leading a high performance sales team and that you’ll agree with the statement Nothing happens until someone sells something. This is a statement I only fully understood after leading and being responsible for creating profit at for-profit organizations and a lesson I believe is critical to pass on to leaders at today’s companies. I’d like to briefly share my journey on the path to understanding the truth behind this statement.

Starting my corporate career as an industrial engineer working on the manufacturing line of a GE plant in Middle America, I could have sworn then that nothing happened if someone didn’t make something. I quickly learned, however, that a person or a business can make anything it wants, at whatever quality level it chooses, and price it however it sees fit. But there is simply no guarantee that it will sell. And if it doesn’t sell, then there is no business . . . period.

After a few years of working on the line, I decided to continue my education and was accepted into Harvard Business School’s MBA program. Over the next years, I rubbed ...