Do not go quietly into that good night, do not silently accept anything that isn’t right. I promise that if you do have the items listed in this book, you wouldn’t be worse at your job.

52 Weeks of Book Reviews. Week # 12 – Sales Management. Simplified.: The Straight Truth About Getting Exceptional Results from Your Sales Team by Mike Weinberg

I’m not sure if Mike Weinberg ever talks about silent acceptance in this book specifically but it is definitely a thread throughout the entire work. All it takes for a good sales team to turn into a disaster is for one good sales manager to silently accept something that shouldn’t be allowed. Most of us know what we should be doing, we just don’t do it all the time, we get by without being consistent or expecting more. If I’m right, you need this book to refresh on what you should be doing, and then take action. If I’m wrong and you have no idea what you are doing, then shame on the person that put you in that position but kudos’ to you for trying to research and find some help, you need this book yesterday.

One thing I really appreciate is Mike’s respect for the bottom line. His takeaways are strong. He gives very specific advice on how to structure sales meetings for teams or 1:1’s for example and I found myself pulling over on the road (I listened to this on Audible.com) and I hit the rewind button and took notes on his specific structure or requirements. I may listen to the book again in the future, there are several chapters that are great reminders for any manager once per year, but I’d recommend buying a hard copy of the book in order to takes notes in the margins. Every chapter has a very specific end game, I wouldn’t be surprised if the author didn’t have twice as much material and really parred down the subject material to the bare necessities. The book feels very refined, not a lot of what I’d consider to be fluff pieces. There were some solid examples and case studies which were entertaining and very illustrative of particular points. There is nothing self serving or distracting from the advice in the book, we know Mike’s a coach but he’s not pitching his service and trying to sell something with his fame. I think he genuinely cares about the condition of industry and the livelihood of every single road warrior, pavement pounder,  door knocker, call center agent and all of their customer’s. All of those Sales Professionals in the industry deserve to have a strong leader, mentor and coach to lead them to success.

If you are a leader, want to become a leader you should take a look at this book. It’s straight forward in it’s content and will give you cause to question where you want to go and make you put together a plan to get there.