Review of The Cadence of Excellence

[Brandy_Nyongesa]

[Following is a volunteer review of "The Cadence of Excellence" by Matthew McDarby.]

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4 out of 4 stars

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The Cadence of Excellence: Key Habits of Effective Sales Manager by Matthew McDarby is a nonfiction book with 65 pages. It is an interesting book that emphasizes ways of becoming an effective sales manager. It focuses on how sales managers can improve themselves and their teams. The author gives first-hand hand experiences and lessons learned for he has served as a sales manager and also worked with other sales officers.

The author classifies the approach into two categories: inwardly focused task and outwardly focused task. He goes ahead and explains that inwardly focused tasks; are tasks that aim at improving, evolving, or changing skills and performance as a sales manager, while outwardly focused tasks are those that aim to help the team's performance. Inwardly focused tasks are mainly things that focus on the sales manager like, finding the operating rhythm, leading with influence, using data and metrics to guide sales,s and aligning sales with go-to-market. Outwardly focused tasks include; building a coaching culture, leading by example, and many more.

Matthew McDarby believes that a crucial challenge for a sales manager is to find a way to always influence his or her team's behavior without the use of much direct power. In his understanding, there is a difference between extorting power and having influence, because influence is when you gain power. Therefore, power is earned, not bestowed. The influence of a sales manager will show by how the salespeople see new and different opportunities; address challenges, and leverage available resources salespeople might not have known about. "Selling is about influence, and coaching is about influence." Therefore, sales managers should focus on influencing their teams since, in the long run, the influence will increase their sales.

The author uses Brendan Clerk's experience to explain how a sales manager can establish the discipline of planning. Disciplined teams draw plans and stick to the plans in good and in bad times. To grow discipline in the team and as a sales manager, planning has been highlighted as a key factor. There are various levels of planning that sales managers can participate in to achieve great results in the sales organization. These levels include; market planning, account planning, opportunity planning, and call planning.

What I liked most about the book is the fact that the writer used real-life experiences to express ways of achieving great goals as a sales manager. The author has included a simple worksheet at the end of the book, this is amazing as it helps the reader to commit to change upon finishing reading the book. I also love the fact that the book is written in simple English that a lot of people can understand, including those who are not in the business world.

There is no part of the book that I didn't like. The book is well-edited since I did not find any obvious errors. For the same reasons, I rate the book a 4 out of 4 stars. I recommend this book to salespeople aspiring to be sales managers, sales managers who would love to improve on their managerial skills, and any business enthusiasts especially those focusing on sales.

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The Cadence of Excellence
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[Brandy_Nyongesa]

Being a sales manager has a very big influence on the marketing of products and services. I would recommend this book to any aspiring entrepreneur especially, those becoming sales managers.