Frank Cespedes

About Frank Cespedes

Frank Cespedes teaches at Harvard Business School and for 12 years was Managing Partner at a professional services firm. He has worked with many companies on go-to-market and strategy issues, and has been a Board member at consumer goods, industrial products, and services firms. He has written for numerous publications, and is the author most recently of Aligning Strategy and Sales (Harvard Business Review Press) which was cited as "the best sales book of the year" (Strategy + Business), "a must read" (Gartner), and "perhaps the best sales book ever" (Forbes).

Being a Manager

19 May 2019 by Frank Cespedes

In a previous article in Top Sales Magazine (February 2019), I discussed why you cannot just excel at sales to be a good sales manager. The message was that moving from doer to manager is a crucial transition, and developing the required capabilities is a joint responsibility of the individual and the organization. Market changes… Read More

Four Ways to Build a Productive Sales Culture

23 July 2015 by Frank Cespedes

All businesses face opportunity costs. In the case of a sales organization, money, time, and effort allocated to accounts A and B are resources not available for accounts C, D, and so on. That reality drives the distinction between effectiveness (optimization by doing the right things) and efficiency (doing things right) that Peter Drucker and… Read More

Getting Your Money’s Worth: Improving Sales Compensation

8 May 2017 by Frank Cespedes

In a previous article (“Rethinking Sales Compensation,” February 2017), I examined three common but false assumptions about money, motivation, and management in sales compensation practices. The message was that the purpose of any sales comp plan is to motivate the sales force to achieve the firm’s goals. There’s no such thing as effective selling if… Read More

Rethinking Sales Compensation

15 March 2017 by Frank Cespedes

Compensation is probably the most discussed aspect of sales and the biggest chunk of the $900 billion that U.S. companies alone spend on selling. An estimated 85% of companies use incentive plans which, on average, account for about 40% of total sales compensation. Yet, in a survey of 700 firms, a whopping 20% reported that… Read More

Sales Managers Must Manage

4 March 2019 by Frank Cespedes

Probably the most common complaint I’ve heard throughout my career from C-level executives about their sales colleagues concerns the latter’s ability to manage, not sell. As one senior executive puts it, “I want sales executives: people with one eye on a sales number [and] another eye on serving a market, making customers successful, and representing… Read More

The Dialogue That Rarely Happens

8 March 2016 by Frank Cespedes

In any organization, influence is bestowed as well as earned. It requires relevant expertise and results, but also being recognized by others as adding value. Sales managers are no exception to the rule. In many firms, Sales is still treated as a mysterious black box—essential for meeting quarterly revenue targets, but hermetically sealed off from… Read More