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Book Review: McKinsey’s Sales Book

Posted by Greg Alexander on Sun, Jul 01, 2012
  
  
  
  

There are 1,525,124 sales books for sale on Amazon. Sales Growth Book Review

On April 24th, McKinsey added “Sales Growth: Five Proven Strategies from the World’s Sales Leaders” to this crowded field.

Is this book worth reading?

No.

This contribution, from arguably the world’s most respected management consulting firm, to the sales body of knowledge is welcomed.   McKinsey has a lot of clout and when they speak people listen.  I thank the authors for elevating the sales effectiveness conversation into the board room where it belongs.  Writing a book is a lot of work and I truly appreciate the author’s efforts.

But, unfortunately, they missed the mark.

Why?

The Research Method

The research methodology was flawed.  McKinsey spent two years interviewing senior sales executives inside 100 global companies with a track record of outperforming their peers.  The profile of the companies studied averaged $31 billion in revenues, 86,000 employees, across 10 industries. Two thirds were B2C companies.

The “five proven strategies” that emerged from this are:

  1. Get to growth opportunities before competitors.
  2. Use multiple channels.
  3. Use sales ops and technology.
  4. Balance the short and long term.
  5. Gain commitment from the organization.

These findings fall into the obvious category.  You, the educated sales leader, will be upset you wasted three hours of your life reading 256 pages to receive such basic recommendations in return.  This is what happens when the research is limited to interviews with primarily B2C executives.  McKinsey would have been better served if they added a few of the following methods to their research approach:

  • Sales Rep Ride Alongs- it is essential that the researcher gets in the field and makes sales calls with the sales reps to see what actually happens.
  • Prospect Interviews- the researcher must always get “both sides of the story”.  McKinsey only heard one side of the story, that of the seller.  They did not talk to the buyers.  Do the buyers value the five proven strategies? 
  • Competitor Mystery Shopping- the companies profiled in the book have outperformed their peer groups.  Yet, McKinsey did not engage the peer group to understand their sales approach and how it differs.
  • Metric Benchmarks- simply comparing top line revenue numbers to broad industry indexes is insufficient.  Sales data analysis requires deep causality research.

Lastly, how many of you work inside $30 billion companies with 86,000 employees?  It would have been a better read if the research had included companies of more modest scale.

The Authors

The McKinsey authors have never led a B2B sales force.  Thomas Baumgartner, has spent the last ten years as a consultant and prior to that was a university lecturer.  Homayoun Hatami’s experience is as a member of the MIT board of trustees.  Jon Vander Ark is a partner at McKinsey focused on B2C industries such as travel, consumer durables, and automotive. 

I am sure the three authors are highly intelligent and capable. McKinsey only hires the best.  However, unless you have had to make a number, quarter in and quarter out, you simply do not understand what it takes to be a successful sales leader.

The Findings

Here are a couple of examples of their findings to give you a feel for the book:

  • McKinsey advises you to look 10 quarters ahead. The focus of our work is to help the head of sales make the in-year revenue quota.  The average tenure of the chief sales officer is 6 quarters.  B2B sales leaders do not have the luxury of looking 10 quarters out.
  • Find big growth in big data.  Sales organizations today are getting dirty data from the field and have to battle untested assumptions from corporate.  To suggest a sales leader can implement a big data strategy is irresponsible.  This recommendation highlights the disconnect between academics and practitioners.

There are some sections worth reading.  Pay attention to the sections on blending online and offline selling, engaging the customer early in the cycle, and brining your expertise to the table. Beware:  there are so few practical recommendations for the B2B sales leader, it takes a lot of patience from you to find them.

Alternatives

If you are looking for a sales book to read, here are a few that are a better use of your time:

Lastly, if reading a full length book is of no interest, here is an ebook  we put together that can be read in 30 minutes.

If you have read the book, I would enjoy getting your perspective in the comments section below. 

Greg on Google+

Greg Alexander

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Comments

Greg,  
 
Let me begin by saying that I like the fact that you "call it like it is" when it comes to reviewing books. Your honesty is refreshing in this era of being PC. Thank you for the review. 
 
My only issue with the review is that you castigate the authors because they didn't present: “both sides of the story" (valid point), yet ironically, you review what's wrong with the book, but never mention any "good points" (the other side) made in the book. 
 
The review seems heavy-handed and one-sided leaving your readers (me) with the impression that you found no salient points in ~300 pages that your readers (not just you) would find useful.  
 
If that is the case, then it is, what it is. But if not, I would've preferred reading some "high points" about the book and then your recommendation on whether to read it or not. 
 
Keep up the great work...Victor 
 
 
 
 
Posted @ Sunday, July 01, 2012 7:04 AM by Victor Antonio
p.s., Thank you for the (3) book recommendations!
Posted @ Sunday, July 01, 2012 7:06 AM by Victor Antonio
Victor- I praised three sections in the book. See last paragraph in The Findings section of the post.
Posted @ Sunday, July 01, 2012 8:40 AM by Greg Alexander
Greg, I stand corrected...my brain must've done an unconscious mental skip over that paragraph. My apologies.
Posted @ Sunday, July 01, 2012 8:46 AM by Victor Antonio
Kudos to Sales Benchmark Index for sniffing out a dog. While thought leadership is always welcome from professional sources like McKinsey, sales force efffectiveness is not about sales based thinking anymore . You have highlighted the underlying fact that this book is no longer relevant and the findings are no longer apply in what we call is the Age of the Buyer.  
 
I have not read the book and respect that there are most likely some great recommendations and observations, the singular issue is these are not the reality of today's intelligent buyer who no longer needs a traditional sales story...if they do...then heaven help those organizations that still think they can apply selling behaviors from the past. Like the book, "What got you here,won't get you there", it's not about sales growth, is all about revenue performance and the skills for generating sales has changed forever. We are in an exciting new age that continues to unfold where buyers no longer need sales. The sooner you get it, the quicker you can help your customers and prospective buyers by offering a better web presence and making it easy to find the exact search interest...to engage,enable and empower the buyer with cloud based buyer specific portals (and not some CRM playbook) and most of all, know that the buyer today needs genuine help in finding you, qualifying you, building a relationship of knowledge of you and trust you'll be worth their investment in you. Now wasn't that what saleswas supposed to do?.. not any more. 
 
Sale Benchmark Index is an outstanding authority who's thought leadership and guts to call it what it is bang on. Greg and team, keep it up..  
Wayne Wood 
 
Posted @ Sunday, July 01, 2012 9:46 AM by Wayne Wood
"Male Midwifes can not understand Childbirth." I happen to think that is false.  
 
 
 
"You can not understand Selling without Sales Ride alongs."  
 
I know thats false because I have made more than 2,000 Ridealongs! 
 
 
 
The book is not aimed as a silver bullet for Sales Reps. It is not a gimmick.  
 
OMG you recommended  
 
Dirty little Secrets... 
 
Do YOU understand Modern Selling? 
 
 
 
The book is a well researched, well written view of the future of Selling. The Chapter on Big Data is PRICELESS. 
 
 
 
 
 
It is on a level with Neil Rackham's  
 
"Rethinking The Salesforce" 
 
I fear you have reviewed,  
 
what you do not understand! 
 
 
 
I have no connection with the book, its authors or McKinsey.
Posted @ Sunday, July 01, 2012 10:17 AM by Brian MacIver
Thanks for the comment Brian. I disagree with but respect your views. I anticipated some blow back from this post. But I feel I owe it to my readers to be authentic.
Posted @ Sunday, July 01, 2012 2:50 PM by Greg Alexander
absolutely spot on with your pov/analysis and I have not even read the book. When I saw the HBR blog...I thought here we go again....over generalised guff. Back to your point of the authors not being in sales/management....like all this stuff....wonder if they have applied it themselves!!! Good piece Greg (and for sure it aint research!!)
Posted @ Thursday, July 12, 2012 11:36 AM by mark mccarthy
Greg,  
 
I like and respect a lot of my colleagues in the sales effectiveness world, but you are among a dozen whom I truly admire. I think SBI is doing some phenomenal work in the space and is publishing incredibly cogent stuff on a daily basis here. So, I was disappointed to finally catch up on this and read that you don't recommend Sales Growth. 
 
I read a lot. And although I clearly have not read the *thousands* that are available, I've read plenty of books on sales and sales management. There's a lot of crap published that is not evidence-based and which I don't believe offers advice that's replicable outside the author's limited experiences (the primary reason I quip that "business books are dangerous").  
 
There are three books on sales management that I've taken something away from in the past few years. I'd go as far as saying they are currently my top three. They are: 
* Making The Number by you, Aaron and Mike 
* Cracking the Sales Management Code by Jason Jordan and Michelle Vazzana 
* Sales Growth by the McKinsey team 
 
I rarely agree with everything in any book - I'm an opinionated sort. Each one of these, though, in my opinion, has some real shining highlights. However, I don't disagree with some of what you say about Sales Growth. The high-level roll-up of their five strategies was lackluster. I longed for some benchmarking across lines, not just analytics within an organization, no doubt. And the danger of focusing on the very best practices of the very top sales leaders (the 10-quarter thing, for example), is that advice may not be widely replicable (although perhaps taking a longer view would have saved the subprime mortgage industry, because decisions driven by making the short-term numbers sure killed a lot of companies).  
 
On the plus side for Sales Growth, for me:  
* The customer stories and examples started me thinking a little differently about my own performance lever work. Perhaps starting at the frontline level with sales rep and manager behaviors and building support systems around them isn't always the best place to start. I've had great success with it, but I may have taken my eye off other opportunities for driving growth. That probably doesn't apply to you, but it was a good reminder for me. 
* The reinforcement of the importance of the sales manager role and coaching was great to see in print, in a book, with examples, by McKinsey (the Rookies into Rainmakers stuff). The approach of training managers to clearly identify reasons for underperformance and coaching to close those gaps, seems glaringly obvious, yet I find myself "selling" this idea in most organizations I join. Stunningly, it's just not always being done. I appreciated the examples around this including the 80/80 rule, mandated ride-alongs (again stunning, but I've been at companies where it doesn't happen naturally), the "super coach" mentoring concept, and others, where organizations had accepted the value of coaching and worked to change cultures and drive growth through it. This message needs to be tattooed on the forehead of everyone in the C-suite of every company with a feet-on-the-street sales force.  
* I generally enjoyed the case concept, getting a glimpse into what various organizations were doing that worked and seeing their thought process.  
* I think the reminder that analytics must be taken down to an account level, and that managing accounts more effectively, one by one, can yield massive growth for an organization, is critical for so many companies that simply are living in the stone age of account management.  
* "Averages lie" reminded me that in every vertical and every situation, while not much growth may be occurring "on average," some organizations fall on the right side of the bell curve and have found the magic sauce that others missed. I find that endlessly fascinating, because no matter what hand you are dealt, there is usually an innovative way to win, if you can find it.  
 
Anyway, that's my two cents. Sales Growth is as flawed as almost every other business book, with some really solid reminders and good content. Would I have preferred a bit more meat around methodology and a more replicable path to growth? You bet. Did I get something out of it and find it well worth the price and my time? You bet.  
 
Nice banter between you and the McKinsey boys, at least (referencing your follow-up post). I haven't met the others but Jon seems like a great guy.  
 
Mike
Posted @ Saturday, July 28, 2012 11:22 AM by Mike Kunkle
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