5 Fundamentals: My Review

I’m told that there are 613 commandments in the bible, although most of us only know the Top 10. I’m not sure how many sales management fundamentals exist, but a new book provides a valuable service by focusing our attention on the Top 5.

5 Fundamentals for the Wholesale Distribution Sales Manager is a new book by Tim Horan and Steve Deist of Indian River Consulting Group. It is published by the NAW Institute for Distribution Excellence. (The NAW Institute also publishes Facing the Forces of Change®: Lead the Way in the Supply Chain.)

This book should be required reading for all wholesale distribution sales managers, regardless of tenure. The 5 Fundamentals is practical, straightforward, and relevant.

The book is organized around the following fundamentals:

1. Assess and develop your own coaching and management skills
2. Recognize talent and select the right people
3. Manage the sales function successfully and systematically
4. Know how to build a high-performing team
5. Maintain thriving relationships with customers and suppliers.

It’s hard to argue against anything on this list. Few consultants would recommend you build a low-performing team or select the wrong people.

Thus, the authors' main contribution comes from demonstrating how these core principles translate into real-world actions. For instance, the chapter on managing the sales function provides an exceptionally clear description of fact-based account planning.

The book benefits from the many case studies in sales management, which I presume represent disguised experiences from their client base. I chuckled when reading about “Bill,” a senior rep who was nicknamed the “agitator” because he was “…always stirring things up, always making more work for the management team, and always irritating the support staff.” All of the case studies are written using first names, making them great discussion and coaching tools, especially for those of you practicing Fundamental #1.

I also appreciate the authors’ sense of humor, as indicated by the cartoons and hilarious asides sprinkled throughout the book. Horan and Deist can not even resist taking one final shot in the conclusion, arguing that the old days of relative ability (if you were a relative, you had ability) are gone. Doh!

I found the self-assessment exercises, such as the “Core Competency” worksheet in Chapter One, to be very useful and would have liked to see more exercises. A keyword index would also have been useful as I found myself having to search for particular ideas by flipping pages. These are very minor misgivings.

In my opinion, all current and future sales managers should show their commitment to lifelong learning by getting 5 Fundamentals for the Wholesale Distribution Sales Manager.

P.S. If you like this book, I’d also recommend What Got You Here Won't Get You There as a great complement to the Five Fundamentals. This new book identifies “the bad habits that keep highly successful people from succeeding even more.” The Twenty Bad Habits (anti-fundamentals?) are a rogue’s gallery of career limiting behavior. You can see the list in this Knowledge at Wharton review.