new sales world, a handful of companies already excel. We will
explore the four ways those companies—leaders like UPS,
Toyota, Nokia, and others—behave differently from their peers
and achieve different results. We’ll also hear directly from execu-
tives about how they make major purchases and what they seek
in salespeople. We’ll listen to what sales leaders think about the
skills needed to outperform the competition. And we’ll share
some exciting research by others in the field to see where the
trends are headed.

The book is organized around four pillars that define the

practices of world-class sales forces today:

Each section explores one pillar in detail, starting with a sum-

mary theme that describes how world-class sales forces apply the
principle of that pillar to accelerating their customers’ results.
Next, relevant research provides data to support the theme and
illuminate changing sales practices. Then a set of detailed con-
cepts describes exactly what evolving sales forces are doing to dif-
ferentiate themselves. Models that illustrate these concepts and
detailed descriptions of best practices anchor the discussions.
Following the discussion of the four pillars, we outline the sales
leader’s role in bringing a sales force to world-class performance
levels.

4

The Big Picture

FIGURE 1.2

The four pillars of world-class sales performance.