Sales 101 · Book Two
The sales manager's guide to building systems, coaching teams, and leading without micromanaging.
By Christopher Brooks
Overview
Sales Leadership Made Simple is for the manager who was promoted because they could sell and is now figuring out how to lead. The skills that made you a great rep — personal drive, closing instinct, individual performance — are not the same skills that make a great manager. This book covers the shift, and everything that comes after it.
The System That Carries the Deal
Why process beats personality — every time, at scale
Hope Is Not a Sales Strategy
Pipeline clarity, probability weighting, and why most forecasts lie
KPIs, Goals, and the Activity Equation
What to measure, how to read the ratios, and how to coach from the data
Coaching Over Control
Developing people deliberately — and what the leader's job actually is
The Manager's Internal Game
Why your attitude is your team's environment
The Right People
What to hire for, in what order, and why character beats experience
Recruiting: Finding Them Before You Need Them
How to build a candidate pipeline before the vacancy appears
Building the Machine
The daily and weekly disciplines that keep the system running without you holding it together
The Sales Meeting: Agenda, Training, and Role Play
How to run a meeting that actually develops your team
Champion Duties and the Mentorship Chain
How knowledge moves through a team — and why it matters
Coaching the Price Conversation
Why reps default to discounting and how to change that
Managing the Underperformer
When to coach, when to set a timeline, when to move on
Managing the Top Performer
The most seductive and dangerous management challenge — and how to handle it
Building a Sales Culture
What culture actually is, what it is not, and how the manager sets it
Lead Generation: The Multi-Spoke Wheel
How a well-run team builds a prospecting engine that feeds itself
Forecasting and Reporting Upward
How to build credibility with leadership through honest numbers
The Manager as the Bridge
How to translate pressure from above into direction for the team without losing either side
Remote and Hybrid Team Management
What changes with distance and what never does
The Manager You're Building Toward
Top performance is a direction — here is what you are building toward
"Your number is not your number anymore. Your team's number is your number. That shift — from personal performance to team performance — is where most new managers struggle."