One Step Closer to the TM Field Guide!

It has been a busy month here at Lake Wobegon!  (Sorry– I could not resist a parody of Garrison Keillor!)

I  have been busy completing the details on my first book (click here) and have been working like a one-armed paper hanger in a hurricane behind the scenes on my second book– a book I am tentatively calling “The HVAC Territory Manager’s Field Guide.”  (My editor may suggest a better title, so for now, this is a working title.)

I finalized the paperwork on the contracts over the weekend, and we should be in print in about 90 days +/-, so expect it to be ready in mid-June of this year!  (Just in time to help rescue your career from a worsening economic nightmare…)

This is going to be a huge book– the manuscript is 564 pages long!  It will also have a CD-ROM as part of the project, and there will also be a Sales Manager’s Guide (on CD-ROM only) for sales managers who wish to take their sales teams through the process.

Here are the chapter titles for now…

CHAPTER 1: WHAT IS YOUR JOB?

Overview of what it means to be a territory manager

CHAPTER 2: MAXIMIZING YOUR INCOME

How to do the things best for which you get paid

CHAPTER 3: WHAT IS YOUR TIME WORTH?

Determining how much you are worth per hour; and then, why would you do stupid stuff with your time when you are worth that much?

CHAPTER 4: RULES OF THUMB

Quick ways to determine key averages and performance indicators for dealers

CHAPTER 5: TERRITORY ANALYSIS

Simple ways to analyze a territory and build a sales plan

CHAPTER 6: TERRITORY FORECASTING AND PLANNING

How to forecast sales, expenses, margins and profit and then build a plan to achieve these

CHAPTER 7: THE TYPES OF CONTRACTOR

Commercial, residential, service, low-temp, and so on– how are these business segments handled differently by successful contractors?

CHAPTER 8: THE LIFE CYCLES OF A CONTRACTOR

How contractors change as they go through their life cycles and what you can do to be of the greatest value to them at every step along the way

CHAPTER 9: HEY, IT’S A BUSINESS!

Understanding the fundamentals a dealer has to know– how to run a successful business (no TM is born with this knowledge)

CHAPTER 10: FINDING NEW DEALERS

How to recruit to find diamonds and rubies, not lumps of coal

CHAPTER 11: HELPING CONTRACTORS DEVELOP AND MATURE

How you can bring what a dealer needs to his party to help him grow and earn his business

CHAPTER 12: ACCOUNT SEGMENTATION

How to organize your accounts along logical lines and differentiate your sales calls with those classifications

CHAPTER 13: KEEPING SCORE

Tracking the numbers; what and how, and why!

CHAPTER 14: GOT DEALERS?

How many dealers do you need to achieve a given sales goal (such as share of market or dollar level)?

CHAPTER 15: BASIC CONTRACTING FINANCIAL MANAGEMENT

The HVAC business by the numbers; what every dealer needs to know (and most TMs don’t)

CHAPTER 16: KNOWING YOUR STUFF

Being the right balance of subject-matter expert and resource versus being useless to your dealers

CHAPTER 17: INFORMATION MANAGEMENT

How you pass information up and down the channel to help all concerned; how to leverage technology to get more done face to face

CHAPTER 18: DOING THE GRIND

Seeing to the details of the job– finishing the paperwork, dotting the i’s, crossing the t’s

CHAPTER 19: SALES REVIEWS

How to survive a sales review!

CHAPTER 20: MARKETING AND ADVERTISING

Can you speak audience ratings?  Column-inches?  Gross rating points?  You need to if you are going to be of great marketing help to your dealers

CHAPTER 21: SALES SKILLS—THEY AIN’T WHAT THEY USED TO BE!

The old days of feature/benefit selling and trial closes belong in museums; learn the new low-key way to persuade dealers to take action.

CHAPTER 22: DEEP COMMUNICATION, THE KEY TO AMAZING SALES

Reading people beneath the surface and unpacking their decision processes so you can influence their decisions

CHAPTER 23: DISPUTE RESOLUTION

Problems are going to arise; how do you handle them effectively?

CHAPTER 24: DOING A GOOD SHOW

Showmanship and presentation finesse– it’s what separates the territory makers from the order takers

CHAPTER 25: PRUDENT ETIQUETTE

Know when to walk away and when to dig in and get involved

CHAPTER 26: EXPENSE REPORTS AND THEIR ROI

The ever-present pain in the neck of expense reports and why you need to track them carefully

CHAPTER 27: TIME MANAGEMENT

The first myth of time management is that it exists.  Learn how to manage yourself to be effective in the now.

CHAPTER 28: GETTING YOUR SALES MANAGER TO WORK FOR YOU

Your boss should also be your greatest coach and helper; use him (or her) to make big gains

CHAPTER 29: MENTORING THE NEXT WAVE

Doing what you can to prepare the next generation (or, if you ARE the next generation, doing what you can to shorten your learning curve)

CHAPTER 30: IS SALES MANAGEMENT IN YOUR FUTURE?

So you think you want that corner office and those nice little perks?

The book will retail for $79.95, but once the publisher has the order form up on his web site, I’ll be offering pre-printing deals for volume orders.  Stay tuned for that in a future blog post!