The challenges facing today's sales executives and their organizations continue to grow, but so do the expectations that they will find ways to overcome them and drive consistent sales growth.

2. “A quarterly perspective can be an organization’s
Achilles’ heel because you can miss the chance to adapt
and make the decisions that will deliver success three
or four years down the line.”
CHAPTER 1: LOOK TEN QUARTERS AHEAD
–Karim Amin, CEO, Global Sales
Siemens Power & Gas
From Sales Growth (Wiley, 2016)

3. From Sales Growth (Wiley, 2016)
“My formula for growth is simple: every
day, somebody has to buy a product that
he or she didn’t buy before. But that
person needs a reason to buy, so you
have to bring something new in order to
attract them.”
CHAPTER 2: MINE GROWTH BENEATH THE SURFACE
–Gil Steyaert,
Managing Director,
Western Europe adidas

4. From Sales Growth (Wiley, 2016)
“What’s interesting is that the
fundamentals of selling haven’t
changed. We just have faster,
more detailed, more data‐rich
ways to answer those questions.”
CHAPTER 3: FIND BIG GROWTH IN BIG DATA
–Jeffrey K. Schomburger,
Global Sales Officer,
P&G

5. From Sales Growth (Wiley, 2016)
“It is a failure of imagination if we can’t figure
out how to segment properly and present the
information in a meaningful way.”
CHAPTER 4: MASTER MULTICHANNEL SALES
–Vikram Nangia, Senior Vice president,
Service Network Engineering,
American Express

6. From Sales Growth (Wiley, 2016)
“Digital creates an opportunity to be
relevant to customers on their terms.
Instead of interrupting them, you provide
precise and relevant information at
times the customer chooses and when
they are most receptive.”
CHAPTER 5: POWER GROWTH THROUGH DIGITAL SALES
–Margo Georgiadis,
President, Americas
Google

7. From Sales Growth (Wiley, 2016)
“In every interaction you need to ask
questions to find what’s really going on and
where we can add value. It’s a coordinated
approach with everyone who interacts with
the customer—administrative staff,
technical staff, really everyone.”
CHAPTER 6: INNOVATE DIRECT SALES
–Sabine Sagaert,
President, Business
Unit Leader, Malt
Cargil

8. From Sales Growth (Wiley, 2016)
“It’s important to ensure that in our digital channels
we can still provoke the same feelings, the
sensations and the comfort with the brand that we
used to always have in dealerships.”
CHAPTER 7: INVEST IN PARTNERS FOR MUTUAL PROFIT
–José Muñoz, Executive Vice President,
and Chairman North America, Nissan

9. From Sales Growth (Wiley, 2016)
“I’ve seen companies entering emerging
markets make two mistakes. The first is
trying to transfer the approach they use
in mature markets to these new
situations. The second is trying to
control too much.”
CHAPTER 8: SELL LIKE A LOCAL IN EMERGING MARKETS
–Mikhail Gerchuk, CEO
Eurasia,VimpelCom

10. From Sales Growth (Wiley, 2016)
“We realized that our support
people talk to customers daily
to help them resolve problems,
so we brought them into the
selling process.”
CHAPTER 9: TUNE SALES OPERATIONS FOR GROWTH
–Alain Raes, Chief
Executive, EMEA and
Chief Executive, Asia
Pacific, SWIFT

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From Sales Growth (Wiley, 2016)
“We don’t take a ‘hero’
approach to deals; the sales
teams know that if a deal
doesn’t have good technicians,
then it won’t win.”
CHAPTER 10: PAY MORE ATTENTION TO PRESALES
–Clemens Blum,
Executive Vice President
Industry Business,
Schneider Electric

12. “If sales and marketing aren’t
aligned as a one‐demand
business, it becomes
impossible to execute our
commercial strategies.”
From Sales Growth (Wiley, 2016)
CHAPTER 11: GET THE MOST OUT OF MARKETING
–Andrew Clarke,
Chief Customer
Officer,
Mars

13. From Sales Growth (Wiley, 2016)
“We realized that if we couldn’t articulate how the
value we brought was different from the
competition, we’d be down to competing on price.”
CHAPTER 12: BUILD A TECHNOLOGICAL ADVANTAGE IN SALES
–Debra Oler, Vice President &
President, US Large Customer and
LATAM Business, Grainger

14. From Sales Growth (Wiley, 2016)
“Sales performance is the
beating heart of the
company. All other
functions support the
sales force.”
CHAPTER 13: MANAGE PERFORMANCE FOR GROWTH
–Mario Weiss, Executive
Vice President, Würth

15. From Sales Growth (Wiley, 2016)
“We can’t just rely on ‘good salespeople.’ We find that
high‐quality training—really updating and exercising
customer understanding and product knowledge—makes a
huge difference.”
CHAPTER 14: BUILD SALES DNA
–Ludwig Willisch, Head of Region Americas,
President & CEO, BMW North America,
BMW

16. “To achieve profitable growth we set both revenue
goals and standard margin targets all the way
down the organization. It’s critical to have both.”
CHAPTER 15: DRIVE GROWTH FROM THE VERY TOP
–Eric V. Roegner, Chief Operating Officer, Alcoa Investment
Castings, Titanium and Engineered Products; President, Alcoa
Titanium & Engineered Products and Alcoa Defense, Alcoa
From Sales Growth (Wiley, 2016)

17. “Perhaps the most important lesson I
would pass on is to start with your
customer, the data, and the reasons for
the transformation. It is tough to argue
with data and tough to argue with what
the customers are asking you to do.”
From Sales Growth (Wiley, 2016)
CHAPTER 16: MAKE IT HAPPEN
–Mark Patterson,
SVP, Worldwide
Sales Strategy and
Operations, Cisco

18. The challenges facing today's sales executives and their
organizations continue to grow, but so do the expectations
that they will find ways to overcome them and drive consistent
sales growth.
Based on discussions with more than 200 of today's most successful global sales
leaders from a wide array of organizations and industries, Sales Growth puts the
experiences of these professionals in perspective and offers real-life examples of
how they've overcome the challenges encountered in the quest for growth.
salesgrowth.mckinsey.com