MaHui Book Giveaway | What Core Capabilities Does a Sales Lead Need?

This edition of MaHui's Book Giveaway features a special recommendation: Sales Lead — the new book by Guo Qing (Lao K), CEO of Oak Lawn Technology, a MaHui portfolio company. The importance of sales in any company's business loop goes without saying, and the sales lead is the soul of that operation. Before founding Oak Lawn, Lao K was a former member of Meituan's top decision-making body, the S-team, and former executive chair of Meituan's Sales Committee. Inside Meituan, he was widely recognized as someone who could win tough battles — he achieved the legendary feat of five promotions in eight years, and led Meituan's hotel business to become the world's largest by room nights in Q2 2020... a sales lead with a sterling track record.

In this book, Lao K defines the sales lead as follows: A sales lead is a sales leader with high commercial acumen, fundamentally distinct from an ordinary sales leader. While an ordinary sales leader focuses on "doing (Do)," a sales lead must think about "how to do it (How)" and even "why do it this way (Why)." An ordinary sales leader can be a specialist; a sales lead must be a general or even a commander-in-chief.

The reality is that whether at startups or growth-stage companies, a common challenge is finding and developing excellent sales leads. Drawing on more than 20 years in the field, Lao K systematically explains how to become an outstanding sales lead across four dimensions: defining roles and responsibilities, core competencies, career paths, and common pitfalls.

For example, the four key abilities a sales lead should possess: understanding the full business landscape and company strategy, formulating sharp sales strategies, cross-functional collaboration, and building sales organizations and talent pipelines; the competency upgrade map for sales teams at different stages; the BBS three-layer theory... As DiDi CEO Will Cheng put it: "This book has practice, reflection, and theory." Meituan's former COO A Gan also said bluntly: "This book represents thinking forged from Meituan's direct sales and scientific operations methodologies, with a clear 'business lead' perspective."

As Lao K himself writes in the book: He hopes that through his limited understanding, he can contribute modestly by abstracting some universal principles to help sales leads make fewer of the mistakes he's made, avoid fewer of the pitfalls he's fallen into, and reduce the waste of their own energy and organizational resources. After all, the farther from failure, the closer to success.

Book Giveaway

Leave a comment below telling us why you want to read this book. Within one week of this post's publication, the top three commenters by likes will receive a copy of Sales Lead from Source Code Capital.