Who We Are

Kurlan & Associates, Inc. was founded in 1985 by Dave Kurlan, a renowned expert in sales force assessments, training and strategic growth strategies. For over 35 years, the firm has helped companies with sales team evaluations, sales process optimizations, sales and sales leadership training, and sales transformation.

The management and senior consultants at Kurlan & Associates bring over 125 years of both domestic and international experience to clients. We pride ourselves on providing unprecedented services to all sizes of businesses from small entrepreneurial companies to Fortune 500 corporations. We have earned recognition for our expertise spanning over 200 industries for our cutting-edge and results-oriented approach to sales growth.

We Love What We DoWe bring decades of proven industry expertise in driving our sales development approach.

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Why Choose Kurlan

We Get Results

Our experts are focused on the solutions required to help achieve your desired results.

Highly Experienced

Regardless of the situation for which you need help,  chances are, we have seen it and solved it before.

Team Engagement

We get your sales team engaged.  Whether it’s your salespeople, sales managers, or sales leaders, and whether it’s training or coaching them, we will create change through engagement.

Expert Role Plays

We demonstrate what good conversations should sound like by extensive use of unscripted role plays and nobody is better at that then the trainers at Kurlan.

The management and senior consultants at Kurlan & Associates bring over 125 years of both domestic and international experience to clients. We pride ourselves on providing unprecedented services to all sizes of businesses from small entrepreneurial companies to Fortune 500 corporations.

Our philosophy is to provide each client with a unique solution that is customized to achieve their desired outcome. Depending on the client’s size, industry and complexity of issues, each Kurlan engagement is designed to meet their specific needs.

All of our strategic partners must have one primary objective – help us make our clients stronger. That’s it. Our services are laser-focused on sales development. Our partners provide the core competencies that we don’t. They must fit with our clients’ needs and play well with the others in the sandbox so all of our actions are unified in your interest. You’ll see that whether it’s a tool, application or consulting firm, we have already done the due diligence so that you don’t have to.

We are renowned experts in sales force evaluations, sales process, training and strategic growth strategies

1,300 Clients
Served
200 Industries
Served
35 Years
Established
55 Awards

Our White Papers

Understanding the Sales Force
  • 10 Unfavorable Selling Conditions That Prevent Sales Success

    When you encounter unfavorable selling conditions, refuse to accept them.  This isn’t about moving forward with a couple of favorable conditions, it’s about NOT moving forward unless the conditions become more favorable. Whether or not you wish to admit it, the truth is that when the conditions don’t favor you, the business isn’t coming to you.

    March 25, 2024
  • Homicide Detective Makes Best Case for Sales Process

    The author admits that until he conducted his “cold-case investigation” of the New Testament, he was an atheist who always followed the evidence to find the truth.  Similarly, a lot of prospects are also non-believers – not necessarily in Jesus – in your product or service. As I read and learned about the author’s methods for uncovering truth, or proof, I felt that salespeople could learn a lot about proof of concept, presenting facts, backing up claims, return on investment, and offering credible testimonials.  That’s not nearly the analogy I’m going to make.

    Wallace shared a story in the Forward about the time he was shot by a criminal who was on parole, and was not allowed to have a firearm.  Up until the moment of the shooting, Wallace believed that a bullet-proof vest would stop a bullet.  In the moment of the shooting, he believed in the bullet proof vest.  At that moment his belief changed from “belief that” to “belief in.”  That was the analogy he wished to apply to the gospels. He wondered if he could find the evidence to replace faith (belief that the miracles occurred) with proof (belief in both Jesus and the miracles).

    That also happens to be my analogy from the book.  Most salespeople believe that a sales process can help them succeed while the very best salespeople believe in their sales process.

    March 21, 2024
  • New Data: Top Salespeople are 7562% Better at Winning RFPs

    RFPs aren’t going away, and there are two ways that salespeople can approach them, the companies that write them, and the people associated with them:

    Passively – in this capacity, they are nothing more than facilitators, waiting for an RFP to drop in their inbox, so they can get it off to the folks who write the proposals.  When complete, they email the proposal back to procurement and hope to win.
    Proactively – in this capacity, they regularly meet and develop relationships with the appropriate CxO’s and Sr VP’s of manufacturing, engineering, design, IT, IS, Finance, Marketing, HR, R&D, Operations, Facilities, Fulfillment, Distribution, Sales, Learning and Development, Enablement, and any other organizational head they might possibly sell to.  They become a resource, an asset, a partner and not only help to write the specifications of the next RFP, but write the specs in such a way that they are the only company that can win the business.

    It seems obvious, doesn’t it?  Option 1 is stupid and Option 2 is brilliant.  But if option 2 is so brilliant and obvious, then why do so many salespeople become so defensive and dug in to option 1?

    March 13, 2024
  • Opportunity Blindness – What’s in Your Sales Pipeline?

    Some observations:

    The data represents the forecast and funnel for 7 sales teams.
    The gaps (A & G) are backwards and should say 72% (A) and 41% (G).
    The quarterly forecast (C) is 58% short of the quarterly target (D).
    The current closable opportunities (B) are 77% short of the forecast (C) and 90% short of the quarterly target (D).
    Add columns G and H and together, all of those columns represent pathetic, old news.

    The question that should be asked is, “What can we do about this?”

    We should be able to answer that question by looking at column F but that’s not possible.  Can you see why?

    Outside of telling us that there isn’t enough in the funnel, the data in column F doesn’t answer the question that must always be asked:  Is the pipeline viable?

    We know the assigned value of the pipeline but we don’t know the answers to these additional ten important factors:

    February 28, 2024

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