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.
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.
I had the pleasure of working with Dennis Connelly over the past year in various capacities. Dennis is one of the finest Executive Performance Coaches I have ever partnered with. He led an excellent onsite workshop for our entire sales team this past summer, gaining their trust and confidence in just two short days. He continues to work tirelessly in developing their coaching and sales skills. With his training and support, we surpassed our sales goals for 2023, and Q124 is off to an exceptional start. Lastly, Dennis is currently my Executive Coach. He blends his professional experience with the right touch of academics to help me work through complex issues while helping me focus on the things that matter as a senior leader. If you are in need of an executive coach, a sales coach, or a talented facilitator, Dennis Connelly is your go-to person.
Dennis Gradillas
Operations & Sales Expertise,I am a member of the Kurlan fan club. Dave has built a tremendous body of work and a large following because of the durability and reliability of his approaches. Dave has helped us grow. We are winning twice as much business today with fewer salespeople and 25 percent less proposal dollars quoted at higher margins. We are turning away work at about 10% because we are above our capacity and we have the strongest backlog that we have had in several years. All of this with one of our primary markets still being impaired by COVID and our costs facing sizable inflation headwinds. Dave’s training has helped us grow confidence, sell better and sell more with less effort and resource burden.
Mark Steele
President & CEO, Craftsmen Industries, Inc.Thank You! Just thought I’d let you know I started a new role recently and it was all thanks to the training that I took over the few months on the basic and advanced courses. After going through them a few times (I have to admit I love the Ghostbusters references to Compelling Reasons) they’ve given me a new lease of life. Just wanted to say thanks for all your help over the past few months – much appreciated!
Neil
Enjoying and embracing. I am really enjoying and embracing the training. I love the sessions and they are really helping me. Thanks!
Jeff
Great stuff! Thank you for these sessions. I enjoyed the modules, roles plays and learned some great techniques. I took away some valuable lessons as well as great reminders and I look forward to future courses.
Kate
Much Better Than Prior Training. In my previous organization, I engaged with and brought in a sales methodology training, and have seen many. Baseline Selling is, without question, the most engaging, energetic, and relevant. Your articulation of SOB and how something seemingly innocuous can have significant impact is brilliant and really resonated with me and will change how I coach team members. Thanks again for the training and I’m excited for where this can go!
Justin
Gold. The visual display of skipping discovery and differentiating steps…gold! Thank you for helping us get better.
Jim
The Biblical Sales Force Part 5 – Consequences and Some Baseball
There are differences between the laws in Deuteronomy and the requirements in the strategic plan, with the major difference being consequences. God’s remedy for many crimes was getting stoned to death, while leadership’s remedy for failing the requirements in the strategic plan is to ignore the crime. Sell another day versus Death.
April 24, 2025
Poison Ivy and 2 Powerful Lessons for Hiring Salespeople
Paul McCartney hoped it would work out with Linda in the band, and while Wings were very successful, let’s be honest. Linda would not have been hired to perform on vocals or keyboard in any other band – not even a local wedding band! Why? She was a photographer and shouldn’t have quit her day job.
We see nepotism in every family owned business where the founder/CEO/President gets the entire unqualified family involved. The family learns to adequately perform in most of the roles but the brother in charge of sales, the nephew managing major accounts, the daughter in account management, and the wife doing estimates just aren’t cutting it.
Let’s not forget the Hope part of this…
Hope is used when sales leaders interview and select sales candidates. They decide that from among the following 10 characteristics and qualifiers, the candidate:
April 18, 2025
My Key to Building a Strong, Sustainable, Sales Pipeline
Building a strong, sustainable pipeline requires not only commitment and discipline from salespeople, it also requires commitment and discipline from their sales leaders who cannot allow them to give up, give in, or take short cuts. While excellence involves advanced sales training skills, extended practice sessions and coaching, the desire to improve is the most important element.
April 16, 2025
Shania Twain’s Lesson for Sales Leaders Who Want to Hire Stronger Salespeople
Instead of seeking industry experience, a degree, and related characteristics, sales leaders must vet for the ability to succeed at selling to your specific audience, at your price point, and against your competition. That one difference takes the entire sourcing, screening, vetting, interviewing, selecting, hiring, and on-boarding process and turns it upside down. Different tools. Different process. Different sourcing. Different questions. Different answers. Different results.
April 14, 2025
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Request
a Callback
To request more information, please use the form provided. We look forward to your message and will call you back shortly. Thank you.