Analogies
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Top 10 Reasons Why Sales Don’t Grow
- August 24, 2016
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Categories: Analogies, Best Top 10 Lists, Understanding the Sales Force
Despite knowing that things don’t fix themselves, thousands of executives believe that sales problems will resolve themselves, change, and improve. Why?
That’s the key question. Because when you don’t know exactly what’s wrong, it’s much easier to remain in denial.
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The Craziest, Most Unusual Sales Selection Criteria and What Really Works
- August 9, 2016
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Categories: Analogies, Sales Data and Science, Understanding the Sales Force
It was just last month that I wrote this hugely popular article about the tech buyer who hated salespeople. In the first paragraph I mentioned that I had a crazy case of poison ivy. At about the one-week point, I started searching Google to find anything that might help ease the itching and discomfort. As you might guess, the remedies I found included some very crazy things that common sense would tell you to stay away from. Well, in the 31 years I’ve been in the sales consulting business, I have heard some very crazy sales selection criteria too. When salespeople are hired but don’t work out, executives and in some cases, entire industries, stick their head in the sand and call it normal or acceptable. Life insurance, where turnover can run as high as 90%, is a perfect example of this. Insurance industry executives say that it’s perfectly normal. However, outside of the insurance industry, most executives will try just about any remedy to stop the discomfort. Here are some of the craziest I’ve seen.
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Do You Know if Your Sales Organization is Digital or Analog?
- August 4, 2016
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Categories: Analogies, Understanding the Sales Force
During our very first conversation with a CEO, the talking path is determined by whether their company is analog or digital.
Digital companies are typically on the cutting edge in their thinking and actions, their CEO’s read content like this, are active on LinkedIn and Twitter, they are aware that selling has changed dramatically, they already have inside sales teams, playbooks, demo decks, sales enablement, online tools beyond CRM and in true digital fashion, they live by their KPI’s which count the elements of their work flow.
Analog companies are old school. Analog salespeople still pound the phones to find opportunities, and visit their prospects to close sales. Their CEO’s may have a LinkedIn account, but it probably isn’t used much, they don’t tweet, read online content like this, and most importantly, have little clue about how dramatically selling has changed in the past 5 years. They may not be aware of the migration to inside sales, typically make little use of selling tools, don’t know what a sales playbook is, and in true analog fashion, measure work product, not flow.
The difference between work flow in a digital company versus work product in the analog company is dramatic too.
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4 Critical Changes to Go from Failure to Success in Sales Today
- July 18, 2016
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Categories: Analogies, Sales Data and Science, Understanding the Sales Force
Today I’m in Florida, preparing to speak at a company’s national meeting. Like many companies, they have not only realized that selling has changed dramatically, but that their salespeople may not have adapted, developed new skills, and changed the way they sell. If you’re a regular reader, active on LinkedIn or Social Media, then you have certainly read about the many ways that selling has changed. But most senior executives haven’t put two and two together yet. They know that win rates are down and sales cycles are longer, they know it’s more difficult than ever before, they see that their salespeople are struggling to meet quotas, but they don’t realize the extent to which things have changed. There are four critical requirements which, together are the difference between success and failure.
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11 Ways You Can Quickly Increase Sales, Revenue and Profit
- July 13, 2016
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Categories: Analogies, Understanding the Sales Force
Verne Harnish is the President of Gazelles – the coaching organization that helps fast growth companies. In addition to his best-selling books, Mastering the Rockefeller Habits and his latest, Scaling Up, he writes the Weekly Insights, which I always read from top to bottom. In his June 30 insights, Verne included a quote from Greg Brenneman, author of Right Away and All at Once – 5 Steps to Transform Your Business and Enrich Your Life. Verne really liked Greg’s emphasis on how to drive sales. Greg says, “Empirical evidence shows that you get at least four times the market value for a dollar of profit that comes from revenue growth versus a dollar of profit that comes from cost reduction.”
Isn’t that a great quote? But it’s more than a quote. It’s a blueprint! Let’s discuss some of the ways that you can achieve the desired revenue growth.
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Tech Buyer Explains Why He Has No Use for Salespeople – Must Read
- July 11, 2016
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Categories: Analogies, Understanding the Sales Force
I managed to develop a case of poison ivy that is so bad it is making my blood boil. Earlier this year I wrote an article explaining why more salespeople suck than ever before. (You’ll need to read that article for the rest of this article to make any sense.) Last week, a reader provided a comment that also made my blood boil and I wrote a response to it. I think you’ll get as riled up over his comment as I did and I hope you’ll love my response, but first, read that article, return here and read his comment which I have included below, and then continue reading for my reply. You won’t be sorry!
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The Sales Success Secret Shared by Bill Walton and John Wooden
- May 24, 2016
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Categories: Analogies, Understanding the Sales Force
Bill talked about the basketball team’s practices and how they were so well scripted, incredibly challenging and the most fun. He called them symphonies! The practices were so powerful that the games, even against the best competition, were always much easier than practice. The games were so easy that the players did not need to remember plays or even think. All they had to do was execute. The team’s system of running the fast break was so well ingrained that executing was easy. This led to an 88-game winning streak!
Translating this story to selling, I need to point out that most salespeople not only hate to practice (read role-playing), but don’t believe it is necessary.
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4 Great Sales Lessons from a Notre Dame Commencement Ceremony
- May 17, 2016
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Categories: Analogies, Understanding the Sales Force
We were fortunate to be in the audience for the 2016 Notre Dame Commencement where Vice President Joe Biden, former Speaker of the House, John Boehner, and former Joint Chiefs of Staff and retired 4-Star General, Martin Dempsey were among the speakers. While all were good, Biden had one great takeaway, and the General shared 3 tips and an action step. I believe that these are all share-worthy and apply to sales and sales leadership as well, and perhaps even better than they apply to those graduating from universities.
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Effective Selling is Less about the Words and More About How You Say Them
- April 25, 2016
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Categories: Analogies, Understanding the Sales Force
Whether you are trying to convince a prospect, customer or salesperson, make sure you emphasize the how over the what and your message has a much better chance of being accepted in the spirit you intended.
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How Coyotes are at the Heart of Sales Motivation
- April 21, 2016
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Categories: Analogies, Understanding the Sales Force
My family lives west of Boston where it is not uncommon for us to see lots of squirrels, chipmunks, rabbits, deer, the family of foxes that live on our property, and on most nights, we hear coyotes. We usually hear them in the early morning hours, and always thought they were celebrating a kill. Recently, I did some research and learned that this is how coyotes greet each other when they are assembling before going out to hunt – before the kill! For those of you who don’t live in or alongside a forest, a group of wild coyotes usually looks and sounds just like in this 1-minute video that I found on YouTube. That got me thinking about the connection to sales motivation and more.
