Dinger the Dog
-
The Key to Account Retention: Be More Like Dinger
- December 4, 2025
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Categories: Dinger the Dog, Understanding the Sales Force
On a typical day, our 8-year-old Golden Doodle, Dinger, chills on the floor, ignoring the sofa like it’s yesterday’s news. But when our 23-year-old son Michael came home for Thanksgiving, and the 5- and 8-year-old cousins crashed the couch party? Boom—Dinger’s suddenly sprawled out, staking his claim. Not for pets or playtime, but pure territorial fire: “This spot’s mine with my bro, outsiders.”
From the sofa to the boardroom, it’s a wake-up call for salespeople. Stop taking clients for granted and start acting like Dinger—territorial, competitive, irreplaceable. Retention isn’t passive; it’s proactive hustle that keeps competitors off your turf. -
Whipped Cream! The Easiest Way to Lower Sales Resistance
- February 13, 2024
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Categories: Analogies, Dinger the Dog, Understanding the Sales Force
Most sales training fails to address the single most important condition of a sales cycle – resistance – thereby rendering the sales training semi-useless. When resistance appears, it does not matter if the sales process, methodology, tactics and strategies are good or even great, unless salespeople are equally great at lowering the resistance.
-
The 10 Avoidable Things That Occur When Salespeople Don’t Talk about Money
- September 27, 2023
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Categories: Dinger the Dog, Understanding the Sales Force
The table above uses data from Objective Management Group (OMG), which has assessed close to 2.4 million salespeople. The data shows that 43% of all salespeople are uncomfortable talking about money and while the top 10% have no such problem, 71% of the bottom 10% are too uncomfortable to talk about money. These are the 10 things that happen when salespeople are uncomfortable with the finance-specific milestones of the sales process:
-
Rainforests and Torn ACL’s Provide Insight into Effective Selling
- July 17, 2023
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Categories: Analogies, Dinger the Dog, Understanding the Sales Force
Only Dave Kurlan can take a torn ACL, rainforests and climate change and use those as analogies for sales effectiveness!
-
Do You Know the Accurate Reason Why a Salesperson Is Not Performing?
- April 20, 2022
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Categories: Dinger the Dog, Understanding the Sales Force
How quickly can you determine why a salesperson is failing?
Dinger loves to play catch with his ball. He has seven of them but loves his white ball the most. When we’re out playing catch and I point to a ball and say, “there it is” or “right there” or “get it” he just can’t seem to find it! Dinger has good listening skills but his ability to see the obvious isn’t very good.
Such was the case earlier this week when a surprised client wanted an explanation for why one of their salespeople, who does not perform very well, scored well on his evaluation. “How can someone who is not my top performer score better than someone who is my top performer?”
That sounded like a challenge so I said, “Let’s go!”
-
My Dog Has Better Listening Skills Than Most Salespeople and I’ll Prove It
- December 10, 2020
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Categories: Dinger the Dog, Understanding the Sales Force
Prospects don’t pay a lot of attention so the less you say the better. It helps them listen and comprehend more of what you share with them when you use fewer words. But prospects aren’t the only ones who don’t listen. Salespeople don’t listen very well either. As a matter of fact, my dog has better listening skills than most salespeople because my dog knows what to listen for. Don’t believe me? I’ll prove it in the video below.
-
Which Salespeople are Easier to Train – Millennials or Veteran Salespeople?
- April 19, 2017
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Categories: Dinger the Dog, Sales Data and Science, Understanding the Sales Force
We brought home a puppy and we had him completely housebroken in 4 days. He’s really smart and we’ve done this before, a combination that makes it nearly impossible to screw up. To see him go to the door and touch it with his little paw, whimper when he is in his crate, go outside and do his business, and run back to the door is great. But it got me wondering, why is training a puppy relatively fast and easy while it is so much harder and takes so much longer to train salespeople?
-
Leads are Making Salespeople Lazier Than Old Golden Retrievers
- July 7, 2014
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Categories: Dinger the Dog, Understanding the Sales Force
We all know that the introduction beats the crap out of the lead follow-up 95 times out of 100. If that’s the case, why are so many salespeople spending all of their time attempting to generate and follow-up on the leads that produce results 5 times out of 100?
