Sales Data and Science
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How Many Authors Does it Take to Screw in a LightBulb Highlighting Selling Skills?
- September 22, 2022
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Categories: Sales Data and Science, Understanding the Sales Force
Dan Caramanico alerted me to this dubious September 19, hbr.com article that explains their 5 Skills Every Salesperson Needs to Succeed. It took three consultants to screw in the lightbulb that illuminates their five stupid-as-shit skills so let’s take a look:
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Not The Top 20 Attributes of Successful Salespeople
- August 1, 2022
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Categories: Sales Data and Science, Understanding the Sales Force
The article was 100% junk science and to use the word science would be a disservice to the word junk. Below, you’ll find five reasons why this article was so wrong, so bad, so misleading, so pitiful, and just plain stupid:
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The Top 10% of All Salespeople are 4,000% Better at this than the Bottom 10%
- March 3, 2022
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Categories: Sales Data and Science, Understanding the Sales Force
I found Dinger with his nose glued to my front bumper where some of the deer’s hair was still attached to my car. Dinger, who loves to bark at deer from the safety of our home, seemed to be saying, “Ohhhh, so THIS is what a deer smells like!”
The exact same thing happened to a salesperson I was training. It wasn’t a deer or a dog, it was about Jim’s sales aha moment.
His team was asked to send me an email with their five biggest lessons from their first six months of training. Among Jim’s top five was this one:
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62% Less Turnover and 80% Higher Quota Attainment When You Hire Salespeople the Right Way
- February 3, 2022
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Categories: Sales Data and Science, Understanding the Sales Force
If you have a sales cycle of several months or more, subsidize your salespeople until they are self-sufficient, and in early 2022 it takes 3 months to find a suitable candidate, you are screwed before you start! Once you finally identify a decent candidate, you have hours, not days or weeks, to make a decision and pull the trigger and what’s the worst that can happen? Six months or more pass before you realize that salesperson won’t make it and you not only wasted a half year’s salary, you lost six months, have an empty territory or vertical, and have to start over from the beginning!
It doesn’t have to be that way and here’s why.
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Data: The Top 10% of All Salespeople are 4200% Better at This
- September 7, 2021
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Categories: Sales Data and Science, Understanding the Sales Force
My wife and I entered the small jewelry shop and were greeted – not with a warm welcome – but with a matter of fact “my name is…and I’m the owner…and I created everything in the store” which was followed by fifteen minutes of non-stop presentation of everything she created.
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A Key Competency That Differentiates Top Sales Performers From Posers
- July 21, 2021
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Categories: Books, Movies, Theater and Television, Sales Data and Science, Understanding the Sales Force
The bottom 50% of all salespeople are posers too. In an article last week we discussed how data can help you hire the ideal salespeople.
In that article I shared a top/bottom analysis where the top performers were 100% more effective reaching decision makers than the bottoms. Below I’ve shared another top/bottom analysis with different findings.
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A Home Run – How the Right Data Can Help You Hire Your Ideal Salespeople
- July 13, 2021
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Categories: Baseball and Sales, Sales Data and Science, Understanding the Sales Force
From time to time I’ve posted some compelling top/bottom sales team analyses using sales assessment data from Objective Management Group (OMG). From nearly 250 data points in 21 Sales Core Competencies, we identify the specific findings and scores that differentiate a company’s top 3 performers from their bottom 3 non-performers.
There are several reasons for doing this:
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Data – Top Salespeople are 631% More Effective at This Than Weak Salespeople (The Bob Chronicles – Part 3)
- January 26, 2021
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Categories: Bob Chronicles, Sales Data and Science, Understanding the Sales Force
Bob is up to his old tricks. If you don’t know who Bob is, you can learn about his sales misadventures in this article on not properly selling a trial, and this article about not selling value. Both articles are of the must-read variety.
So what did Bob do to piss me off this week?
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Are Sales Managers Coaching More Frequently Now That Everyone is at Their Desks?
- January 14, 2021
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Categories: Sales Data and Science, Understanding the Sales Force
We know how sales managers were doing before the pandemic. It wasn’t very good and I wrote about it in November which had data for the last 10 years. What do you think would be different if I filtered the data to show only the last six months of 2020, the time during which sales managers should have already made changes? Do you think it got better, worse, or stayed the same?
Let’s find out.
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New Data – Most Sales Managers are a Disaster When it Comes to Coaching
- November 16, 2020
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Categories: Sales Data and Science, Understanding the Sales Force
My article about Crappy Sales Managers discussed the low recommendation rates for sales management candidates, why they are so low, and the bigger repercussions of the problem. Speaking of deeper dives, today’s article takes a deeper dive into one of the problems identified in the prior article; crappy sales coaching skills.
