• How Frequently Does Fear Play a Part in Sales?

    • November 6, 2013
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    Fear of failing doesn’t affect everyone that sells. The elite 6% are certainly immune to it, and most of the next 20% aren’t affected too much by it either.  But the remaining 74% – the group that basically sucks – battles the fear of failing on a daily basis.

    That fear – and most salespeople aren’t even consciously aware of it – prevents them from

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  • Increase in Social Selling Yields No Improvement in KPI’s

    • November 5, 2013
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    For all the attention that these sites get, for all the salespeople who now spend their evenings perfecting their profile, adding people to their networks and asking for introductions, what hasn’t changed for the better are these key metrics:

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  • Some Truths (You May Not Like) About Relationship Selling

    • November 4, 2013
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    There are 4 possible relationship scenarios:

    Strong relationship and you have the business. 
    Strong relationship, but you don’t have the business.
    Lack of relationship and you have the business. 
    Lack of relationship and you don’t have the business. 

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  • Top 4 Reasons Salespeople Struggle to Reach Decision Makers

    • October 30, 2013
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    So here we are again, with half of the salespeople reporting that they aren’t reaching decision makers.  And why would a decision maker want to be reached if the salespeople are focused only on presentations?  And companies wonder why their sales cycles are so long, their closing percentages are so low and their margins are slip sliding away…

    Also noteworthy were these findings from the survey results:

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  • Sales Lessons from Baseball’s 2013 World Series

    • October 29, 2013
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    Instead of bad or wrong calls and decisions, I believe that it’s critical to frame decisions that don’t go our way as tough decisions rather than bad or wrong decisions.  “Bad” is a judgment and leads to debate, while “tough” forces us to move on to lessons learned and action steps.  It is far more productive.

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  • Experiment – Which Sales Approach is Really More Effective?

    • October 28, 2013
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    During the past 90 days, I have been secretly selling multiple ways.  On one third of our opportunities, I have been selling the way we teach – using a formal, structured sales process with a consultative approach.  On another third of our opportunities (inbound leads),  I have experimented with a more transactional approach, although even that has a consultative element because I can’t help but ask some good questions.  It simply means that I show and tell much earlier than normal.  With the remaining third of our leads, I have experimented with allowing the buyer to dictate the process.   My buyer-dictated approach included a little push-back because I can’t allow a potential client to take the wrong approach to a solution.  

    Want to know what happened?  Look at the table below:

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  • Selling – We’re Going Back to AIDA And You Should Be Scared

    • October 25, 2013
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    While the tools have changed, information is available in the blink of a click, and leads are in huge supply, people, at their core, have not changed the way they buy.

    Sure, they may be meeting with or speaking with salespeople later in their buying process.  Sure, they may take longer to make decisions.  Sure, they may be more diligent about spending their money.  But the one thing that has not changed is that they still have some motivation – some compelling reason – to spend their money and spend it with you instead of someone else.

    The rush to embrace inbound marketing comes with a false sense of security and a poorly grounded belief that the sale is somehow easier, faster and more demo-centric today.  

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  • The Challenge of the Challenger Sales Model – The Facts

    • October 21, 2013
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    If we are discussing a transactional sale, then he is completely correct.  Let the customer just buy what they want to buy and don’t complicate it.  But most of us in the sales consulting space don’t consult to companies with a transactional sale – that’s marketing’s job to get more people to buy!

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  • Now That You Have a Sales Process, Never Mind

    • October 16, 2013
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    Here’s the premise:  Companies that have been rigorously enforcing sales process should stop doing so because it is resulting in longer sales cycles, decreased conversion rates, unreliable forecasts and depressed margins.  So they say.  Here are some of the many problems with their premise:

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  • The Blind Side for Sales

    • October 16, 2013
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    You may remember the book and later the movie, The Blind Side. The football term refers to the offensive tackle that protects the quarterback’s blind (non-throwing) side from defensive linemen who are rushing in hopes of sacking the quarterback.

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