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Sales Competencies and Your Competition
- November 6, 2008
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Companies don’t invest enough time and energy being strategic and tactical about competition. The approach shouldn’t be economic as much as it should be tactical. Your approach should revolve around neutralizing your competition as opposed to being competitive with your competition.
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Sales Process – What Have You Gotten Away From?
- November 5, 2008
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
There are about 45 executives in the room, many of them clients of Kurlan Associates. At two of the tables are clients that have been with the firm for so long, twenty years or so, that they have become great friends and two of them have become business partners at Objective Management Group.
One of the first exercises that the group participated in was Cash Optimization Strategies, and the first part of that exercise was Ways to Improve Your Sales Cycle.
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Misleading Statistics and Hiring the Wrong Sales Candidates
- November 3, 2008
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
The November issue of Fortune Small Business has an article called Entrepreneurial Myth Busters. FSB has Ken Blanchard (consultant )and Scott Shane (academic) go head to head answering questions about small businesses and entrepreneurship. While Blanchard provides insightful answers based on his years of experience working in, consulting to and writing about business, Shane provides surprising answers based on data. I’m sure that if you read the article you’ll agree that Shane’s data lead to some very misleading conclusions. Academics who haven’t been “out there” can fall in love with their data!
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Your Salespeople Call on the Wrong People and Expect Them to Buy
- October 30, 2008
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
I speak quite often to groups comprised primarily of CEO’s and Presidents. Yesterday was a good example of that, with about 100 people in the audience. There were 35 No-Shows, most of whom did not have the title of President or CEO.
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What Have Your Salespeople Been Listening To?
- October 28, 2008
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
In my position as a sales development thought leader and expert I get to hear what many salespeople in many industries are encountering for resistance. In the last few weeks I’ve heard way too much about deals getting suspended due to spending freezes. Have your salespeople been hearing this?
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Cyclical Economy – What Does it Mean for the Sales Force?
- October 23, 2008
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Cyclical. The first problem with cyclical is that I don’t know how to spell it. I suppose I could have also tried spelling it “cyclicle”. That version got red underlined in red in my blog editor too. My next issue with a cyclical economy is making sense of it. Here’s my attempt:
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Who Are Better Salespeople – Men or Women?
- October 23, 2008
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Tom Peters said women are better salespeople than men.
I wrote that Objective Management Group’s data proves that a greater percentage of women are stronger than men.
Here is how that data breaks down:
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Tom Peters – Sales Excellence
- October 22, 2008
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
I see this all the time. Presidents lamenting over their sales force when, so often, the Presidents are the problem!
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Management’s Guide to the Top 10 Differences Between Sales Winners and Losers
- October 19, 2008
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Friday I wrote this post and today I wrote this longer article about the Top 10 Differences between Sales Winners and Sales Losers.
This post is the sales management version of the article referenced above.
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Sales Force Motivation – Learn From the Red Sox Miraculous Comeback
- October 17, 2008
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
When salespeople have plenty of opportunities and have experienced plenty of difficult sales cycles, it’s not such a big deal when an important opportunity dies. But if it’s a salesperson that has very few quality opportunities or one who hasn’t experienced very many deals that went sour, they react – badly – by getting quite emotional, discouraged, and upset.