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The Irony of Free Passes for Under Performing Salespeople
- October 21, 2022
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
A typical US sales team consists of 15 people, including a Sales VP, 2 Regional Sales Managers, and 12 salespeople. Of course, there are exponentially larger and smaller sales teams, but this is the version that we most frequently encounter. This team will have no more than 3 performing salespeople, another 3 who sometimes hit their numbers, and 6 who chronically under-perform.
Let’s assume that the salespeople who are ranked 10-12 are not just under-performers, but pathetically ineffective salespeople. At the end of the year, they receive their annual review – the equivalent of an arrest and release – and are back on the street to underperform for another year, making the company both both the victim and the enabler. This is insanity!
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The Bob Chronicles – The Difference Between Selling Skills and Effectiveness
- October 12, 2022
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Today a client asked me to explain the difference between skills and effectiveness. You won’t find the answer by doing a Google search as that search turns up exactly nothing on the subject. This article will discuss the similarity between symptoms/causes and skills/effectiveness. Do you remember Bob, the subject of many articles and my favorite weak salesperson to write about?
Bob strikes again!
I’ve written 10 articles about Bob and everyone says that the Bob series is their favorite.
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How to Hire the Right Salespeople Using This Jeep vs. Infiniti Analogy
- October 7, 2022
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Usually, the overall score, relative strength of a candidate’s capabilities, and recommendation are more important than any specific scores. Usually. But with the assessment of Mary, it was an entirely different story.
Let’s review the scores and findings from Mary’s OMG Sales Candidate Assessment. She had really good scores. Really good. Her Sales Percentile was 82 so she was stronger than 82% of the salespeople in the world. So was OMG wrong? Why did the company hire her? Why did she fail?
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How Your Sales Team Can Double its Win Rate in a Recession
- September 26, 2022
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
A client was having great success using OMG (Objective Management Group) to assess their sales candidates and they assumed the sales candidate assessment was the only thing OMG offered. When they learned that our core offering is evaluating their existing sales team they became excited about what that would mean for addressing their two biggest selling challenges.
One of their issues was their 20% win rate was much lower than they thought it should be and they believed their salespeople needed some refresher training on closing. They also had a large number of opportunities stalled in the pipeline and they believed that training on more effective techniques to conduct follow up calls would help.
In this article, I thought it might help if I share a bit of what they learned about their sales team.
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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
- Category: 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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Is 28 Years Long Enough for a Sales Assessment Trial ?
- September 19, 2022
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Isn’t 28 years long enough for us to prove ourselves?
Clearly OMG is not for everyone. Companies that sell at the lowest price, companies that are the brand leaders, and companies that have a transactional sale don’t need to hire good salespeople because their salespeople are order-takers. But what about everyone else?
After consistently proving its legendary predictive accuracy making it a no-brainer to use OMG, there are five possible reasons why companies didn’t use OMG to assess their sales candidates over the past 28 years:
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10 Sales Attributes That Don’t Differentiate Top Salespeople from Bottom Salespeople
- September 12, 2022
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
I’ve written several articles (same as always) about OMG (Objective Management Group) Tailored Fits/Proofs of Concept where I analyze the differences between a company’s top producers and bottom producers to identify the findings/scores that differentiate their tops from their bottoms. That is the science of sales performance and sales selection and the last time I wrote about it was in this article from February of 2022. For comparison, the most recent example of a blowhard writing junk science without being scientific about what top salespeople do differently can be found in this article from August of 2022.
Today’s article (new article) will go in the opposite direction and discuss strengths and skills that don’t differentiate tops from bottoms.
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Found: A Great Article About How Important Salespeople Are
- September 7, 2022
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Yesterday, although I wasn’t looking for it, I found my laptop charger that I misplaced a few weeks ago. Today, I found a shirt I wasn’t looking for. It was purchased in May, but I had forgotten about it. Later today, a post appeared in my LinkedIn feed and although I wasn’t looking for an article by a physician, I read it and am so glad I did.
Would you like to know what I loved about that article? I’ll share, but first, consider that…
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How Closing a Tough Sale is Nearly Identical to Hitting a Home Run
- August 25, 2022
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
You’re watching a baseball game on television and the announcer says, “And here’s the pitch and there’s a long drive hit deep to left field and it’s deep, it’s up, it’s way back and GONE!!!!! Home Run Dave Kurlan!” OK, the announcer never said the Dave Kurlan part. Not even close. I was a singles hitter. And I never played at a level that had announcers. So there’s that. For entertainment sake, watch this classic 2-minute clip of Robert Redford as Roy Hobbs hitting the magical home run at the end of the movie, The Natural, one of my all-time favorite baseball movies right up there with The Sandlot and Field of Dreams.
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Which is Worse – The Boston Red Sox or Your Sales Team?
- August 23, 2022
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
The construction of the Red Sox roster is simply a Stupid as Shit Strategy or SaSS. Use of the word strategy means that it’s intentional and is a disservice to the word stupid!
Sales team construction usually lacks formal strategy and that suggests something accidental is at play. We tend to see the “we already had these salespeople” and then “these are the new salespeople who were willing to work for us.” New is a relative term as the newest 30% of the team continues to churn when and if they find candidates.