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How Salespeople Contribute to Losing Accounts
- February 8, 2007
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
I received some really lousy customer service this week and it perfectly demonstrates exactly what salespeople can do and not do to lose their good accounts.
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Top 10 Factors for Getting Salespeople to Overachieve
- February 4, 2007
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
There isn’t a single key to overachieving, so I’ll list my top 10 factors for helping salespeople overachieve. I’m sure I’ve written about each of these topics at some point in the past, but I’ll put them all together here.
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Managing Salespeople That Work in a Remote Location
- February 1, 2007
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
One of the newer findings in our assessment is whether a sales candidate can succeed in a remote location. Two of the many items that make up this finding are (1) whether a candidate can work independently and (2) whether a candidate can work without supervision. For some reason, these two findings have confused people – a lot – so I’ll explain the difference here.
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CEO Alert – What’s Wrong with Your Sales Management Team
- January 25, 2007
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Yesterday, I was the keynote speaker at an Executive Luncheon, addressing around 175 CEO’s. It was a typical audience that responded in a typical way – except for a couple of them. One attendee (not a CEO) wanted to know how his large company could be more effective getting people who appeared to be a good fit to actually succeed. He also said that while they wanted to improve in that area, he wasn’t willing to change their processes, tools, sequence, management involvement, etc. Consider this analogy: You’re sick, taking medicine and the drugs aren’t working. The Doctor suggests changing meds to help you him get better and he prefers to continue using the drugs that aren’t helping. Stupid? Only if we grade him.
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Top 5 Reasons Why Sales Managers Don’t See Their Salespeople Objectively?
- January 10, 2007
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
A question was posed as to why sales managers don’t view their salespeople the same as we view their salespeople when we evaluate them. It’s a great question too. And I wish I had the answer. I have some theories…
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Salespeople – Vacations and the Lack of Urgency
- January 4, 2007
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Take the recent holiday for example. The successful salespeople closed a ton of business right before Christmas. The unsuccessful salespeople left a lot of business on the table in December, expecting to have giant Januaries, and today may be thinking February will be the month.
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Evaluating the Sales Force – Reasonable Expectations
- December 19, 2006
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
It’s to take a real look under the hood of the sales pipeline and determine its quality. It’s to uncover hidden problems that prevent the sales force from achieving its potential and so much more. It’s to provide more important, relevant information than “did we screw up five years ago?”
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10 Reasons for HR and Sales Management to Hire Winning Salespeople Using Assessments
- December 15, 2006
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
There are two variables that have a huge impact on your success using an assessment in the hiring process. The first is which assessment you use. The second is where in the process you use it.
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Entering Sales – a Ten-Year Old’s Perspective
- December 11, 2006
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
The collection of beliefs, possessed by your salespeople can either support or sabotage their outcomes. It’s important to know and understand their beliefs so that you can better understand why they get the outcomes they get. Objective Management Group, in its analysis of each salesperson, uncovers up to 64 self-limiting beliefs.
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Sales Force Accountability
- December 10, 2006
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
For those of you who are afraid to hold their salespeople accountable, let this lesson prove that the worst that can happen is already happening. In response to the likely, “What if it backfires?” question, how can it backfire any worse than most of your sales force making excuses and underperforming.