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Your Salespeople – First Impressions
- June 9, 2006
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Would you like to get sick? Try this exercise. Have your salespeople write down the exact words they use when transitioning out of rapport and into the first sales call. What exactly do they say to their prospects to position themselves for the first appointment.
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Lights Out Sales Performance
- June 6, 2006
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Don’t let your salespeople behave like government employees. Make them take some responsibility or tell them they can go and work for the government where their behavior will be appreciated.
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Sales and Sales Management One Liners
- June 4, 2006
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
In this article, my one-liners are exactly that. MY ONE LINERS – favorite originals I challenge my audiences with. Here are my top ten:
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Management by Baseball
- June 3, 2006
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Just six months after my book, Baseline Selling – How to Become a Sales Superstar by Using What You Already Know about the Game of Baseball was published, Jeff Angus published his new book, Management by Baseball. The experts are saying that this book is a homerun too!
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First Impressions
- June 3, 2006
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Management must do a better job reviewing what is said by their salespeople to ensure consistency, impact, the integrity of the value proposition and revenue. Be sure your messaging is consistent!
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Expectations and Sales Performance
- May 30, 2006
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Where can you go and experience tremendous heat, lots of walking and extremely long lines? Where can you go to overhear husbands and wives snapping at each other over their kids’ behavior while their kids are generally too tired to misbehave? Where can you go to experience all of this yet still have these same people return home to talk enthusiastically about their trip?
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Outdated and Useless in Selling
- May 25, 2006
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Speaking of outliving its usefulness, how about sales managers allowing salespeople to underperform? Are we truly that desperate for warm bodies that underperforming salespeople get to remain in their jobs while anyone else in a company who underperforms gets a pink slip?
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The Sales Force Evaluation – Not Everyone Appreciates the Findings
- May 23, 2006
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
In the May 13 post, More Hirable Sales Candidates, there were some controversial comments posted by a disgruntled sales candidate who didn’t get a job and blamed the assessment. As long as we’re on the subject of disgruntled, perhaps we should discuss the very small minority of clients who actually dislike the findings of the sales force evaluation. It happens very infrequently, only two or three times each year; but when it does, there are usually similar circumstances:
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More Hirable Sales Candidates
- May 13, 2006
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Objective Management Group Inc.’s latest statistics show that when a company assesses all of it’s sales candidates as the first step in the process, they will net as many as 50% more hirable candidates. When companies assessed their final candidates, those who they had already interviewed by phone or face to face, the average percentage of hirable candidates was around 20%. When they assessed all candidates prior to any interview, they percentage of hirable candidates was closer to 30%.
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Put Offs that Sound OK
- May 13, 2006
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Your salespeople come back with good news and tell you that they spoke with the decision maker of the big opportunity they’ve been working on. They report that the decision maker told them they’re very interested in moving forward but want to wait until the close of their fiscal year (90 days away) or want to first complete a project they’re currently working on (60 days) before discussing further. Your salespeople are psyched. They try to get you psyched. You get psyched.