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How to Master the Sales Discovery Call
- April 11, 2025
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Good salespeople know that the key to a sales process that will result in a sale, is uncovering their prospect’s compelling reason to buy. Period. Not “period” as in that’s all they have to do, but “period”, as in nothing else in the process will matter if they don’t uncover the compelling reason to buy. Easy (to state). For most salespeople, even the good ones, it’s not that easy. How can they determine if what they heard is actually compelling? Is it compelling to the prospect? Is it compelling to the salesperson? Do those two determinations have equal value?
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Executive Leadership is the Key to a Lasting and Successful Sales Transformation
- April 6, 2025
- Posted by: Kurlan & Associates, Inc.
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
A customized and optimized sales process should be a tipping point but most companies screw up the opportunity by believing that after the introduction to the sales team they are done. Unfortunately, it is only the beginning, not the end, and unless there is proper governance on required changes, nothing will actually change.
Sales Transformation occurs with Sales Process, but only when there is Governance on the associated requirements.
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Use a Custom Sales Process to Increase Sales by More Than 28%
- April 3, 2025
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
I could wax poetically about the many benefits of a sales process/scorecard that meets the requirements for sales best practices but suffice to say that with proper customization, integration into CRM, introduction to the sales team, utilization, governance and coaching in the context of your sales process by sales leadership, I can guarantee the following outcomes based on four decades of experience with such things:
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How To Double Your Sales Pipeline in 30 Days
- March 31, 2025
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Most salespeople who entered sales more than fifteen years ago and had to prospect for new business, have forgotten how to do it and if we are being honest, may not have been very willing or effective at this when they were expected to prospect.
Most new salespeople never had to make cold calls as that was delegated to BDRs and SDRs who have universally sucked at prospecting, averaging just 1.5 new meetings scheduled per week.
Yes, it’s that bad.
What’s worse is that most companies don’t consider pipeline quantity and quality the biggest challenge in the sales organization! Most would say it’s the low win rate or the percentage of opportunities that stall in the pipeline. Why do you think that is?
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Deadly Negotiation Strategies – The Bob Chronicles Part 8
- March 24, 2025
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
I asked Bob why he thought negotiations would be required and he told me that his prospect said they didn’t want to spend more than $50,000. You read that right. He knew they didn’t want to spend more than $50,000 and he proposed a solution for more than $1,000,000!
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10 Rules for Successful Sales Training and Revenue Growth
- March 17, 2025
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
The truth is that even the most media-rich, entertaining, engaging, memorable sales training can’t come close to holding people’s attention when compared to a series like “24.”
That’s why it is imperative that companies follow my top 10 rules for a successful sales training outcomes:
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10 Cringy Things Salespeople Do and 7 Reasons Why They Do It
- March 13, 2025
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Salespeople are responsible for a lot of cringy selling. In this article I share what I believe are the ten things salespeople do to elicit cringy reactions from their prospects and the top seven reasons for why half of all salespeople cause the cringe.
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New Data: My Top 5 Unacceptable Sales Performance Findings
- February 14, 2025
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
The report says, “87% reported that their sales teams were having difficulty meeting or exceeding quota.” That is so much worse than what has been reported in recent years when the numbers were closer to 55%-60%. This is problematic for more than the obvious reason. When salespeople aren’t hitting quotas, companies need to hire more salespeople, which increases the cost of recruiting, salaries and benefits, not to mention the costs associated with hiring additional sales managers that won’t coach up their salespeople. It also reinforces a culture of mediocrity because when not hitting quota is normal and expected, more people don’t hit quota because their jobs are clearly not in jeopardy.
The next finding explains the previous finding.
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6 Benefits From Incorporating C2MPE in Your Selling Efforts
- February 10, 2025
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
You could say that the Philadelphia Eagles showed up for Super Bowl LIX with tremendous urgency to win. You could also say that the Kanas City Chiefs made it clear that they lacked that same urgency.
While the single most important thing for salespeople to achieve in a discovery call is urgency, you can’t tell a prospect that they have urgency, you can’t manufacture urgency, and you can’t fake urgency.
Urgency arises from a combination of the following five factors which together, I call C2MPE:
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How Indecisiveness Undermines Sales and Sales Leadership Effectiveness
- February 1, 2025
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
If you are driving down the road in your car, looking at your phone, fiddling with your radio, looking at people walking on the sidewalk, weaving in and out of traffic or speeding because you’re in a hurry, you are probably not a very good driver and bad things will happen.
If you have a pile of files on your desk, a to-do list that must be scrolled to read, past-due proposals, and an empty pipeline, you are probably not very well organized, don’t manage your time very well, and likely behind on quota.
We’re referring to things we do that prevent us from being as effective as we could be or need to be and there is another one we should discuss, and that’s when a sales leader has a Non-Supportive Buy Cycle attribute of needing to think things over. In the 4-minute video below, which you must watch to understand the concept, I explain how the indecisiveness of a sales leader prevents them from being able to develop, coach up and grow their sales team.