Search Results
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Don Kent and My 8 Reasons For Inaccurate Sales Forecasts
- February 15, 2024
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
1960’s Don Kent is like a 2020’s salesperson. Excited about an opportunity, but wrong. And they don’t have to be wrong, shouldn’t be wrong, and honestly, can’t be wrong. The 2020’s salesperson may not have computer models, but they do have technology and it’s not the technology getting the forecast wrong. It’s the salesperson. There are a number of reasons they get so excited and get it so wrong but here are eight good ones:
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Coconut Flakes Help to Improve Sales Effectiveness
- November 6, 2023
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
My wife took me to a Vegan restaurant for lunch and I ordered a sandwich that consisted of coconut, lettuce and tomato on multi-grain bread. I not only didn’t hate it, I liked it. I showed my wife that it had bacon in it and she swore it didn’t. She suggested I ask the owner so I asked him about the bacon and he explained that he prepared the coconut flakes to have the look, taste and texture of bacon. Fake bacon.
There are fake salespeople too.
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Three Recent Hurricanes Show the Path to More Effective Selling
- September 18, 2023
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
A great example of how much more successful salespeople are when they call on Decision Makers came from a salesperson who messaged me last week. Freddy was excited to talk about his recent success and I have changed his name and company names to protect his identity. Freddy wrote:
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The Impact of Relationship Building Challenges in Sales
- August 28, 2023
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
My wife and I recently finished streaming Parenthood, whose theme song was Forever Young, by Bob Dylan. Despite my enjoyment of the series, the theme song hit me like nails on a chalkboard. I cringed every time I heard it.
It explains a lot about intangibles in selling.
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What If Pay Equity Comes to Sales Teams?
- February 28, 2023
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
When pay equity comes to sales teams, top performers will be the group that is most affected. While it is too early to know whether their incomes will be reduced, they will be compensated equally with the worst performers on the team. If you are a top performer, and you are no longer earning significantly more than the worst performers in the company, what would you do? Here are some possibilities:
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The Top 10 Sales and Sales Leadership Articles of 2022
- December 12, 2022
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Criteria: Popularity (views) is nice but quality of content is nicer. Likes are cool but engagement is cooler. Entertainment value counts and my opinion matters because I’m judging the articles. In the end, I’m applying popularity, quality of the content, likes, entertainment, comments, engagement and my opinion to create this list of the top 10 articles.
Enjoy!
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“Spirited” Has So Much in Common with Most Salespeople
- November 29, 2022
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Only 13% of all salespeople take a consultative approach to selling and almost none of them can be found in the bottom 50% – the group that fails to meet quota each year. A coincidence? On the other end of the spectrum, the top 10% of all salespeople are 4300% more likely to have the Consultative Seller competency as a strength!
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The Top 10% of All Salespeople are 4,000% Better at this than the Bottom 10%
- March 3, 2022
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
I found Dinger with his nose glued to my front bumper where some of the deer’s hair was still attached to my car. Dinger, who loves to bark at deer from the safety of our home, seemed to be saying, “Ohhhh, so THIS is what a deer smells like!”
The exact same thing happened to a salesperson I was training. It wasn’t a deer or a dog, it was about Jim’s sales aha moment.
His team was asked to send me an email with their five biggest lessons from their first six months of training. Among Jim’s top five was this one:
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Top 10 Sales and Sales Leadership Articles of 2021
- December 7, 2021
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
There are several criteria for choosing the top articles of the year, including, but not limited to:
Views (Article)
Popularity (likes on LinkedIn and Twitter)
Engagement (comments to the article, via email, and on LinkedIn)
Personal (my favorites)
Value (insights for the community) -
Two Selling Strategies That are More Effective Than Facts and Figures
- January 29, 2021
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Most of my articles begin with a Story and despite not writing about story telling very often, it is a very important part of selling.