• The Chainsaw Massacre and Building Sales Teams

    • September 14, 2021
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    Despite the existence of both a science and a process for hiring salespeople, most efforts also tend to be hit or miss and the emphasis always seems to be on miss.  There are plenty of reasons why, and we can discuss some of them, but the biggest and most insane reason is…

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  • Data: The Top 10% of All Salespeople are 4200% Better at This

    • September 7, 2021
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    My wife and I entered the small jewelry shop and were greeted – not with a warm welcome – but with a matter of fact “my name is…and I’m the owner…and I created everything in the store” which was followed by fifteen minutes of non-stop presentation of everything she created.  

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  • How To Stop Sucking by Understanding and Changing Your Sales Metrics

    • August 30, 2021
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    Suppose a company reports that its win rate is 24%.  Does that tell you anything other than they suck?  It doesn’t tell us how badly they suck, why they suck, how long they’ve sucked, who sucks, or whether there is any hope for them to stop sucking.  And even if their win rate is double the 24%, the same questions apply. Let me explain.

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  • Follow This Advice to Schedule More Meetings and Spend Less Time Doing It

    • August 25, 2021
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    Regular readers know that I’m all about the data and I have written nearly two thousand articles based on data from Objective Management Group’s (OMG) assessments of more than two million salespeople.  Occasionally however, I see data where incorrect conclusions have been reached and like the toad on the window, my conclusions run counter to theirs.  One such example is a beautiful infographic from sales playbook company Xant. I am going to share some of their data, graphics and conclusions and I’ll provide my counter argument to their conclusions.

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  • Nothing Beats This One Tool When You Can’t Sell Face to Face

    • August 19, 2021
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    There are some misguided selling strategies that can be undone and in today’s article we’ll discuss the benefits of the single tool that is the real deal and a huge difference maker.

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  • Siri Can’t Help You Close the Deal but Doing These Three Things Can!

    • August 9, 2021
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    Sometimes Siri doesn’t actively listen and decides to send you somewhere different from where you asked her to navigate; a different city or town and/or a place that doesn’t sound remotely close to what you asked for. She gets in the way.

    So what do you do when Siri isn’t cooperating?  Do you give up and wing it?  Do you try again?  Do you stop navigating with Siri and switch to Google, Waze or your built-in system?  Do you persist until you get what you need?

    That’s exactly what salespeople are supposed to do.  Get creative, be persistent and find a way to reach the decision maker.  You do it with Siri, so why don’t you do it when someone in the company won’t introduce you to the decision maker, when they won’t give you the decision maker’s name or when they don’t cooperate?  Why do so many salespeople give up and plow forward with the contact they are speaking with right now?

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  • Salespeople Will Close 50% More Business By Changing This One Thing They Do!

    • August 5, 2021
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    At Objective Management Group (OMG), one of the 21 Sales Core Competencies we measure and report on also tends to confuse salespeople, is the cause of frequent pushback, but has thirty-five years of cumulative science to support the finding and our conclusions.  Allow me to introduce you the competency called Supportive BuyCycleTM.

    BuyCycleTM represents how salespeople go about the process of making a major purchase and there is a 100% correlation between how they buy and the behavior they accept from their prospects.  For example:

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  • A Key Competency That Differentiates Top Sales Performers From Posers

    • July 21, 2021
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    The bottom 50% of all salespeople are posers too.  In an article last week we discussed how data can help you hire the ideal salespeople.

    In that article I shared a top/bottom analysis where the top performers were 100% more effective reaching decision makers than the bottoms.  Below I’ve shared another top/bottom analysis with different findings. 

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  • A Home Run – How the Right Data Can Help You Hire Your Ideal Salespeople

    • July 13, 2021
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    From time to time I’ve posted some compelling top/bottom sales team analyses using sales assessment data from Objective Management Group (OMG).  From nearly 250 data points in 21 Sales Core Competencies, we identify the specific findings and scores that differentiate a company’s top 3 performers from their bottom 3 non-performers.

    There are several reasons for doing this:

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