-
How to Use Buckets to Improve Sales Performance and Coaching
- February 19, 2021
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Buckets are important, especially when you’re attempting to coach up a salesperson or even improve your own sales performance. If you don’t have the OMG evaluation at your fingertips and can’t lookup the scores in 21 Sales Core Competencies, or see which attributes need to be improved, you’ll need to think in terms of buckets.
When salespeople are struggling, there are five primary buckets to consider:
-
How Overthinking the Turnover Problem Impacts Hiring Salespeople
- February 12, 2021
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
This week I experienced a scenario with a large company whose executives thought they had it all figured out and were looking for solutions that were so poorly thought out that it was hard for me to keep a straight face. Curious?
-
The Baseball Experience That Continues to Generate a 28% Increases in Sales
- February 10, 2021
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
The challenge isn’t whether or not they’ll enjoy and benefit greatly from the training. The challenge is getting sales leaders to attend the training! There’s a little matter of ego. Most successful sales leaders have fairly large egos and while their egos helped spur them on to their current roles, now that they’re in their current roles, their egos sometimes obstruct their ability to improve, ask for help, and bring professional training into their companies. The voice in their head whispers thoughts like:
-
Good Bob, Bad Bob, The Stockdale Paradox, and Sales Success
- February 2, 2021
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Happy Ears is a Big Problem for most salespeople. When it’s a strength, Objective Management Group (OMG) calls it Healthy Skepticism. The challenge is that Healthy Skepticism is unlike the other selling strengths and weaknesses measured by OMG, where great salespeople have them as strengths and weak salespeople have them as weaknesses. With Healthy Skepticism there is little differentiation between strong and weak salespeople.
-
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.
-
Data – Top Salespeople are 631% More Effective at This Than Weak Salespeople (The Bob Chronicles – Part 3)
- January 26, 2021
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Bob is up to his old tricks. If you don’t know who Bob is, you can learn about his sales misadventures in this article on not properly selling a trial, and this article about not selling value. Both articles are of the must-read variety.
So what did Bob do to piss me off this week?
-
Why Sales Transformation Achieves Better Results Than Sales Training Alone
- January 22, 2021
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
You brought in sales training but it didn’t achieve the expected change because the training didn’t address the bigger problems that went beyond selling skills. You may not have realized that companies really need sales transformation and while sales training can be part of that transformation, on its own, it usually underperforms.
Why?
-
New Movie Has 3 Great Lessons for Salespeople and Sales Managers
- January 18, 2021
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Among all the product shortages we have experienced in the past ten months, there has been no shortage of crappy movies. It’s almost like the movie studios decided to release all the movies filmed in the past several years that weren’t ready for prime time and hope that people would stream them at home during the pandemic because we had watched everything else.
One exception to the crappiness of 2020 movies is The Trial of the Chicago 7. This article is not a review of the movie but it was a terrific film and worth the time to watch it. As good as this movie is, it comes with a bonus because it also provides three exceptional lessons for salespeople and sales managers. Let’s take a look!
-
Are Sales Managers Coaching More Frequently Now That Everyone is at Their Desks?
- January 14, 2021
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
We know how sales managers were doing before the pandemic. It wasn’t very good and I wrote about it in November which had data for the last 10 years. What do you think would be different if I filtered the data to show only the last six months of 2020, the time during which sales managers should have already made changes? Do you think it got better, worse, or stayed the same?
Let’s find out.
-
My Prediction – What’s in Store for Sales Teams in 2021?
- January 8, 2021
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
When I made my predictions for 2020 I’m pretty sure I didn’t predict a pandemic. Making predictions isn’t easy.
In the US, sales teams are coming off three robust years of sales growth and while revenue was up during that time, the percentage of salespeople hitting quotas was not. That means the top 20% were not only carrying the load, they carried more of the load.
That dynamic growth hit an iron barrier last spring when COVID became the unexpected economic disrupter, but the second half comeback was quite impressive. What does 2021 have in store for those of us in the sales world? In the US, how will Democrat control of all three branches of government affect sales and selling? And how long before that kicks in?