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Why I Believe We Should Blow up the Business Development Rep (BDR) Role in Sales
- March 29, 2021
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
For decades it was normal practice for Copy Machine, Office Supply, Cell Phones, Life Insurance and Residential Real Estate companies to recruit and train (a little classroom) rookie salespeople and then have them spend years making Cold Calls. Industries like those continue to suffer from the highest voluntary turnover rates you can imagine and the practice is not entirely different from what tech companies are doing with the BDR Role.
But why? Whose brilliant idea was this?
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Startups Almost Always Get The Sales Thing Wrong
- March 19, 2021
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Typically, founders of start ups put it all on the line – everything – their house, savings, loans from friends and family and perhaps bank loans, angel investments and more. As brilliant as they are, in most cases, sales is not one of their strengths and it’s not until the business has a logo and a website when they realize that success won’t come until somebody sells something. Oh-oh, now what?
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My Simple COVID Relief Plan Actually Provides Relief
- March 2, 2021
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
In the US, the COVID relief bill has passed the House of Representatives and the Senate and we learned that only 9% of the $1.9 trillion in the plan goes to actual COVID relief. The 9% includes $1,400 for individuals earning less than $50,000 and several hundred billion dollars for small business relief although it’s unclear how the small business money will directly help the specific small businesses that were hurt the most. It seems clear that this is another bill that won’t do what is needed but will certainly lead to a tax increase. Joe Biden said this could increase GDP by $1 trillion. Imagine that. Spend $1.9 trillion for a $1 trillion return. Where I come from that’s a pretty bad investment so in response to their bloated, stupid bill, I present my simple plan and explain how it will help everyone involved.
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How Pitchers Fielding Practice is Exactly the Same as Salespeople Role-Playing
- February 26, 2021
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
My Twitter feed had the funniest 1-minute baseball video I have ever seen. It was pitcher fielding practice (PFP) and the coach was miked up. It illustrated just how bad most professional major league pitchers are at fielding their position and how a coach can keep it light – even make it funny – when the pitchers are struggling so badly.
When professional salespeople are asked to role-play the salesperson’s part of a sales conversation they sound eve
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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:
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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?
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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:
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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.
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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.
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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?