Search Results
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Coaches Benefit from Tryouts, Sales Managers Fail Using Gut Instinct
- April 27, 2023
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Sports teams hold tryouts which serve as auditions. Coaches know what to look for. Sales Managers use resumes, interviews, and hire on gut instinct.
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The Powerful Similarity Between Bad Baseball Teams and Most Sales Teams
- April 17, 2023
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Stop using revenue to rank your salespeople or to conclude that your salespeople with the most revenue are good salespeople. It’s fiction. It’s BS. It’s misinformation. It will lead you to make bad decisions. Revenue represents what customers spend with you. Sales effectiveness is the measure of a salesperson’s ability to grow revenue by bringing in new business.
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Top 10 Keys to Determining and Improving Your Ideal Win Rate
- March 7, 2023
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
What kind of car should you drive?
Answering that question with anything other than, “It depends,” is irresponsible because there are so many variables. Choosing a car depends on budget, family size, how much stuff you load into your car, the length of your drives, the logo/ego influence, fit and function, ergonomics, appearance, perceived value, reliability, cost to drive it (gas/electric/mileage), and so much more.
If that makes senses, why do companies struggle when I am unable to instantly tell them what their win-rate or closing percentage should be?
There are so many the variables that can influence your sales win-rate and here are my top ten keys to win rates:
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4 Types of Sales Positions That Can Never Be Replaced by AI
- February 22, 2023
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
We’re seeing ChatGPT’s ability to create human-like articles, essays, poems, notes and messages.
I just asked ChatGPT to write a short poem on the death of selling. Here’s what it generated.
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Made Up Sales Statistics and Their Contrast to Real Data
- February 2, 2023
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
A sales consultant who knows that I geek out on sales data read that 84% of salespeople suck because they don’t enjoy what they do. A huge percentage of salespeople do actually suck but the actual number is closer to 75%. Is it really because they don’t enjoy selling?
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Sitcoms, Sales Process, Sales Assessments and Sales Competencies
- January 11, 2023
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Hubspot, an inbound marketing company published a list of 18 Sales Core Competencies which include non-sales competencies like customer service and data analysis. Job site Indeed published a list of 18 Sales Core Competencies which include non-sales competencies like leadership and change management. I’m not suggesting that these capabilities aren’t important, but in no way, shape or form should they be considered core sales competencies. Why would people turn to any of these lists of opinions when there is a widely accepted, definitive list of 21 Sales Core Competencies backed by science and data on more than 2.3 million salespeople?
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The Connection Between Road Signs, Sales Data, Consultative Selling and Sales Recruiting
- December 6, 2022
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Salespeople who are learning to take a consultative approach to selling hear a stated issue – the consultative selling version of a road sign – but think they have arrived at their destination – the compelling reason to buy.
This is supported by the data. Objective Management Group (OMG) has data on 2,280,260 salespeople that have been assessed from more than 30,000 companies. The findings are horrific:
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The Wall Street Journal Shares News About What it Takes to Succeed in Sales
- November 14, 2022
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
I’m not anti-Wall Street Journal – at least I wasn’t. I haven’t written about their articles before. After all, they aren’t known for writing the kind of crap that the Harvard Business Review writes with regard to sales and selling.
While reviewing the article, I identified two themes – how much harder it is to sell today versus years ago and how millennials have adapted to changing times.
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New Data: Is Sales Compensation Aligned With Changing Motivational Needs?
- October 31, 2022
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
When interviewing sales and sales leadership candidates, similar counter-intuitive discussions occur. Many candidates claim that money isn’t that important because they love sales – until they claim that the base salary isn’t high enough. For others, even though they may not disclose it, the base salary is completely irrelevant as long as the company won’t cap the salesperson’s total earnings. We need to decode the topic of compensation so that we can be sure that both the base salary and the total on-plan earnings are acceptable to candidates.
It is very important to make sense of the hidden and unpredictable compensation responses because many salespeople leave the company after a short time because they don’t believe earnings are equivalent to the compensation that was promised.
It is crucial to understand that salespeople are motivated primarily by one of two motivational styles and unless you wish to hire only one type of salesperson, there must be two compensation plans that should be tailored accordingly. Let’s discuss this.
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The Irony of Free Passes for Under Performing Salespeople
- October 21, 2022
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
A typical US sales team consists of 15 people, including a Sales VP, 2 Regional Sales Managers, and 12 salespeople. Of course, there are exponentially larger and smaller sales teams, but this is the version that we most frequently encounter. This team will have no more than 3 performing salespeople, another 3 who sometimes hit their numbers, and 6 who chronically under-perform.
Let’s assume that the salespeople who are ranked 10-12 are not just under-performers, but pathetically ineffective salespeople. At the end of the year, they receive their annual review – the equivalent of an arrest and release – and are back on the street to underperform for another year, making the company both both the victim and the enabler. This is insanity!