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Perhaps Hope is a Selling Strategy After All!
- June 9, 2017
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
You’ve heard that hope is not a strategy – and it isn’t a strategy if you’re sitting there saying to yourself, “I hope I win this deal…”
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Predict the Weather but Control the Sales Forecast and Revenue
- June 6, 2017
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
You may be familiar when the rant sounds like: “It’s almost the end of the quarter, we’re only at 65% of forecast, the pipeline is half empty, and nothing is closing. With the exception of 3 nice deals that came in during May, our salespeople have sucked.”
While the crappy weather and your crappy 2nd quarter revenue have crappy in common, there is one huge difference that can help you hit your sales forecast even when the weather forecast is for rain.
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Phone Prospecting – the Key to Scheduling Meetings
- May 23, 2017
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Today, a salesperson left a voicemail message and he didn’t sound bad; but his strategy and script were awful. Listen to the message below and try to identify what was wrong. Then watch the video below to hear me talk getting your prospects to pay attention and engage with you on the phone.
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How to Simplify Coaching Salespeople
- May 19, 2017
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
When you take sales coaching, baseball, watching video and put it all together, what do you get?
You get the post-call debrief – the most powerful tool for great sales coaching.
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7 Powerful Exercises to Up Your Sales to the Next Level
- May 8, 2017
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Today, I received yet another request asking if I would recommend how to use the exercises in the Baseline Field Guide with the book, Baseline Selling. In an effort to help everyone, and not just those who choose to write me, my recommendations on some powerful ways to correlate the two appear below.
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Kurlan Associates and Membrain Release Unprecedented Sales Process Plugin for CRM
- May 4, 2017
- Posted by: Kurlan & Associates, Inc.
- Category: News
Westborough, Massachusetts USA – May 4, 2017 – US-based Kurlan Associates, global leaders in sales process development and sales training, announced today, a joint initiative with Membrain, makers of the global sales effectiveness platform. This innovative platform incorporates top-rated Baseline Selling®, including its innovative best practice sales process and methodology, as well as its integrated sales enablement materials to guide salespeople to higher levels of performance. The framework is now available inside CRMs through Membrain’s plug-in, or directly through Membrain’s stand-alone platform.
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New Analysis Shows the 5 Biggest Gaps Between Top and Bottom Sales Performers
- May 1, 2017
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
It didn’t take very long for this to happen. When Objective Management Group (OMG) announced that it was making its findings data available to the public, we knew that it wouldn’t take long for someone with a flair for analytics to dig in and come up with something cool. Last week, John Cousineau, creator of Amacus, got me on a video conference and shared what he came up with. Hint: Another way to differentiate top performers.
He
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Closing and Negotiating Challenges – Symptoms of Another Selling Problem
- April 25, 2017
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
One of OMG’s sales candidate assessment clients in Europe purchased two goldfish. In keeping with their tradition, the client named the two fish, Recommended and Not Recommended. Surprisingly, recruiting salespeople was not one of the topics addressed in the Richardson 2017 Selling Challenges Study. Meghan Steiner, from Richardson, was nice enough to send me a copy of the results. There were a number of interesting findings and of course I had some insights from the report.
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Which Salespeople are Easier to Train – Millennials or Veteran Salespeople?
- April 19, 2017
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
We brought home a puppy and we had him completely housebroken in 4 days. He’s really smart and we’ve done this before, a combination that makes it nearly impossible to screw up. To see him go to the door and touch it with his little paw, whimper when he is in his crate, go outside and do his business, and run back to the door is great. But it got me wondering, why is training a puppy relatively fast and easy while it is so much harder and takes so much longer to train salespeople?
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What B2B Companies Must Learn from 10 Reasons Why Amazon is Destroying Retailers
- April 17, 2017
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Amazon generated almost $44 Billion in net revenue last year and it had to come from somewhere. That’s not $44 Billion that people wouldn’t have spent if not for Amazon. It’s money that people would have spent, at some retailer, probably within an hour of their home or office, but chose to buy from Amazon instead.
You may think it’s because Amazon saves them money but that isn’t necessarily true. And you may think it’s simply more convenient to order from your laptop or mobile device but that might not be the case either. I’m going to share my 10 reasons why this is happening and you might be very surprised with my conclusion at the end of the article where I provide an important warning for B2B Sellers.