• Top 10 Problems with Channel Sales – Don’t be Held Hostage

    • May 9, 2014
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    The salespeople charged with selling to and through a channel are different – in many ways – and their goals, expectations, activities, skill sets and strategies must be different as well.

    When we work with companies selling through channels, the sales processes, metrics, sales management, sales coaching, sales training, messaging and coaching must be different from what we do with direct B2B sales forces.  Channel sales is quite different.

    read more

  • Can These 5 Keys Determine the Fate of Cold Calling?

    • May 7, 2014
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    When marketers and writers tell us that cold calling is dead, they never remember to qualify what they are trying to sell us.  The amount of death in cold calling is dependent on a number of variables that never seem to be discussed.  If we take a good hard look at these variables, we can see that taking a broad brush stroke to cold calling is a mistake:

    read more

  • The Best Top 10 Lists for Sales and Sales Management

    • May 5, 2014
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    Over the years, I have written the occasional Top 5, Top 10 and Top 20 Articles and they are now in a series of their own.

    read more

  • Sales Blogging – Do As I Say, Not as I Do

    • May 1, 2014
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    It’s a big problem with many of the sales blogs you read.  One-person sales consulting firms, self-appointed experts, telling, but not doing, what they say.

    read more

  • Top 10 Indicators That You Have a Trustworthy Sales Prospect

    • April 28, 2014
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    there are some indicators that we can identify, to help salespeople have a better handle on whether the prospect is being honest and whether or not they will buy.  But these are not replacements for instinct. These indicators do not change the facts, they cannot move the opportunity to another stage of the pipeline or sales process, and they cannot alter the probability of closing.  They are simply indicators:

    read more

  • Double Article Friday and the Death of All Selling Forever

    • April 25, 2014
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    There is no doubt that selling has changed – a lot – but the marketers who most benefit from telling you that it has changed to the point where you should not sell anymore are simply trying to get you to buy their stuff!

    read more

  • What the Sales World Can Learn from Marathon Participants

    • April 23, 2014
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    While some professional runners enter a marathon, more than 30,000 people were simply participating because they could.  These participants have full-time jobs, careers and businesses.  This is a hobby.  Yet their commitment to this hobby should be embarrassing to most salespeople, who don’t put forth anywhere near this level of commitment, effort, time or practice into their own career!

    read more

  • Benchmarking Salespeople Sounds Great but Has Many Flaws

    • April 21, 2014
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    You want to hire better salespeople, don’t you?  And you’ve been told that if you use a sales assessment, you will be able to select better salespeople, right?  And if you have a strong HR background, you may believe that benchmarking is a good first step.  There are many uses for benchmarking in sales, and while the approach taken by most assessment companies helps them, it doesn’t really help you.

    read more

  • Is This an Example of Succeeding or Failing at Inside Sales?

    • April 18, 2014
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    It’s bad enough when companies move to the demo too quickly, but it doesn’t get any faster or more transactional than when they ask you if you’ve seen their demo with their very first question.  But hey, give him a break.  At least he asked a question instead of telling me he wanted me to see a demo…

    read more

  • Is There a Lack of Clarity on the Current State of Selling?

    • April 14, 2014
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    Without question, the internet, inbound marketing, and social selling have replaced traditional sales – IN CERTAIN AREAS.  But they are relatively small areas and most B2B sellers will NEVER, EVER find themselves in that situation.

    read more