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My Key to Building a Strong, Sustainable, Sales Pipeline

April 16, 2025
Posted by: Dave Kurlan
Category: Understanding the Sales Force

Building a strong, sustainable pipeline requires not only commitment and discipline from salespeople, it also requires commitment and discipline from their sales leaders who cannot allow them to give up, give in, or take short cuts. While excellence involves advanced sales training skills, extended practice sessions and coaching, the desire to improve is the most important element.

How to Master the Sales Discovery Call

April 11, 2025
Posted by: Dave Kurlan
Category: Understanding the Sales Force

Good salespeople know that the key to a sales process that will result in a sale, is uncovering their prospect’s compelling reason to buy. Period. Not “period” as in that’s all they have to do, but “period”, as in nothing else in the process will matter if they don’t uncover the compelling reason to buy. Easy (to state). For most salespeople, even the good ones, it’s not that easy. How can they determine if what they heard is actually compelling? Is it compelling to the prospect? Is it compelling to the salesperson? Do those two determinations have equal value?

Deadly Negotiation Strategies – The Bob Chronicles Part 8

March 24, 2025
Posted by: Dave Kurlan
Category: Understanding the Sales Force

I asked Bob why he thought negotiations would be required and he told me that his prospect said they didn’t want to spend more than $50,000. You read that right. He knew they didn’t want to spend more than $50,000 and he proposed a solution for more than $1,000,000!

10 Cringy Things Salespeople Do and 7 Reasons Why They Do It

March 13, 2025
Posted by: Dave Kurlan
Category: Understanding the Sales Force

Salespeople are responsible for a lot of cringy selling. In this article I share what I believe are the ten things salespeople do to elicit cringy reactions from their prospects and the top seven reasons for why half of all salespeople cause the cringe.

New Data: My Top 5 Unacceptable Sales Performance Findings

February 14, 2025
Posted by: Dave Kurlan
Category: Understanding the Sales Force

The report says, “87% reported that their sales teams were having difficulty meeting or exceeding quota.” That is so much worse than what has been reported in recent years when the numbers were closer to 55%-60%. This is problematic for more than the obvious reason. When salespeople aren’t hitting quotas, companies need to hire more salespeople, which increases the cost of recruiting, salaries and benefits, not to mention the costs associated with hiring additional sales managers that won’t coach up their salespeople. It also reinforces a culture of mediocrity because when not hitting quota is normal and expected, more people don’t hit quota because their jobs are clearly not in jeopardy.

The next finding explains the previous finding.

Is BANT a Sales Process or a Man-Made Disaster?

January 15, 2025
Posted by: Dave Kurlan
Category: Understanding the Sales Force

Last week, I noticed that people are still using this archaic and overly simplistic sales qualifying process, and too many are still writing about the benefits of BANT (Acronym for Budget, Authority, Need, Timing). The first page of a Google search revealed 10 articles were written about BANT in 2024 alone.

How is it that in 2024, people are still hailing BANT as a relevant sales tool?

250 Best Articles on Sales and Sales Leadership by Category

April 4, 2024
Posted by: Dave Kurlan
Category: Understanding the Sales Force

These are the top 10 articles in 25 categories on sales, sales leadership, sales assessments, sales performance, sales excellence, sales process and more.

Don Kent and My 8 Reasons For Inaccurate Sales Forecasts

February 15, 2024
Posted by: Dave Kurlan
Category: Understanding the Sales Force

1960’s Don Kent is like a 2020’s salesperson. Excited about an opportunity, but wrong. And they don’t have to be wrong, shouldn’t be wrong, and honestly, can’t be wrong. The 2020’s salesperson may not have computer models, but they do have technology and it’s not the technology getting the forecast wrong. It’s the salesperson. There are a number of reasons they get so excited and get it so wrong but here are eight good ones:

Wouldn’t Sales Call Play-by-Play Analyses be Fun?

January 27, 2024
Posted by: Dave Kurlan
Category: Understanding the Sales Force

Most sales managers protect their salespeople instead of pushing them to improve. Most companies set budgets that formulaically increase year-over-year budgets by just 3.5%. The sales recruiting process and selection criteria at most companies are horrible. Most sales training is product-focused instead of sales development. Most salespeople are not consistently or effectively coached. Most senior sales leaders are indifferent about doing anything about those things.