Consultative Selling
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4 Reasons Why Salespeople Suck at Consultative Selling.
- September 26, 2017
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Yesterday, a sales manager I was coaching asked me to explain the difference between a great question and a tough question. I gave him the one-minute version but this article has the expanded version of that answer.
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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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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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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.
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10 Selling Scenarios When You Must Slow Down
- February 7, 2017
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Rick Porcello’s thoughts about the importance of slowing down in certain situations and focusing on the present apply to the following 10 sales and sales leadership scenarios. Slow down:
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The Second Most Important Sales Lesson of My Life
- September 8, 2016
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Earlier this week I posted an article that told the story of the biggest sales lesson of my life. I received so many emails about that article because it seemed to really resonate with my readers. Yet, as much as it resonated, there was one question that several of them asked in their emails. They wanted to know why we were in that tenement building in the first place. And the answer to that question leads me to the second most important sales lesson of my life.
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Dissecting the #1 Sales Best Practice
- August 26, 2016
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
One company is attempting to create a compilation of best sales practices by sending out a weekly survey to sales leaders and asking them to choose from multiple choice questions what they most often do and teach. The topic changes each week. This is silly because (1) it just isn’t that simple, (2) it’s different for each selling role, each vertical, the decision makers they call on, their price points, the length of their sales cycle, and their respective competition, just to name a few. In addition, when you ask multiple choice questions like this, the answers will be so varied that there won’t be even a few, never mind a single best practice. Here is an example of what they asked this week:
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4 Critical Changes to Go from Failure to Success in Sales Today
- July 18, 2016
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Today I’m in Florida, preparing to speak at a company’s national meeting. Like many companies, they have not only realized that selling has changed dramatically, but that their salespeople may not have adapted, developed new skills, and changed the way they sell. If you’re a regular reader, active on LinkedIn or Social Media, then you have certainly read about the many ways that selling has changed. But most senior executives haven’t put two and two together yet. They know that win rates are down and sales cycles are longer, they know it’s more difficult than ever before, they see that their salespeople are struggling to meet quotas, but they don’t realize the extent to which things have changed. There are four critical requirements which, together are the difference between success and failure.
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Tech Buyer Explains Why He Has No Use for Salespeople – Must Read
- July 11, 2016
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
I managed to develop a case of poison ivy that is so bad it is making my blood boil. Earlier this year I wrote an article explaining why more salespeople suck than ever before. (You’ll need to read that article for the rest of this article to make any sense.) Last week, a reader provided a comment that also made my blood boil and I wrote a response to it. I think you’ll get as riled up over his comment as I did and I hope you’ll love my response, but first, read that article, return here and read his comment which I have included below, and then continue reading for my reply. You won’t be sorry!
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Breaking News – More Salespeople Suck Than Ever Before (and Why)
- February 29, 2016
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Salespeople always seem to get a bad rap and obviously that’s bad for business. But it’s always been that way and nobody has made a very big deal about it, so what has changed?