Dave Kurlan
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Case History – Another Pitiful Sales Cold Call Exposed
- March 2, 2015
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
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Verne Harnish’s Rant and 3 Sales Leadership Issues
- February 25, 2015
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
The one newsletter that I never fail to read each week, rain, 7 feet of snow, sub-zero temperatures, or shine, is Verne Harnish’s Weekly Insights (subscribe here). If you are not familiar with Verne (The Growth Guy), he wrote Mastering the Rockefeller Habits and his latest book, Scaling Up: How a Few Companies Make it and the Rest Don’t, is another must-read best seller.
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Fix Your Mediocre Pipeline for Accurate Sales Forecasts
- January 26, 2015
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Most salespeople don’t pay too much attention to this. Even though we perform a pipeline analysis and restage the pipeline with every individual sales evaluation and comprehensive sales force evaluation we conduct, we typically discuss this exclusively at the executive level.
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Top 5 Keys to Select and Hire Great Salespeople in 2015
- December 8, 2014
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
I’m always amused when an email comes through with a message that says something like, “Maybe we should target candidates that aren’t recommended” or “Why do so many candidates lack Commitment?” or “Your assessments are only recommending 1 out of every 5 candidates!” or “The questions don’t fit the role!” or “Thanks for saving us so much time – we would have hired some of these losers last year!”
I can usually determine, just from the comment of the email, exactly who, by title, must have sent it to us. Here are some funny examples:
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Selling Value – Everything You Always Wanted to Know
- December 4, 2014
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
So if not those topics, then what should we all be writing about – all the time – that would be a real difference maker for salespeople?
I believe that it’s the importance of and ability to sell value. Why, you ask?
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Key Sales Strategies for December
- December 1, 2014
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
So let’s discuss December sales strategies. What can you do to assure that December (a short month with only 17 business days) as well as the 4th quarter and the year finish – all have a strong finish?
You won’t like my answer at all, but it’s the truth.
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You’re Afraid to Sell Because You Think There is Hope
- November 24, 2014
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
It may have been in episode 4 or 5, in season 1. It was definitely in the HBO series Band of Brothers. Thanks Chris, for recommending it. I can’t believe I’m a decade late watching this!
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Why This Salesperson Failed to Close the Deal
- November 17, 2014
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
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Second Secret to Sales Force Excellence
- November 10, 2014
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
One of the stand-out findings that jumps off the pages of our new White Paper is about sales training. Over the years, many reports have highlighted all of the money that has been wasted on ineffective training. However, the study on which this White Paper, on Sales Force Excellence, is based was equally clear about this subject. Most of the companies in the study reported that they offered sales training to their sales force. But when we looked beyond the obvious, what became most clear revolved around three important distinctions:
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Leading a Sales Force is Even More Like Baseball
- November 6, 2014
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
I’ve written plenty about the similarity betwen baseball and selling, but today I’m writing about the similarity between baseball and sales leadership. If you’re not a baseball person, you might not see the same things that I see, most of which can be applied to leading a sales force. For example,