objective management group
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HBR or OMG – Whose Criteria Really Differentiate the Top and Bottom 10% of Salespeople?
- August 22, 2016
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Categories: Junk Sales Science Debunked, Sales Assessments Compared, Sales Data and Science, Understanding the Sales Force
In their June 20, 2016 article, A Portrait of the Overperforming Salesperson, HBR identified several traits, attitudes and actions that they claim differentiate the top from bottom performers. I’ll summarize it for you below and then explain why I believe it is junk. The findings include:
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Those Who Follow Sales Best Practices Don’t Necessarily Become Top Performers
- June 24, 2016
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Categories: Sales Data and Science, Understanding the Sales Force
You’ll regularly find me writing about the science – the data – that differentiates top sales performers from the bottom. But today, I’ll move into the world from which everyone else in this space operates – anecdotal evidence and opinions.
I will cite two sources for this article:
The 130 sales consulting firms that partner with me at Objective Management Group (OMG) and provide our award-winning sales force evaluations and sales candidate assessments;
The tens of thousands of salespeople, sales managers and sales leaders that I have personally trained.In both groups of people I have noticed a few things that are common to the tops and not so much the bottoms and I’m certain that if you paid attention, you would recognize some of the same patterns in your organization.
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What Should You Do When You or Your Company is Disliked in Sales?
- April 11, 2016
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
I know. Everyone loves you. You are just so likable that it’s inconceivable that you could be disliked. As usual, I see things a bit differently and I’ll prove that there is someone that not only dislikes you, but might even hate you. For example, my company, Objective Management Group (OMG), is universally hated by an entire vertical! I’ll share that with you, but first I must ask you a question.
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Why Uncovering Pain Doesn’t Close the Sale with a CEO and the 3 Conditions You Do Need
- April 4, 2016
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Categories: Analogies, Understanding the Sales Force
I want to share 5 out of more than 100 important insights that they took away which apply equally to you too.
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Breaking News – More Salespeople Suck Than Ever Before (and Why)
- February 29, 2016
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Categories: Sales Data and Science, 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?
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Has the Sales Profile of an A Player Changed Dramatically?
- February 3, 2016
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Categories: Junk Sales Science Debunked, Understanding the Sales Force
Recently, a number of readers asked me to review two articles which they thought were right up my alley. Apparently they thirst for one of my specialties – poking holes in articles that are just plain wrong about hiring salespeople. It’s not that I enjoy ripping articles apart, it’s just that I don’t have any tolerance for authors who either don’t know what they are talking about, don’t have any science backing them up, or use examples that can’t be replicated across industries, markets and geographies. Shall we dig in?
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Sales Selection Experiment – Part 2 – It’s Back!
- January 13, 2016
- Posted by: Kurlan & Associates, Inc.
- Categories: Sales Assessments Compared, Sales Data and Science, Understanding the Sales Force
When our son was just beginning to speak and we did something that he really enjoyed, he would say, “Again! Again!”
Two years ago, I wrote about a sales selection experiment with a group of college kids and the results were so much fun to read that when they repeated the exercise this year, my first reaction was, “Again!” I think you’re going to really enjoy the conclusions from this year’s class!
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The Science of Sales Selection vs. the Marketing of Modern Selling
- August 14, 2015
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Categories: Sales Data and Science, Understanding the Sales Force
I started with more than 100 sales-specific findings and narrowed them down to the 18 findings and scores that clearly differentiated their tops from their bottoms. A mistake made by behavioral scientists and sellers of personality and behavioral styles assessments is that they only look at top performers and identify common traits. They fail to realize that the bottom performers have the same personality traits and behavioral styles as the top performers and none of those traits or styles are predictive of sales performance.
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12 Proven Sales Hacks to Increase Sales
- June 25, 2015
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
It seems that these days, things are changing faster than we can recognize. Cosby is finally out of the news, but the Marathon Bomber is back in. The terrible winter weather is in our rear view mirror, but now we are dealing with droughts and tornadoes! And in our world, Sales 2.0, a term we haven’t heard in a while, is making the rounds again. In today’s article, we’ll talk about the sales improvements that readers are most interested in.
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What You Get When You Accelerate Sucky Sales
- June 22, 2015
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Categories: Analogies, Customer Service as Sales, Understanding the Sales Force
Chris Beall, CEO of ConnectAndSell.com says, “Be careful not to accelerate suck!”. That quote appeared today on the High Velocity Sales Blog, where Chad Burmeister wrote a great article about outbound on demand. You should read that article. It can change your world! Anyway, I wanted to elaborate on that quote as it applies to expanding your sales force.
