objective management group
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Sales Selection Experiment – a Must Read Case Study
- January 27, 2014
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
They were assessed with OMG’s tools, and assembled into 5 teams, all selling the exact same product. They had to go door-to-door, sell an overpriced luxury item, in the same market, over a 3-day period.
5 people were placed on each team based on the following carefully selected scores from OMG’s Sales Candidate Assessment:
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What Does it Take to Become a Sales Manager?
- January 24, 2014
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
After his football career ended, Chatham went back to school and received an MBA from Babson in 2011. With that in hand, he said that he would prefer a front office job and wishes to become a GM. On the other hand, Fouria said that he would love to coach, but…
There were a lot of buts:
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Global Warming, Social Selling and The Sales Force of Tomorrow
- January 8, 2014
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
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What Is the Makeup and Function of the Ideal Sales Force
- December 12, 2013
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
I’ve written four White Papers over the last several years, all backed by science and data from the more than 700,000 salespeople and sales managers that Objective Management Group has evaluated and assessed. They include:
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What is the Most Difficult Part of the Sales Process?
- December 6, 2013
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
We discussed the various challenges associated with all three milestones and when all was said and done, everyone agreed that the midpoint, that crucial point in time where compelling reasons to buy must be identified, is the most difficult for salespeople.
Why? Well a quick look at the following list of mini-milestones, that must be accomplished in order to get to the point where compelling reasons will be shared, tells the whole story. How many of your salespeople can do all of this in their first meeting?
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Now That You Have a Sales Process, Never Mind
- October 16, 2013
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Here’s the premise: Companies that have been rigorously enforcing sales process should stop doing so because it is resulting in longer sales cycles, decreased conversion rates, unreliable forecasts and depressed margins. So they say. Here are some of the many problems with their premise:
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Validation of the Validation of the Sales Assessment
- October 4, 2013
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
One of the companies that insisted on validating our validation is moving forward with a license to hire 200 salespeople using our Sales Candidate Assessment. I’ll share the results of their own validation:
They conducted a 7-day pilot and hired 23 salespeople.
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Do You Need to Save All of those Sales Assessments and Evaluations?
- August 22, 2013
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
The best reason to save all of those sales candidate assessments which you ran last year can be answered with a few letters: EEOC. That’s right. It’s especially true if you don’t follow the sales hiring process to a “T”, or worse, if you don’t always follow the recommendations on the assessment. Let’s say that you loved one candidate so much that you hired him despite the recommendation not to do so.
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Why Can’t We Hire This Sales Candidate?
- July 22, 2013
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
We interviewed him; she’s from our industry; we really like him; but your assessment says she is not recommended. Why can’t we hire her?
That’s probably the single, most frequently asked question that we hear.
So, to answer the “Why can’t we?” question, there are two more questions:
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What Google Might Know about Hiring Salespeople
- June 22, 2013
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
The NY Times posted a story on June 20 about Google, their recruiting efforts, and big data. The story really doesn’t reveal that much, but there is an interesting quote (that I will get to shortly) that is relevant to hiring salespeople. When we help companies get the sales selection piece right, there are several components that we tweak. We help them get the following things right: