relationship building

  • What Relationship Builders Do Better Than All Other Salespeople

    • September 5, 2023
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force
    relationship building

    Last week, I posted an article on the Impact of Relationship Building Challenges in Sales.  The article explored what happens to salespeople who are skilled at selling, but aren’t very good at building relationships, as well as those who are great at building relationships, but aren’t very skilled at selling.  While there were some terrific insights, the one thing that was missing from the article was what great relationship builders do that everyone else fails to do.

    Also last week, we celebrated the life of my best friend and longtime business partner, Matt Hogan, who passed away on Friday, August 25.  Today’s article will pay tribute to Matt, the best relationship builder I have ever known, I’ll share the 10 things Matt did to build strong, lasting relationships, as well as ten things I learned from Matt.

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  • How to Hire the Right Salespeople Using This Jeep vs. Infiniti Analogy

    • October 7, 2022
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    Usually, the overall score, relative strength of a candidate’s capabilities, and recommendation are more important than any specific scores.  Usually.  But with the assessment of Mary, it was an entirely different story.  

    Let’s review the scores and findings from Mary’s OMG Sales Candidate Assessment. She had really good scores.  Really good. Her Sales Percentile was 82 so she was stronger than 82% of the salespeople in the world. So was OMG wrong?  Why did the company hire her?  Why did she fail?

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  • The Many Different Selling Roles and How They Differ – Part 1

    • July 27, 2022
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    The same kind of thinking is required when thinking about the various roles of salespeople.  We can name them: Account Executive, Territory Manager, Business Development Rep, Sales Development Rep, Account Manager, Key Account Manager, National Account Manager, Channel Manager, Application Engineer, Sales Consultant, Inside Sales, Outside Sales, and more.

    To further complicate things, in some companies and industries, Sales Managers function as salespeople and Sales VPs function as Sales Managers.

    While the above roles have selling as a primary responsibility, there are as many differences to selling roles as there are differences to the class or style of cars.  Today, we’ll explore the difference between an Account Executive and a Business Development Rep.

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  • Your Last Chance to Make a Good First Impression

    • June 14, 2019
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    Most salespeople don’t take first impressions seriously enough. If they did, their first impressions would be much more favorable.

    I can still remember my first (unintentional) lesson about first impressions.  My family was gathered at my grandfather’s house to watch the debut of the Beatles on The Ed Sullivan show.  It was February 9, 1964 and at 8 years old, I was one of seventy-three million people watching the show that night.  I was as excited about this show as I would be later that same year when I attended my first Red Sox baseball game at Fenway Park.  That is pretty excited! 

    Sitting on the carpet, I was completely focused on seeing and hearing The Beatles play five of their hit songs, but my mother was doing color commentary from the plastic covered sofa behind me.

    She said, “He’s cleaner than the other 3”, referring to Paul McCartney, who had straighter teeth, and a face more suitable for the mop top hair style shared by the four of them.

    There it was, my first lesson in judging people by how they looked, and more specifically, what “clean” did and did not look like.

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  • Sales Effectiveness – IDC and CEB Draw Conflicting Conclusions

    • February 24, 2011
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    The latest IDC Study says that of the customers who changed vendors last year, 65% did so because they either had a poor relationship with their vendor or a better relationship with the new vendor.  One of their conclusions is that companies need to do a better job teaching their salespeople how to develop relationship building skills, especially in the C-Level.

    The latest Corporate Executive Board study starts out with this headline:  “Most companies are betting that reps who focus on building stronger customer relationships will rebuild sales. They’re wrong—here’s why.”

    So why are these two studies coming to two different conclusions?

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