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10 Prospect Rules That Salespeople Must Learn to Break
- January 24, 2022
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Like I said, this is not a COVID article because if it was, I could write a book about the data, science, policies and hypocrisies. However, there is a sales equivalent to the stupid restaurant masking requirement and that is what we will discuss in today’s article.
Have you or your salespeople ever been told by a prospect that they can’t:
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Crappy Salespeople and Lack of Urgency Alignment – The Bob Chronicles Part 4
- April 27, 2021
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
This is the fourth installment in the Bob Chronicles. Bob is the weak salesperson who represents the bottom 50% of all salespeople. You can read previous installments about Bob below:
The $225,000 Mistake That Most Salespeople Make
Data – The Top Salespeople are 631% More Effective at This Than Weak Salespeople
Good Bob, Bad Bob, The Stockdale Paradox and Sales Success
You’re probably wondering, what did Bob screw up this time? He screwed up urgency. You might be asking how a salesperson could possibly screw up urgency but Bob and the rest of the weak salespeople screw up just about everything else so why not urgency too?
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31 Conditions That Predict Your Sales Opportunity is in Trouble
- April 16, 2021
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Last week, a crazy driver pulled out right in front of me and despite the fact that I anticipated his stupidity and would have been able to stop before smashing into this moron, my car wasn’t as certain as I was. My Genesis took matters into its own hands and went into all out protection mode – making sure nothing happened to it or me.
As advertised, it took over the braking and steering to protect itself, sounded all the alarms to alert me to its strategy and then did two things that really surprised me. All at once, the seat enveloped me in a cocoon and the seat belt tightened around my shoulders so that there was no chance that I was leaving that seat. Going through the windshield? Not a chance unless the whole seat was coming with me!
That was cool.
And it got me thinking. Wouldn’t it be cool if salespeople had a sales version of an early warning system/driver assist like my car has?
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Startups Almost Always Get The Sales Thing Wrong
- March 19, 2021
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Typically, founders of start ups put it all on the line – everything – their house, savings, loans from friends and family and perhaps bank loans, angel investments and more. As brilliant as they are, in most cases, sales is not one of their strengths and it’s not until the business has a logo and a website when they realize that success won’t come until somebody sells something. Oh-oh, now what?
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Key to Successfully Hiring Salespeople: Getting it Right Versus Getting it Over With
- December 21, 2020
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Recruiting salespeople doesn’t need to be difficult or complicated, but it is a process and needs to be completed thoroughly and correctly. Ask yourself this question: eighteen months from now, would you prefer to have spent five months to get it right and have a productive new salesperson, or three months getting it over with, only to have to do it again four months later, and again four months after that.
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There is More Than One Type of Bias in Hiring Salespeople
- December 4, 2020
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Biases drive decision making. You have them. I have them. We all have them. Most of the time those biases are fine but when it comes to hiring, and specifically sales hiring, bias can get you in a heap of trouble.
While some biases simply cause bad hiring decisions, others have led to the growth of the Diversity, Equality and Inclusion (DEI) role in companies. This article attempts to explain and make sense of the various biases, how they affect selection, and how that correlates to sales success.
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Using the Power of a Duracell to Help You Hire Perfect Salespeople
- April 25, 2019
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Apparently, Duracell 9 volt batteries are the picture of consistency.
Last night, all 7 of our upstairs smoke detecters starting squawking within about 30 minutes of each other to indicate that their batteries needed to be replaced. Given that the Duracells were installed in those units on the same day 4 years ago, one would hope that there are more things that we could rely upon to be as consistent and predictable.
One of those things is Objective Management Group’s sales candidate assessments.
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Hiring Salespeople Should Not be Like a Coin Flip
- February 6, 2019
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Hiring salespeople does not have to be like a pot luck supper or a coin flip. If you are selective instead of impulsive, good things will happen. Take a look at the image below.
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New Data Shows That Elite Salespeople are 700% Less Likely to Do This
- August 20, 2018
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
How effective are salespeople when it comes to creating urgency? I’m not talking about salespeople who create urgency by telling their prospects that if they don’t order today the price will go up or it won’t be available. I’m talking about salespeople who create urgency by asking questions to uncover problems, the consequences and cost of which, create urgency.
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Applicant Tracking and Sales Candidate Assessments Fit Like Ducks Take to Water
- November 21, 2016
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Back to the Applicant Tracking analysis. My first takeaway is that it validated what I knew only anecdotally –
that just about every mid-market and large company are using cloud-based applicant tracking systems and smaller companies are quickly moving in that direction too. It makes sense. If companies are using cloud-based job sites to source candidates, then it only makes sense that they would be integrating applicant tracking as well.My second takeaway is that with all of these companies sourcing from the cloud and tracking from the cloud, why aren’t more of them using the best sales candidate assessment in the cloud? I have 4 possible answers to that question:
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