Sales Coaching
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Don’t Let MT and Lay-Z Tank Your Sales Team: Lessons from Squirrels
- September 7, 2025
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Six years after meeting squirrels Ernest, MT, and Lay-Z, I’m stunned their sales team counterparts—underperforming salespeople—still linger. Learn why leaders hesitate to act and how to build a thriving sales team for 2026.
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Unify Your Sales Message: Lessons from Politics and Balance of Nature
- September 2, 2025
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Democrats flood the airwaves with one message, like their cringy 2025 Trump/Musk attack videos, while Republicans’ scattered talking points barely register. Sound like your sales team? Most operate like the GOP—95% of companies lack consistent messaging, per Objective Management Group data. Take Balance of Nature’s “fruits and veggies in a capsule” campaign: real customers, from moms to celebs, passionately amplify one message, driving huge growth. Imagine your salespeople delivering your value prop with that fire! At Kurlan & Associates, we analyze elevator pitches and value propositions to ensure consistency and impact. Sales leaders, review your messaging, make sure your team knows it cold, and enforce it like CRM compliance. Need help crafting a unified, authentic pitch? Read the full post for tips to make your sales messaging win.
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Lessons from Happy Gilmore 2: Why Salespeople Need to Get Serious About Skill-Building
- July 28, 2025
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Adam Sandler’s sequel delivers laughs and a sales wake-up call: Like Happy recommitting to golf, why don’t more reps grind on their skills? Explore 10 barriers backed by OMG data on 2.5M assessments, and how training flips the script for growth.
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How to Spark the Sales Equivalent of a 10-Game Winning Streak
- July 13, 2025
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Success breeds success: Just like the Red Sox’s 10-game winning streak after trading Rafael Devers, sales teams ignite when B and C players start closing deals, pushing everyone—including top performers—to elevate their game. Learn how effective training boosts revenue by 28-42%, with real client results like growing from $24M to $68M in 12 months.
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Future Red Sox Stars to Sales MVPs: Why One-on-One Coaching Wins
- July 9, 2025
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
The Red Sox turned young players into stars with one-on-one coaching, and your sales team can too. Learn why group coaching falls short and how personalized coaching can boost revenue by up to 42%. Ready to hit a sales home run?
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Why Salespeople Skip the Sales Process (And How It’s Killing Your Revenue)
- May 19, 2025
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Planting a fruit tree requires five simple steps in the right order—mess it up, and you’re left with dirt. Sales is no different, yet only 34% of salespeople follow a structured process. From mistaking methodologies for processes to winging it, discover why salespeople ditch the roadmap and how a proper sales process can boost revenue by 20%.
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Executive Leadership is the Key to a Lasting and Successful Sales Transformation
- April 6, 2025
- Posted by: Kurlan & Associates, Inc.
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
A customized and optimized sales process should be a tipping point but most companies screw up the opportunity by believing that after the introduction to the sales team they are done. Unfortunately, it is only the beginning, not the end, and unless there is proper governance on required changes, nothing will actually change.
Sales Transformation occurs with Sales Process, but only when there is Governance on the associated requirements.
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How To Double Your Sales Pipeline in 30 Days
- March 31, 2025
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Most salespeople who entered sales more than fifteen years ago and had to prospect for new business, have forgotten how to do it and if we are being honest, may not have been very willing or effective at this when they were expected to prospect.
Most new salespeople never had to make cold calls as that was delegated to BDRs and SDRs who have universally sucked at prospecting, averaging just 1.5 new meetings scheduled per week.
Yes, it’s that bad.
What’s worse is that most companies don’t consider pipeline quantity and quality the biggest challenge in the sales organization! Most would say it’s the low win rate or the percentage of opportunities that stall in the pipeline. Why do you think that is?
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How Indecisiveness Undermines Sales and Sales Leadership Effectiveness
- February 1, 2025
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
If you are driving down the road in your car, looking at your phone, fiddling with your radio, looking at people walking on the sidewalk, weaving in and out of traffic or speeding because you’re in a hurry, you are probably not a very good driver and bad things will happen.
If you have a pile of files on your desk, a to-do list that must be scrolled to read, past-due proposals, and an empty pipeline, you are probably not very well organized, don’t manage your time very well, and likely behind on quota.
We’re referring to things we do that prevent us from being as effective as we could be or need to be and there is another one we should discuss, and that’s when a sales leader has a Non-Supportive Buy Cycle attribute of needing to think things over. In the 4-minute video below, which you must watch to understand the concept, I explain how the indecisiveness of a sales leader prevents them from being able to develop, coach up and grow their sales team.
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New Competency Has 10 Attributes for Post 2024 Sales Success
- November 18, 2024
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Categories: Uncategorized, Understanding the Sales Force
The problem is not that prospects and customers expect you to lie, the problem is that they wonder if you are being truthful, especially when it sounds too good to be true or they believe you are telling them what they want to hear.
Thank God that Larry Levine wrote and published Selling in a Post Trust World earlier this year! That’s a book that will help you adapt to these changing times. Another book that will have you selling more and selling with integrity is my timeless book, Baseline Selling-How to Become a Sales Superstar.
In addition to the 21 Sales Core Competencies that are current best practices, I officially recommend the following ten, additional, post 2024 selling attributes: