sales culture
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Top 20 Reasons Salespeople Miss Quota and How to Fix it
- June 12, 2026
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Categories: Analogies, Baseball and Sales, Best Top 10 Lists, Sales Process, Understanding the Sales Force
People have been babying me since my bypass — and sales leaders are babying their teams the same way by lowering quotas. Here are the Top 20 Reasons Salespeople Miss Quota and exactly how to fix it instead of making excuses. No more false wins. Time to run the bases the right way.
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How Most Companies Get Sales Team Structure Wrong
- June 6, 2026
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Most companies overcomplicate sales team structure with too many roles and expensive BDR teams. Discover why simplifying to Hunters + Account Managers, fixing channel sales, and addressing weak management + infrastructure delivers far better results.
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25 Factors Indicative of a Strong Sales Culture
- May 11, 2026
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Categories: Analogies, Music and Sales, Sales Compensation, Sales Process, Understanding the Sales Force
Executives love the idea of a sales transformation until it’s time to actually change. Here are 25 proven factors that separate a truly strong sales culture from one that’s stuck making excuses.
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Worst to First: How Sales Teams and Salespeople Can Turn It Around
- April 23, 2026
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Categories: Baseball and Sales, Understanding the Sales Force
Discover how sales teams go from middle-of-the-pack to first place. Learn why leadership changes and culture shifts are the real keys to turning around veteran performance and hitting record revenue.
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Is Your Sales SCAM Leaving a SCAR on Your Sales Team?
- December 1, 2025
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Categories: Analogies, Sales Compensation, Understanding the Sales Force
Remember high school free periods vs. rigid bells? Your sales team’s dealing with the same drama—SCAM cultures and SCAR comp plans that fit half the reps and flop the rest. Time to offer options and slash turnover. (Read how!)
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The Golf to Sales Analogy: When You Don’t Know What You Don’t Know
- November 4, 2025
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Categories: Analogies, Understanding the Sales Force
Discover how a late start in golf taught me the ultimate sales lesson: “I didn’t know what I didn’t know.” From clueless reps sending premature proposals to managers without accountability, this post reveals the blind spots killing sales performance—and how a savvy CEO fixed it all.
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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
- Categories: Books, Movies, Theater and Television, 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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Fire Your Top Salesperson: The Red Sox Lesson for Better Sales Teams
- June 18, 2025
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Categories: Baseball and Sales, Understanding the Sales Force
Can firing your top salesperson transform your team? The Boston Red Sox’s bold trade of Rafael Devers reveals how letting go of a problem performer can lead to big wins. Discover the sales team lesson in this surprising move.
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Homicide Detective Makes Best Case for Sales Process
- March 21, 2024
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Categories: Bible and Sales, Sales Process, Understanding the Sales Force
The author admits that until he conducted his “cold-case investigation” of the New Testament, he was an atheist who always followed the evidence to find the truth. Similarly, a lot of prospects are also non-believers – not necessarily in Jesus – in your product or service. As I read and learned about the author’s methods for uncovering truth, or proof, I felt that salespeople could learn a lot about proof of concept, presenting facts, backing up claims, return on investment, and offering credible testimonials. That’s not nearly the analogy I’m going to make.
Wallace shared a story in the Forward about the time he was shot by a criminal who was on parole, and was not allowed to have a firearm. Up until the moment of the shooting, Wallace believed that a bullet-proof vest would stop a bullet. In the moment of the shooting, he believed in the bullet proof vest. At that moment his belief changed from “belief that” to “belief in.” That was the analogy he wished to apply to the gospels. He wondered if he could find the evidence to replace faith (belief that the miracles occurred) with proof (belief in both Jesus and the miracles).
That also happens to be my analogy from the book. Most salespeople believe that a sales process can help them succeed while the very best salespeople believe in their sales process.
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Why Sales Transformation Achieves Better Results Than Sales Training Alone
- January 22, 2021
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
You brought in sales training but it didn’t achieve the expected change because the training didn’t address the bigger problems that went beyond selling skills. You may not have realized that companies really need sales transformation and while sales training can be part of that transformation, on its own, it usually underperforms.
Why?