Sales DNA

  • The Best Salespeople are 2733% More Likely to Have This Than the Worst Salespeople
    • July 11, 2019
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    86% of all salespeople have beliefs that don’t support ideal sales outcomes.  That’s important because beliefs influence behavior, and appropriate sales behavior drives results.  Think about sales process, sales methodology, sales strategy and sales tactics. Salespeople who have the ability to execute those four elements of success are less dependent on their knowledge of selling than what they believe.  While most salespeople have self-limiting beliefs, it should not surprise you that only 18% of the elite salespeople – the top 5% – have self-limiting beliefs.  But it drops off rapidly from there.  Below I have listed the percentage of salespeople with self-limiting Beliefs by performance levels.

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  • The 21-Day Solution for the Toughest Sales Weaknesses
    • April 5, 2019
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    I wrote a popular article called, How the Rubber Band Sabotages Sales Performance.  That article discussed six competencies specific to Sales DNA and the impact those six have on performance when they appear as weaknesses.  At the end of last week’s article, I promised to introduce a solution to you within a week and true to my promise, the solution follows.

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  • How the Rubber Band Sabotages Sales Performance
    • April 1, 2019
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    I have written many articles about Sales DNA, the combination of strengths that support sales process, sales strategy and sales tactics; or, when it appears as a weakness and sabotages ones ability to execute.

    Unlike strategies and tactics, where you can learn and apply them, improving your Sales DNA requires much more effort and time.  

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  • New Data Shows that You Can Double Revenue by Overcoming This One Sales Weakness
    • October 22, 2018
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    My article revealed that salespeople who are burdened with the need to be liked are far less effective at selling than those who don’t have that weakness.  The biggest insight of all was that these salespeople were 47% less effective reaching decision makers!

    This article will take the same approach and use the same data from Objective Management Group’s (OMG) evaluations of 2,064,425 salespeople to look at salespeople who are uncomfortable having a financial conversation with their prospects and customers.  The latest data reveals that 60% of all salespeople have this weakness!  What do you think it will reveal?

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  • New Data Shows How Relationships and the Need to be Liked Impact Sales Performance
    • June 4, 2018
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    In my most recent article, I shared data that showed a chain reaction would occur when salespeople have more than one major weakness in their Sales DNA and the second major weakness is their tendency to become emotional. As a trigger, the first major weakness causes the salesperson to become emotional, at which time their listening skills become compromised.

    That article can be found here and as of this writing nearly 6 dozen LinkedIn subscribers have contributed some very insightful comments here.  Their comments inspired me to dig even further and look into the correlation between relationship building that salespeople do and their need to be liked.  In this study, even I was surprised by what I found!

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  • New Data Shows Sales Weaknesses Cause Powerful Chain Reactions in Salespeople
    • May 30, 2018
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    I have written extensively about Sales DNA over the years and today we will view Sales DNA from the perspective of sitting inside of a chemistry lab.

    Sales DNA is the combination of strengths (or weaknesses) that support (or sabotage) the execution of sales process, sales strategy and sales tactics.  Objective Management Group (OMG) measures and includes the 6 most powerful of those strands of Sales DNA in its 21 Sales Core Competencies.  While I usually discuss the impact of these weaknesses, we have never conducted a lab experiment like this before! 

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  • More Fake News in Sales Organizations Than on TV Networks!
    • December 13, 2017
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    Most of your salespeople are just like fake news and I will prove it.  I’m not talking about the elite top 5% or the next group of 15% who are very strong.  I am referring to the bottom 46% of the sales population who, if I am to be completely honest, totally suck. If yours is like most companies, then half of its salespeople fit this description.

    I’m going to show you exactly how your salespeople report fake news but first, we need to break down how fake news happens so that I can demonstrate how your weak salespeople do the exact same thing, every chance they can get.

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  • Is Excuse Making Actually the Biggest Obstacle to Increasing Sales?
    • December 14, 2016
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    I’ve talked a lot about excuse making and the powerful difference between using your index finger, which points outward, versus your thumb, which points inward.  Today, Brandon Steiner wrote a great little article about taking responsibility.

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  • Holiday Sales Treat – A Mashup of Two Classic Songs
    • December 6, 2016
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    This past weekend I read that the lyrics to the popular Christmas song, “Baby it’s Cold Outside” were rewritten to emphasize consent.  And the weekend before I saw the news that Brady Bunch Mom, Florence Henderson, had passed away.  That immediately caused the Brady Bunch theme song to come to mind but my brain tends to combine things. In 2005, when I combined sales and baseball,  it became Baseline Selling, which when I looked as I was writing this, was still ranked #9 in the sales category on Amazon.com.  So my brain went and combined the Brady Bunch Theme song with a lyric change and came up with this diddy on OMG.

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  • What is the Single Biggest Differentiator Between Top and Bottom Salespeople?
    • October 3, 2016
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    There is one Blog that I never fail to read, and that’s Seth Godin’s Blog.  Seth doesn’t write about sales – he pens a thought leadership Blog – but sometimes his articles are very applicable to sales and selling.  Recently, he posted two very short articles – each is less than 30 seconds to read and I believe they are both well worth your time.

    The first is Fully Baked.  The second, on a related topic, is Skills vs. Talents. 

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