sales effectiveness
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It’s Coming Sooner Than You Think – 5 Keys to Prepare Your Sales Force for the Recession
- March 10, 2016
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
You remember the last recession – the great recession – right? I remember that in November of 2008, the business stopped coming in as if someone had turned off the faucet. Bam! We lost a third of our revenue overnight – and we were prepared for it! I predicted the last recession as early as September of 2006 with this article and in the summer of 2008 with this article.
In my business, I can see two trends ahead of others and I began seeing both of those factors begin to kick in last month. Do you know what they are?
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Key to Significantly Improve Sales Training Results
- May 28, 2014
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
The best players, getting the advanced instruction on the travel teams, improve the most. Those same kids, on their regular season team, learn almost nothing new and aren’t challenged or pushed. Practice, and sometimes even the games, can be so boring for them that they don’t play their very best.
Translation from Baseball to Selling
If we translate all of that baseball to selling, the only two things that change are the activity and the age of the people being coached and trained.
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Why Do Salespeople Forget What They Learn?
- August 21, 2013
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Some salespeople are fortunate enough to get trained and/or coached. Maybe it’s an all-day seminar, not really training as much as exposure to some different thinking or approach. We don’t expect anything to change from a single day, so why should you? I went to a short game golf school for a day. It was awesome while I was there, but 4 years later, I can’t do any of the things I learned there. Comprehensive sales training (8-16 months) leads us to expect dramatic change and a significant increase in sales.
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Is Selling Difficult or Easy? It All Depends on Your Definitions
- April 2, 2013
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Difficult selling, with its challenges, gives way to easy-to-achieve outcomes. Easy selling, while avoiding challenges, causes difficult-to-achieve outcomes. See my definitions below…
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This is How Sales Managers Should Coach Their Salespeople
- March 13, 2013
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
A salesperson told me he met with a customer that had taken their business to a competitor because of price. It sounded like they were getting what they were paying for:
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Great Salespeople Can See the Pixels – The Rest Watch the Movie
- March 6, 2013
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
We have been describing the Consultative Sales approach. How do your salespeople fare in their ability to sell consultatively and, more importantly, which of them can be trained and coached to effectively execute this with consistency and results?
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Why Salespeople Won’t Abandon the Early Demo and Presentation
- March 4, 2013
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
If you want your sales force to strive for sales excellence, the bottom line is that your salespeople won’t drive this transition and neither will a sales manager. You have to drive it. You must commit to it and it must be a sustained commitment. It’s not a do-it-yourself project, so you must also be prepared to do it correctly, get help from a results-oriented firm, and lead by example.
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Sales Incentives, Awards, Lead Follow-Up and Sales Effectiveness
- December 19, 2012
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
In the case of appointment setters, as in the email above, training them to be more effective with the appointment-setting conversation will pay dividends too. Not only will the appointments be more qualified, there will actually be more, better-qualified appointments!
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Selling is All in the Timing
- May 9, 2011
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Selling is like cooking.
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The Effect of Momentum on the Sales Force
- February 25, 2011
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Momentum has a magical effect on salespeople.
When salespeople are doing well, there is pressure on everyone to keep up, carry their fair share, compete, be successful, and contribute. It causes salespeople to remain focused, be at their best, and put forth the extra effort. It contributes to happiness, fulfillment, excitement, confidence and success. That’s all pretty good, huh?