sales excellence
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Rainforests and Torn ACL’s Provide Insight into Effective Selling
- July 17, 2023
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Only Dave Kurlan can take a torn ACL, rainforests and climate change and use those as analogies for sales effectiveness!
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Resistant Salespeople Can Prevent Consistent, Strong Sales Results
- June 27, 2023
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
CEOs and Sales Leaders whose salespeople aren’t responding need to understand that their veteran salespeople are the same as my son when he was thirteen.
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How to Easily Motivate and Incentivize Sales Pipeline Building
- June 20, 2023
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Music motivates me to do what I otherwise don’t really want to do. But while everyone is different, I’ve seen music work as a motivator for others too.
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Use Music to Understand the 12 Criteria Prospects Use to Buy from Salespeople
- June 12, 2023
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Yesterday, while watching our son play in a summer collegiate baseball game, I missed a step and tumbled all the way down the bleachers. Isn’t that a great analogy for what happens when you miss, or skip a crucial step in the sales process? More than half of all salespeople are missing and skipping important milestones in the sales process each and every day and their egos get more bruised from failing to close those opportunities than my body got bruised from my not so thrilling adventure to the ground.
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The Irony of Free Passes for Under Performing Salespeople
- October 21, 2022
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
A typical US sales team consists of 15 people, including a Sales VP, 2 Regional Sales Managers, and 12 salespeople. Of course, there are exponentially larger and smaller sales teams, but this is the version that we most frequently encounter. This team will have no more than 3 performing salespeople, another 3 who sometimes hit their numbers, and 6 who chronically under-perform.
Let’s assume that the salespeople who are ranked 10-12 are not just under-performers, but pathetically ineffective salespeople. At the end of the year, they receive their annual review – the equivalent of an arrest and release – and are back on the street to underperform for another year, making the company both both the victim and the enabler. This is insanity!
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How to Get Your Audience to Fall in Love With Your Virtual Event
- April 9, 2021
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
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How to Use Buckets to Improve Sales Performance and Coaching
- February 19, 2021
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Buckets are important, especially when you’re attempting to coach up a salesperson or even improve your own sales performance. If you don’t have the OMG evaluation at your fingertips and can’t lookup the scores in 21 Sales Core Competencies, or see which attributes need to be improved, you’ll need to think in terms of buckets.
When salespeople are struggling, there are five primary buckets to consider:
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The Top 10 Sales Articles of 2018
- December 13, 2018
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
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Discovered – Data Reveals the Second Biggest Obstacle to Closing More Sales
- May 7, 2018
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Whichever way you turn, wherever you look, and whatever you listen to there is data. Polls, surveys, metrics, analytics, analyses, white papers, graphs, charts, infographics, tables, spreadsheets and more. There is data everywhere. 5 of my last 10 articles were based on data and I know that my regular readers love the articles that are based on data so I am writing about data again today.
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Persistence Over Polish – What the Top 10% of All Salespeople Do Better
- March 12, 2018
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
The best athletes in the world know exactly how they do the things they do that make them so great. In addition to their God-given talent, they outworked everyone else to master the mechanics and nuances of their sport, the mindset required for greatness, and competed at a high level from a very young age. When they falter they can easily make the adjustments necessary to get back on track.
Interestingly, most top salespeople don’t know what it is that they do that makes them so successful! That’s surprise #1. If you look through the data on the 2,.3 million salespeople that Objective Management Group (OMG) has assessed, you will see that the top 10% of all salespeople have better average scores than their colleagues in each of the 21 Sales Core Competencies. Their average scores are listed below for 5 Sales Core Competencies in which they have the best scores. They are:
