sales leadership
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Why CEOs/Presidents Tolerate Ineffective Sales Management
- October 7, 2013
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Lack of overall sales performance is an easily recognized problem. A savvy President or CEO may correctly identify the symptoms: inaccurate forecasts, a lack of new opportunities, new salespeople failing to ramp-up quickly enough, delayed closings, and complacency. However, they usually fail to understand that these issues are not sales issues, but sales management issues.
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Presidents & CEO’s: 4 Out of 5 Sales Managers Are Ineffective!
- October 2, 2013
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
A title like, “Presidents & CEO’s: 4 Out of 5 Sales Managers Are Ineffective”, will cause some Sales Directors, Sales VP’s and Sales Managers to click and read the article. That’s OK, but a spoiler warning: if you feel threatened by hearing the truth about yourself or your sales team, or would be uncomfortable sharing the truth about you or your team with the President or CEO, you should probably exit this article right now.
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Has the Death of Selling Finally Arrived?
- September 23, 2013
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
eople in inbound marketing would have you believe that if you create the right content, get people to raise their hands, complete a form, and request something, then inbound marketers, formerly known as inside salespeople, can take it from there. If you are selling something in great demand (iPhone 5), really inexpensive (monthly subscription of $20 or less), significantly lower-priced than your competition (by 20% or more), or that people must have (wireless service), then you can easily replace salespeople with marketers.
However, there are 15 scenarios where you do need salespeople if you are selling something that:
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The Key to Powerful Sales Conversations
- August 28, 2013
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Earlier this week, I wrote this article about the importance of using specific words and phrases at specific times.
That article discussed some of the milestones in the sales process where just the right word or phrase can make such a huge (make or break) difference in the direction that the sales call takes. In the article, I mentioned “at just the right time”, but I didn’t elaborate. I’ll correct that omission with the following examples.
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Which Industries Need the Most Help to Get Sales to the Next Level?
- August 15, 2013
- Posted by: Kurlan & Associates, Inc.
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
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Get Sales Compensation Right to Recruit Winning Salespeople
- August 13, 2013
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Sales candidates, especially good ones, are exponentially more difficult to attract than they were just two years ago. We regularly observe clients struggling when it comes to getting resumes from quality candidates. One of the reasons is compensation.
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Why Sales Leaders and Salespeople Get Frustrated
- August 6, 2013
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
You may not have control over external factors or forces but you do have control over how you react to them. Take a step back. Take a deep breath. Clear your head. Start over. Choose one thing that you know you can fix. Take action. Then get help fixing everything that you aren’t sure you can fix. One thing at a time. You can do this.
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The Great Migration to Inside Sales – Will You Get it Right?
- July 31, 2013
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
I agree that there is a significant trend toward moving salespeople to the inside. But in general, every company needs to conduct a case justification and every situation should be determined on a case-by-case basis. Making broad statements, that define the general scenarios where sales should be moved inside, simply won’t work for most companies because there will be more exceptions to the guidelines than those that fit.
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Why Can’t We Hire This Sales Candidate?
- July 22, 2013
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
We interviewed him; she’s from our industry; we really like him; but your assessment says she is not recommended. Why can’t we hire her?
That’s probably the single, most frequently asked question that we hear.
So, to answer the “Why can’t we?” question, there are two more questions:
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How Much Sales Development Can Leadership Do In-House?
- July 17, 2013
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
From time to time, clients want to handle some of the services we provide in-house. “Why can’t we do the sales process ourselves?” They can, but a few questions come to mind. If they didn’t have an effective, efficient, optimized, formal, structured sales process for the last 20 years, where would this expertise suddenly come from to create this process tomorrow? What if they get it wrong?