sales leadership
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Disagreement Over Sales Leadership Best Practices?
- July 17, 2012
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
When sales leaders initiate the questions, how do they differentiate best practices from stupid practices?
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How the Right Sales Leader Can Turn Around Sales Performance
- June 12, 2012
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
What kind of people problems have you created?
How can you fix them? -
10 Best Sales Force Articles That You Probably Didn’t Read (Yet)
- June 4, 2012
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
I’ve written 930 articles for this Blog. Some, that I don’t think are particularly good, are the most popular, getting thousands of reads here, and thousands more on other sites that republish them. Others, which I think are very good and/or important, are hardly noticed, usually because of either the title, day of the week, or time of day.
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Why Do So Many Salespeople Fail to Make Quota?
- April 26, 2012
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
The statistics are staggering. In some sectors, fewer than 25% of all salespeople will make quota. Even best-in-class companies are lucky when fewer than 80% of their salespeople make quota. Are you OK with it when your own salespeople fail to make quota? There are a number of possible reasons for this widespread mediocrity and failure and, depending on the company, some or all of them may apply.
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Sales Leaders Got These Issues All Wrong
- April 16, 2012
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
I couldn’t help but notice that for most companies, including the best-in-class, their initiatives were not in alignment with the business pressures which they reported having. Here are their business pressures:
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A Different Look at Sales Compensation
- April 6, 2012
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
With a salaried position, salespeople are essentially on a fixed income – perhaps a more attractive fixed income than a retiree, but fixed none the less. And these days, with most people living at or above their means, fixed simply becomes another word for broke! The thought of coming up with $75,000 in discretionary funds is daunting unless a salesperson is the rare exception who has been squirreling away most of his income. This is the world of the salaried salesperson. Play it safe, but don’t expect any big commission checks.
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Sales Strategy and Tactics – Thoughts from the Super Bowl
- February 6, 2012
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
In my opinion, football is the sport based more on strategy while baseball is the sport based more on tactics.
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Great Sales Management Advice from Football’s Greatest
- February 3, 2012
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Sales Managers could learn a thing or two from Bill Belichick! Like:
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Are You Part of the Problem with your Salespeople?
- November 15, 2011
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
One of the things I always stress with sales leadership teams is that before they can coach effectively, before they can really hold people accountable to agreed upon metrics, before they can really motivate people to perform, and before they can develop their people, they must first shape their environment. That’s the hard part. After that has been accomplished, the actual coaching, motivating, development and accountability can be enjoyable and productive because of the resulting cooperation.
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Does Inbound Marketing Deliver Good Leads for the Sales Force?
- March 1, 2011
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
At least that’s the promise. And it delivers on the promise – to a point.
People submitted their names and email addresses (and perhaps more) to receive samples, download a white paper, request more information, view a video clip, subscribe to a free trial, subscribe to a blog or newsletter, get free use of a tool, or receive some premium content. To that extent it delivers on delivering leads. B U T, are the leads any good?