sales leadership

  • 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?

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  • How Can Anyone Spend That Much Time on Sales Coaching?

    • November 4, 2010
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    According to Objective Management Group’s considerable data, only 15% of all sales managers spend as much as 25% of their time on coaching and the time they do spend on coaching is generally ineffective.  Two more statistics from OMG reveal that 18% of them shouldn’t even be in sales management, and 34% of them aren’t trainable because they lack the incentive to change.  And one last statistic, a whopping 84% of sales managers just plain suck!

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  • Trigger Events – The Anatomy of Sales Wisdom

    • June 16, 2010
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    Some may call what I am describing nothing more than experience, wisdom or intuition.  It doesn’t really matter what you call it, as long as your salespeople do it during every conversation.

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  • Sales Leadership – a Balancing Act to Achieve Compliance and Quotas

    • March 11, 2010
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    We covered many areas of Sales Leadership that fall under the direction of someone in Phil’s role including cultural issues, competition among sales managers, and getting an entire sales force to change.  I chose to discuss the balance sales leaders must have between sharing, mandating and asking.  Sounds simple.

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  • Sales Leadership – 6th of the 10 Kurlan Sales Management Functions

    • November 19, 2009
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    Sales Leadership includes but is not limited to:

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  • 5 Ways to Motivate Your Salespeople

    • July 14, 2009
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    I was coaching a senior leader today and the conversation turned to motivation, specifically, how to be a better motivator.

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