sales management
-
The Will to Succeed, Sell Anything, Top Sales Books, and Coaching
- January 10, 2011
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
I was just wondering – do you or your salespeople play the lottery? Do you or any of your salespeople have an inheritance coming? These are two things that you might not think anything of but they can cause salespeople to lack the consistency and effort that are so important to sales success. Salespeople maintain the mindset that financial success and independence, and the freedom to have what they want, when they want it, regardless of cost, must be earned and not handed to them. Big base salaries and commissions from residual business can have an even greater negative effect except they are even more immediate threats to productivity than lotteries and inheritances!
-
Top 10 Steps to Initiate Salespeople to Their Roles
- January 4, 2011
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Categories: Best Top 10 Lists, Understanding the Sales Force
This is exactly how to initiate salespeople, whether they are new to your company, new to their role, or new to sales. Don’t vary at all from the steps above. More importantly, don’t assume that because they have sold for 10 years they’ll know what to do or be able to do it effectively. Follow the steps!
-
How Christmas Gift Giving Mirrors the Ideal Sales Process
- December 15, 2010
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Categories: Sales Process, Understanding the Sales Force
If you understand that, then why do so many executives and salespeople, from all industries, still insist that the first thing they must do with a new prospect is present? Even the word “present” suggests waiting for the perfect time.
-
Top 10 Outcomes That Should Come from Sales Coaching
- December 14, 2010
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Categories: Best Top 10 Lists, Understanding the Sales Force
When you coach a salesperson, which words should you hear that would tell you the session was effective?
Not “Thanks” or “OK”.
-
Top 5 Interesting Sales Tips
- December 13, 2010
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Categories: Best Top 10 Lists, Understanding the Sales Force
Depending on the context of the conversation, weather, personality and the frame of reference of their prospect, here are the top five things that “Interesting” could mean:
-
What The Salesperson Saw (or Didn’t) – A Question about Sales Calls
- December 10, 2010
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
It’s one thing to have eyes, but our salespeople need to use them too. Typically, their mouths are moving so fast and so often, and the sound of their own voice is so compelling (to them), that their eyes are neutralized. This is similar to what happens on a long drive when you suddenly realize you drove 10 miles past your exit and have no idea how you got that far without noticing.
What do your salespeople miss on their sales calls?
-
When it Comes to Compensation Sales is Not Like Baseball
- December 9, 2010
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Categories: Sales Compensation, Understanding the Sales Force
The other day a client asked whether salespeople can make the jump from earning $85K to a position that could pay them $150K.
-
How to Determine if Your Sales Process is Effective
- December 8, 2010
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Categories: Sales Process, Understanding the Sales Force
Can you reverse engineer your sales calls?
OTHER THAN THE PART OF YOUR SALES CALL THAT INVOLVES PRESENTING, could you break down and explain, each step, strategy, tactic, question, response and milestone met, in the order they occurred, why they were chosen, and the resulting reaction of each occurrence, AFTER you’ve completed an entire sales cycle?
-
Another Behavioral Styles Assessment Pretends to Assess Salespeople
- December 3, 2010
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Their #4 is the Ability to Develop a Compelling Story – This IS a differentiator between good and bad salespeople – only they have it backwards! The bottom 74% have perfected the ability to present capabilities, value proposition, the brand promise and other pitches. The top 26% have perfected the ability to ask good, tough, timely questions. What good is the story unless you can tie it to the problems uncovered by effective questioning?
-
The Science of Achievement Applied to Sales Success
- November 29, 2010
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Many salespeople have been in sales for ten plus years and aren’t the best of the best. They’re not even in the top 26%. I will use science to explain this. If we go back and look at Objective Management Group’s data on the salespeople that have been assessed so far, we find that 22% are not trainable (no incentive to change) and another 10% shouldn’t even be in sales. So that leaves 42% unaccounted for. What about them? I dug through the data and found that: