sales management
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Do You Need Your Salespeople to Love and Respect You?
- October 5, 2009
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
I was coaching a sales manager whose reps were all under performing, even though many of them have a history of achieving and over achieving during less difficult times. Many salespeople with prior success have been struggling to match their past performances. The truth is that most of them just aren’t good enough to overcome the resistance that they face right now. The question is, what percentage of those struggles are due to the ineffectiveness of the salespeople and what portion lies with the ineffectiveness of their sales manager?
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A Forgotten Secret of Sales Success
- October 1, 2009
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Brad Ferguson, my guest on this week’s edition of Meet the Sales Experts, shared a story about a bank he worked with. Using Objective Management Group’s Sales Force Evaluation, he identified 8 bankers that weren’t right for the business development roles they were in. After both the voluntary and involuntary turnover of 7 of them, the bank increased new business revenue by 30% from the 5 remaining bankers. What did Brad have them do? It was relatively simple, really. He had them identify and focus on specific behaviors they could measure, required them to perform specific levels of those behaviors, and held them accountable. Listen to the show to hear more.
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5 Steps to Coaching Your Salespeople Beyond Happy Ears
- September 29, 2009
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Today I posted this article about Diagnosing and Overcoming Happy Ears on the Baseline Selling web site. And last week I wrote this article about Happy Ears and an empty pipeline.
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Understanding the Sales Force – Top 100 Blogs
- September 28, 2009
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
It’s been a pretty good week for getting honored.
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Why Some Lousy Salespeople Can’t Get Any Better
- September 18, 2009
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Chris Mott returned to Meet the Sales Experts this week and provided us with a show packed with good information.
We were discussing salespeople who don’t improve, aren’t motivated to do better and who resist training, development and coaching efforts of sales managers and outside experts. Chris said that much of this behavior is due to negative personal experiences that these salespeople had when being sold to by other, basically, horrible salespeople.
So I believe that as a result of this two things happen:
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Sales Prospecting on Steroids
- September 10, 2009
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
With all of the articles written about sales and cold calls being dead (I usually write the counter arguments to that. How would you find new business if the only thing you could rely on was a lead?) it was a breath of fresh air when Michael Strickland, my guest on this week’s edition of Meet the Sales Experts, spoke about prospecting on steroids.
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Top Producers, Top Salespeople, or Good Account Managers?
- August 27, 2009
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Today I received an email from Selling Power promoting their latest webinar, The Hunter/Farmer Paradigm is Dead.
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Chinese Salespeople May be the Next Group to Outsell Your Salespeople
- August 25, 2009
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
What are you going to do when, not only are you out priced, out sourced, out willed, out shipped, and out produced, but also out sold – by the Chinese?
That is the question posed by my Kurlan & Associates colleague, Frank Belzer, who is blogging from Shanghai, where he is spending the week training Asian companies in the art of sales management.
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Avoid Mistakes, Take Action, Overcome Resistance
- August 24, 2009
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
The Forbes Success Calendar for July 30, 2009 had the following quote:
“More people would learn from their mistakes if they weren’t so busy denying that they made them.” Anonymous
Great quote.
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Hit More Fairways and Close More Sales
- August 19, 2009
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Eric Dunn, my guest on this week’s Meet the Sales Experts Radio Show, stressed the importance of positive self talk, affirmations, and transformation as keys to sales success.