sales management

  • Motivating Your Sales Team – Secrets to Success

    • September 9, 2013
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    My first post-vacation post is a collection of announcements that have been sitting in my note-taking app, inbox, and calendar.

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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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  • Do You Need to Save All of those Sales Assessments and Evaluations?

    • August 22, 2013
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    The best reason to save all of those sales candidate assessments which you ran last year can be answered with a few letters: EEOC. That’s right. It’s especially true if you don’t follow the sales hiring process to a “T”, or worse, if you don’t always follow the recommendations on the assessment. Let’s say that you loved one candidate so much that you hired him despite the recommendation not to do so.

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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 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?

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  • Baseball and Selling Revisited – A Powerful Analogy

    • June 12, 2013
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    A salesperson tells you about a great-looking opportunity that has been forecast to close this month.  “We’re definitely getting this and it’s an awesome opportunity for us.  We’re going to knock this one out of the park!”

    At the end of the month, the deal hasn’t closed and you question your salesperson about it.  You are told that the decision-maker has been away on vacation, but as soon as he returns, the deal is sure to get done.

    A month later, nothing has changed.  This time, the salesperson admits that he has had a little difficulty reaching the decision-maker, but he is sure that nothing has changed.  You are assured that everything is good.

    Six months later, when the deal still hasn’t closed, you force the salesperson to archive the opportunity with the salesperson still not understanding what went wrong.

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  • Salespeople Must Stop Snorkeling and Start Scuba Diving

    • May 15, 2013
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    We talk a lot about the importance of using a consultative approach instead of a transactional approach to better differentiate and sell value instead of price.  When we explain consultative selling, we usually emphasize the importance of listening and questioning.  When we further explain effective listening and questioning, it becomes much more difficult to describe in a paragraph or in the absence of a demonstration or role-play.

    Until today.

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  • Is the “Lack of Commitment to Sales Success” Finding Predictive?

    • May 7, 2013
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    So you have your sales force evaluated and in addition to learning why you are getting the results you are getting, and what you can do to significantly improve those results, you are surprised by some of the individual findings on some of your salespeople.  One of the findings that generates the most push-back is Lack of Commitment to sales success.

    We could hear any of the following comments as push-back to this finding:

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  • When Sales Coaching, Best Practices and Books are Ignored

    • May 6, 2013
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    Coaching is crucial to the success of any sales force; however, coaching without the context of an effective sales process, pipeline, metrics to drive revenue, motivation and accountability aren’t enough.  So, our events integrate these additional elements to make for a well-rounded, comprehensive two days.

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