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My New Perspective on Sales Process and Methodology
- August 8, 2023
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
We were at the Zoo when we came upon the monkey in the picture. He was holding on to the chainlink fence with both hands and both feet – probably not very unusual for a monkey – but he was sitting on a basketball!
The monkey is following a traditional monkey methodology for hanging on, while being authentic, allowing his silly personality to come through, and getting people who were interacting with him to laugh.
We can even apply that approach to sales process and methodology!
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Use Music to Understand the 12 Criteria Prospects Use to Buy from Salespeople
- June 12, 2023
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Yesterday, while watching our son play in a summer collegiate baseball game, I missed a step and tumbled all the way down the bleachers. Isn’t that a great analogy for what happens when you miss, or skip a crucial step in the sales process? More than half of all salespeople are missing and skipping important milestones in the sales process each and every day and their egos get more bruised from failing to close those opportunities than my body got bruised from my not so thrilling adventure to the ground.
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Top Sales Videos and Rants From Dave Kurlan
- March 21, 2022
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
From time to time I record impromptu unscripted rants as well as some that are more well thought-out videos. From among the collection presented below, most are rants so the rants are much more popular. The most-watched (I have added to the list so there are more than 10 now!) videos are shown below in order of popularity and while I like all of them, I indicated my personal favorites with an asterisk. All but three of the videos are three-minutes or less, one is six-minutes, one is ten-minutes and one is eight-minutes. Topics include:
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How I Realized That Selling is Just a Bunch of Crap
- October 31, 2018
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Those are strong words and probably quite surprising coming out of my mouth but I’ll explain it all. Earlier this week I was leading another Sales Leadership Intensive and during a break it came to me.
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Remembering The Most Powerful Sales Lesson of My Life
- September 6, 2016
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Which one thing helps almost every salesperson succeed, even when they have other challenges?
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Can Free Sales Content Send You Down a Dangerous Path?
- May 2, 2016
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
I downloaded a Sales Process Cheat Sheet which promised a standardized playbook and a simple, easy-to-follow sales methodology to help managers coach their inside sales reps into following a proven, standardized process from discovery to close. Was there value? It was a joint promotion from Hubspot and InsideSales.com. – maybe you received the same offer in your inbox. Was it any good? Was it a process? Was it a playbook? Was it a methodology?
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Sales Slumps – What Causes Them and How to Fix Them
- September 28, 2015
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
During the course of a baseball season, both hitters and pitchers fall into slumps. In basketball, players slump with their outside shots and from the foul line. Football Quarterbacks go into passing slumps. Golf and Tennis pros have swing slumps. Tiger has been in a slump since Thanksgiving of 2009! (I’m sure there must be some kind of a slump that Soccer players can fall victim to, but I don’t know enough about soccer to weigh in.) With slumps being so common, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that salespeople get into slumps too. In this article, we’ll explore what causes salespeople to get into slumps, what their slumps look like, and how can they be fixed.
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How Can Consultative Selling Already be Dead?
- April 30, 2015
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
In this article for Middle Market Executive,Tom Searcy insists that Consultative Selling is dead. He says that consultative sellers end up with buyers who can only make small decisions, experts end up in purchasing and only industry authorities can reach executive decision-makers. He also says that consultative sellers ask, “What is your pain?”, experts say, “Here is your pain.”, and authorities say, “Here is the pain your industry is having and how you can uniquely overcome it.”
Is he right?
Let’s discuss that right now before your clothes go out of style…
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Sales Success is Like Making Great Tasting Soup
- November 3, 2014
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Sales success is no more about any one competency than great-tasting soup is about one ingredient. If you omit one ingredient, like salt, the soup will taste bland. If you omit one competency, like Qualifying, your sales effectiveness will suffer. While you can’t leave one ingredient out of the soup, it’s also not possible to make soup by focusing on and including only one ingredient. Likewise, with sales, you can’t expect to succeed, dominate your market, and celebrate your results if you focus on and include only one of the competencies on my list.
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Solitaire and Modern Sales Training – What Should it Cover and Include?
- October 6, 2014
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
I’ve been playing one of those Solitaire games on my iPad and I can routinely score in the neighborhood of 2 minutes and 30 seconds, with my best time being just under 2 minutes. I thought I was doing pretty well until I realized that my wife routinely scores between 1 minute and 1:20 seconds with her best scores (not score) being under 1 minute. She has scored as low as 48 seconds.
If not for my wife, I would have thought I was a real pro at Solitaire!
This is exactly how many CEO’s, Presidents and Sales VP’s view their sales forces. Without anything or anyone with whom to compare, they form their judgements on sales effectiveness in a vacuum. I routinely hear things like, “We have a custom sales process.”, and “We’ve been working on consultative selling.” Yet, after a sales force evaluation has been completed, those same companies are routinely found to have been lagging, not leading, in those areas.
When it comes to providing sales training for your sales force, what exactly, should modern training include?
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