sales motivation
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8 Movie Scenes to Frame Your Mind for Killer Sales Calls
- August 5, 2025
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Discover how clips from classics like CSI, Dumb and Dumber, and Better Call Saul can pump you up, teach active listening, and help close deals—perfect motivation for your next sales call!
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Lessons from Happy Gilmore 2: Why Salespeople Need to Get Serious About Skill-Building
- July 28, 2025
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Adam Sandler’s sequel delivers laughs and a sales wake-up call: Like Happy recommitting to golf, why don’t more reps grind on their skills? Explore 10 barriers backed by OMG data on 2.5M assessments, and how training flips the script for growth.
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Is Complacency to Blame for Missed Quotas? A Deep Dive into Sales Performance Challenges
- May 30, 2025
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Is Complacency to Blame for Missed Quotas? A Deep Dive into Sales Performance Challenges
Is complacency why 57% of reps miss quota? Data from 2.5 million salespeople shows 64% of the bottom 50% lack the Will to Sell. From poor compensation to lack of motivation and discipline, here’s what’s holding them back—and how to fix it.
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How to Become More Successful One Day at a Time
- April 13, 2021
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
You can find inspiration anywhere. Even in a book called, A Year of Playing Catch. Tom Schaff was nice enough to send me a copy of this book and there was the inspiration, right there on page 128. Why would someone from the world of sales care about a page out of a baseball book? I’ll give you fourteen really good reasons. You see, the book is much less about baseball and much more about the following fourteen integral competencies of sales success:
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Dave Kurlan’s 10 Surefire New Years Resolutions For All Salespeople
- January 3, 2019
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
I’ve compiled a list of resolutions that all salespeople should make and follow. Some will likely surprise you but they are all necessary to become more successful. Enjoy the 10 most important elements for New Year’s Resolutions That All Salespeople Must Make. Here we go!
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What Happens When You Force a Square Sales Peg into a Round Sales Hole?
- March 2, 2018
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Can you imagine attaching a snow plow to a Lamborghini and hiring yourself out to clear parking lots? Back in April I wrote about our new puppy. Now he’s 1-year old and has grown to 60 pounds, but could you imagine putting a saddle on him and selling rides on the beach? Could you imagine if the US arsenal of nuclear weapons consisted of putting 1,000’s of firecrackers into a plastic cylinder and then saying to North Korea, “try us!”
These are all examples of trying to put a square peg into a round hole – things you just don’t do. And that’s how I felt when I received an email asking how to deal with the following sales challenge.
The reader asked me to write an article explaining how to improve the sales effectiveness of their mostly altruistically motivated salespeople.
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Why You Should Care That Sales Motivation Data Correlates Perfectly With Sales Effectiveness
- September 13, 2017
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
I reviewed the data and in the table below you’ll see that extrinsic motivation is most prevalent in the top group of salespeople while altruistic motivation is most prevalent in the lowest group of salespeople.
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What We Can Learn from the Latest Data on Sales Motivation
- July 25, 2017
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Sales Motivation is just one of the 21 Sales Core Competencies that we measure, but as with all of the competencies, we go very deep.
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The Future of Selling – Understanding This Crucial Sales Competency is More Important Than Ever
- April 12, 2017
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Sales Motivation is one competency where the changes have been dramatic over a very short period of time and today I want to share those changes, as well as how the changes impact salespeople, sales leaders and sales organizations.
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How to Eliminate the Need for Sales Motivation, Accountability and More!
- April 10, 2017
- Posted by: Kurlan & Associates, Inc.
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
What if I told you there was a way to completely eliminate the need to manage the pipeline, motivate, recruit and hold salespeople accountable? There is and I’m going to share it with you!