• Can a New Sales Manager Be a Difference Maker?

    • November 9, 2022
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    I speak with so many sales leaders who tell me about the four sales managers they went through in the last two years.  I speak with CEOs who tell me about the three sales VPs they went through in the last eighteen months.

    There is tremendous pressure to fill these roles because your team’s performance will suffer without someone at the helm.  Or is that misinformation?  How much worse could a team perform than how they perform under a sucky sales manager?

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  • Bob Chronicles Part 6 – When Salespeople Suddenly Make Things Your Problem

    • January 20, 2022
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    Bob was informed 2 weeks ago that an important customer proposal would be due by the end of business today. At 4pm, Bob was in a panic, screaming that he needed pricing in the next 10 minutes or you’ll lose the business.  Suddenly it has become your problem.

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  • Top 10 Sales and Sales Leadership Articles of 2021

    • December 7, 2021
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    There are several criteria for choosing the top articles of the year, including, but not limited to:

    Views (Article)
    Popularity (likes on LinkedIn and Twitter)
    Engagement (comments to the article, via email, and on LinkedIn)
    Personal (my favorites)
    Value (insights for the community)

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  • Salesenomics – Many Sales Organizations Are Stuck in the 1980’s

    • November 22, 2021
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    When was the last time you saw a black and white television or even a console color TV?

    How about an electric typewriter?

    Or a car that didn’t have anti-lock brakes?

    You would have to return to the 1980’s to see those things and when it comes to their operations, some sales organizations are still in the 1980’s.

    For example, check out these statistics from OMG’s evaluations of 30,000 sales teams and more than two million salespeople.

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  • Sales Forecasts Do Not Have to Be as Wrong as Fortune Cookies

    • October 29, 2021
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    With all of these forecasts having the chance to be completely wrong, it makes me wonder about the way sales leaders and CEOs react to sales forecasts.  After all, should we expect anything different when it comes to sales?

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  • Most Sales Processes, Funnels and Pipelines are How Old?

    • September 29, 2021
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    I was looking for an image of a sales funnel and couldn’t believe what I found!  My search results can be found here.  Can you believe all of those images of sales funnels?  Look them over and see if you can recognize the  problem with all of them.

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  • How To Stop Sucking by Understanding and Changing Your Sales Metrics

    • August 30, 2021
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    Suppose a company reports that its win rate is 24%.  Does that tell you anything other than they suck?  It doesn’t tell us how badly they suck, why they suck, how long they’ve sucked, who sucks, or whether there is any hope for them to stop sucking.  And even if their win rate is double the 24%, the same questions apply. Let me explain.

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  • FOX News and CNN Can Help You Conduct Better Sales Opportunity Reviews

    • August 17, 2020
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    I don’t really care whether or not you like, approve of, tolerate, or agree with President Trump and/or the issues he stands for.  Doesn’t matter to me.  And you shouldn’t care what I think of him or which side of that invisible center line I am on.  Shouldn’t matter to you.  While this is an article about coaching salespeople, I am going to use the current divisiveness as an analogy to help you better understand how sales leaders can have a huge impact on your salespeople.

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  • 15 Things Salespeople Must Do to Make up for a Lackluster 2nd Quarter

    • August 12, 2020
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    Last week we moved our son into his dorm to begin his freshman year of college. The college President’s opening remarks were virtual, so we joined the Zoom stream from our hotel room and listened in.  He had some really useful things to share with the new freshmen and while his thoughts were targeted to the students, they apply quite equally to salespeople.

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  • The Real Reason Why So Many Salespeople are So Bad at Selling

    • June 8, 2020
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    In today’s article, I will explain why this problem exists and how it relates to a bigger problem in sales.

    The people who don’t return calls are usually technical in nature.  The garage door openers, gate electronics, and glass people are all entrepreneurs running small businesses and their expertise is not sales or customer service, it’s their technical subject matter expertise. 

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