sales strategy
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Revolutionizing Sales Forecasting with a Baseball Twist
- September 12, 2025
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Discover the “Power Alley,” a revolutionary sales forecasting strategy inspired by baseball. Learn how this KPI aligns pipeline, forecast, and revenue to boost accountability and solve CEOs’ biggest frustration.
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Unify Your Sales Message: Lessons from Politics and Balance of Nature
- September 2, 2025
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Democrats flood the airwaves with one message, like their cringy 2025 Trump/Musk attack videos, while Republicans’ scattered talking points barely register. Sound like your sales team? Most operate like the GOP—95% of companies lack consistent messaging, per Objective Management Group data. Take Balance of Nature’s “fruits and veggies in a capsule” campaign: real customers, from moms to celebs, passionately amplify one message, driving huge growth. Imagine your salespeople delivering your value prop with that fire! At Kurlan & Associates, we analyze elevator pitches and value propositions to ensure consistency and impact. Sales leaders, review your messaging, make sure your team knows it cold, and enforce it like CRM compliance. Need help crafting a unified, authentic pitch? Read the full post for tips to make your sales messaging win.
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Eggs, Toast, and Bacon Aren’t Original—Neither Is Sloppy Sales Prep
- August 24, 2025
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Dave’s cracking up over a restaurant’s “original” eggs, toast, and bacon combo—and calling out salespeople who skip their homework. Learn how AI like Grok can supercharge your prospect research in seconds.
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The 20-Year Legacy of Baseline Selling: Why Its Sales Process Still Wins in 2025
- July 1, 2025
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Celebrating 20 years of Baseline Selling, this article dives into why its staged, buyer-focused sales process remains the most complete framework for predictable, repeatable sales success. From its baseball-inspired origins to its seamless CRM integration with Membrain, discover why Baseline Selling outshines other methodologies.
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Sell More by Understanding this God, Garden, and Baseball Analogy
- June 9, 2025
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Discover how faith in God, weeding a garden, and the Red Sox-Yankees rivalry reveal powerful lessons for boosting your sales. Learn to trust your process, balance efficiency with precision, and leverage unique strengths to close more deals.
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Why Salespeople Skip the Sales Process (And How It’s Killing Your Revenue)
- May 19, 2025
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Planting a fruit tree requires five simple steps in the right order—mess it up, and you’re left with dirt. Sales is no different, yet only 34% of salespeople follow a structured process. From mistaking methodologies for processes to winging it, discover why salespeople ditch the roadmap and how a proper sales process can boost revenue by 20%.
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10 Reasons Why You Can’t Outsell an Incumbent
- June 7, 2024
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
When the strategy is correct, the messaging can be perfected.
When the strategy and messaging are correct, the sales process can be optimized.
When the sales process is optimized, the sales tactics will work.
Stop winging it. Stop struggling. Stop losing.
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2 Questions That Will End Every Request for a Better Price
- November 15, 2021
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
What’s the point? When prospects tell you that they’re going with the lowest price, it’s total crap. They might be saying that, but are they required to do that? If they have any bottled water in the kitchen, pay for any streaming, or software then it’s simply not true. Can you say bluffing?
I don’t blame companies for trying to buy for less, but it doesn’t mean you have to sell for less, or match or beat someone’s price. They’re just saying the words and waiting to see if you’ll bite. Just about a year ago at this time, I wrote another article about selling value where I used Dunkin Donuts coffee as an example.
So what should you do when a prospect asks for a lower price?
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What B2B Companies Must Learn from 10 Reasons Why Amazon is Destroying Retailers
- April 17, 2017
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Amazon generated almost $44 Billion in net revenue last year and it had to come from somewhere. That’s not $44 Billion that people wouldn’t have spent if not for Amazon. It’s money that people would have spent, at some retailer, probably within an hour of their home or office, but chose to buy from Amazon instead.
You may think it’s because Amazon saves them money but that isn’t necessarily true. And you may think it’s simply more convenient to order from your laptop or mobile device but that might not be the case either. I’m going to share my 10 reasons why this is happening and you might be very surprised with my conclusion at the end of the article where I provide an important warning for B2B Sellers.
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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?