Kurlan & Associates, Inc.
Kurlan & Associates, Inc.
  • About Us
    • Corporate Overview
    • Management
    • Senior Consultants
    • Brand Promise
    • Our Philosophy
    • Partners
    • Ask a Question
    • Our Clients
      • Testimonials
      • Client Projects
  • Services
    • Cutting Edge
      • Sales Candidate Assessments and Sales Force Evaluations
      • Training
      • Sales Process Consulting
      • Coaching
      • Train the Trainer
      • Sales Recruiting
    • Sales Force
      • Sales Force Architecture
      • Social Selling
      • Inside Sales
      • Sales Process Customization
      • Channel Sales
      • Sales Pipeline and Forecasting
    • Growth and Development
      • Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
      • Sales Force Evaluation
      • Sales Methodology
      • Sales Compensation
      • Corporate Training
      • Free Tools
  • Who
    • CEO or President
    • CSO or Sales Leader
    • Human Resources VP or Director
    • Non-Profit Director or Chair
    • Founder/Owner
    • Sales Manager
    • Salesperson
  • News & Events
    • Sales Leadership Intensive
      • Overview
      • Agenda
      • Speakers
      • More Information
      • Enroll
      • Attendee Testimonials
    • News
    • Book A Speaker
      • Book Chris
      • Book Dave
      • Book Dennis
      • Book Derek
    • Corporate Training
    • Self-Directed Training
  • Baseline Selling
    • About Baseline Selling
    • Selling Tips
    • Field Guide
    • Trade Reviews
    • What The Experts are Saying
    • Corporate Training
    • Self-Directed Training
    • Speaking
      • Invite Dave Kurlan to Speak
  • Blog
  • Contact
  • Media
    • Dave Kurlan’s Blog
    • Books
      • Baseline Sellng
      • Sales Hack
      • Death of 20th Century Selling
      • 101 Ways to Improve Your Life V2
      • Mindless Selling
      • Stepping Stones
      • Mastering the World of Selling
    • Magazine/Newspaper/Interviews
    • Videos
    • Podcasts & Webinars
  • Coconut Flakes Help to Improve Sales Effectiveness

    • November 6, 2023
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force
    authentic salespeople

    My wife took me to a Vegan restaurant for lunch and I ordered a sandwich that consisted of coconut, lettuce and tomato on multi-grain bread.  I not only didn’t hate it, I liked it.  I showed my wife that it had bacon in it and she swore it didn’t.  She suggested I ask the owner so I asked him about the bacon and he explained that he prepared the coconut flakes to have the look, taste and texture of bacon.  Fake bacon.

    There are fake salespeople too. 

    read more
  • Resistant Salespeople Can Prevent Consistent, Strong Sales Results

    • June 27, 2023
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force
    resistance

    CEOs and Sales Leaders whose salespeople aren’t responding need to understand that their veteran salespeople are the same as my son when he was thirteen. 

    read more
  • The Problem with Self-Directed Sales Training and its Role in Developing Salespeople

    • June 8, 2023
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force
    sales training

    Yesterday, Andy Miller and I delivered onboarding training to a group of new partners at Objective Management Group (OMG).  Andy reached the slide that said “Lunch” at the end of the day, and I spent most of the morning displaying only slide #2 which could have been covered in 10 minutes.  The spontaneous, robust discussion that broke out was not planned, but most importantly, it was not discouraged.  To the contrary, it was strongly encouraged.  The group learned more from that spontaneous two-hour discussion than they ever would have learned from the sterile slides.  Are slides bad?

    read more
  • Sometimes The Biggest Sales Problems Have the Simplest Solutions

    • May 30, 2023
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force
    sales problem

    There are simple, easy, fast and powerful solutions for sales problems too.  See my examples below.

    read more
  • Did You Know That You Have Woodpeckers on Your Sales Team?

    • May 8, 2023
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force
    woodpecker

    There are plenty of things that could interfere with a salesperson’s ability to Hunting or Farm and this article will discuss all of them.

    read more
  • The Latest Perspective on My Most Popular Article on Selling

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

    During a first sales call, suppose your salespeople hear one prospect say, “This has been a very interesting and productive conversation and we might have some interest in this.”  And imagine another prospect at the same meeting says, “We’ll get back to you next month and let you know what kind of progress we’ve made.”  And still a third might say, “In the meantime, please send us a proposal with references and timeline.”

    read more
  • The Top 10 Sales and Sales Leadership Articles of 2022

    • December 12, 2022
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    Criteria: Popularity (views) is nice but quality of content is nicer.  Likes are cool but engagement is cooler. Entertainment value counts and my opinion matters because I’m judging the articles.  In the end, I’m applying popularity, quality of the content, likes, entertainment, comments, engagement and my opinion to create this list of the top 10 articles.

    Enjoy!

    read more
  • 5 Reasons Sales Teams Underperform Like My Old Wiper Blades

    • November 17, 2022
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    I speak with a lot of CEOs and Sales Leaders from companies whose sales teams are underperforming.  One thing they seem to have in common is the mileage problem.  When I ask how long the sales team has been underperforming, it is usually the equivalent of 60,000 miles.  It’s not a new problem, the signs have been there for YEARS but something recently changed to the extent that they couldn’t tolerate it any longer.  The sales team’s performance was finally presenting a threat (safety) whereby one or more of revenue, earnings, sustainability, personal income, stock prices, turnover, market share, morale and more were at risk.

    What causes executives to wait so long?  Here are five potential reasons:

    read more
  • How Your Sales Team Can Double its Win Rate in a Recession

    • September 26, 2022
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    A client was having great success using OMG (Objective Management Group) to assess their sales candidates and they assumed the sales candidate assessment was the only thing OMG offered.  When they learned that our core offering is evaluating their existing sales team they became excited about what that would mean for addressing their two biggest selling challenges.  

    One of their issues was their 20% win rate was much lower than they thought it should be and they believed their salespeople needed some refresher training on closing.  They also had a large number of opportunities stalled in the pipeline and they believed that training on more effective techniques to conduct follow up calls would help.

    In this article, I thought it might help if I share a bit of what they learned about their sales team.

    read more
  • You Can’t Lose Customers or Salespeople – 2 Secrets to Their Retention

    • July 6, 2022
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    There were lots of articles that had the top 5, 7, 10, 12, and 15 reasons why salespeople leave or quit their jobs.  Most of those lists were simply subsets of other lists and the reasons included things like compensation, morale, workload, changing quotas, culture, toxic management, the job was misrepresented, too much pressure and lack of growth opportunity. While there were no surprises to these lists of reasons, I think there is a more pervasive reason that is not represented on the lists created by marketers and recruiters:

    Sales Selection. 

    read more
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • …
  • 16
Search Our Site
Subscribe to Our Blog

Book A Speaker

Do you need a speaker? Click here for information on booking Kurlan & Associates, Inc. at your next event!

Latest News
  • Kurlan & Associates Named to Top 20 Virtual Sales Training Companies in 2020

    June 8, 2020
  • Training Industry named Kurlan & Associates one of the Training companies to watch in 2020

    May 1, 2020
Discover More About Kurlan & Associates
 
Follow Us on Twitter
Retweet on Twitter Dave Kurlan Retweeted
heytammybruce Tammy Bruce @heytammybruce ·
1 Dec

“My fifth-grade science project was to type everyone’s blood in my class. My oldest son’s fifth-grade science project, four decades later, was the equivalent of number-painting a comic book.” https://martinhackworth.substack.com/p/why-21st-century-science-is-in-trouble

Reply on Twitter 1730396912203825446 Retweet on Twitter 1730396912203825446 16 Like on Twitter 1730396912203825446 65 Twitter 1730396912203825446
Kurlan & Associates, Inc.

Kurlan & Associates, Inc. was founded in 1985 by Dave Kurlan, a renowned expert in sales force assessments, training and strategic growth strategies.

Contact Us

  • 21 East Main Street, Suite 301
    Westborough, MA 01581 USA
  • 00 +1 + 508-389-9350

Explore

  • Home
  • About
  • Services
  • News
  • Baseline Selling
  • Sitemap
  • Contact

Follow Us on Twitter

Retweet on Twitter Dave Kurlan Retweeted
heytammybruce Tammy Bruce @heytammybruce ·
1 Dec

“My fifth-grade science project was to type everyone’s blood in my class. My oldest son’s fifth-grade science project, four decades later, was the equivalent of number-painting a comic book.” https://martinhackworth.substack.com/p/why-21st-century-science-is-in-trouble

Reply on Twitter 1730396912203825446 Retweet on Twitter 1730396912203825446 16 Like on Twitter 1730396912203825446 65 Twitter 1730396912203825446
© Copyright 2005-2023 Kurlan & Associates, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Website designed and developed by PENTA Communications, Inc.
Subscribe to Our Blog

Understanding the Sales Force