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Is Your Sales Force More Like a Dunkin’, Starbucks or Panera Drive Thru?
- January 21, 2020
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
This all begs the question, is the sales force at your company more like the Dunkin’, Starbucks, or Panera drive-thru? Today’s article will explain how to answer that question.
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The Science Behind One Company’s Top Sales Performers and Why They’re So Much Better
- January 16, 2020
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
There are comparisons of apples to oranges, red or green, black or white, stop and go, and the most relevant and current of all, liberals to conservatives.
In today’s article, I’ll share a hot/cold comparison of my own, but this one is about sales candidates. Back on January 9, my article about why 3 good salespeople failed and 3 so-so candidates succeeded, used the results of a top/bottom analysis to identify the reasons why.
Those results were unusual because many of the differentiators came from outside the 21 Sales Core Competencies. What does it look like when the differentiators come from within the 21 Sales Core Competencies? Take a look at this top/bottom analysis and you’ll quickly see the difference!
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Only 11% of All Salespeople Do This at the End of a Sales Call
- December 2, 2019
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Traditions are important. They ground us, give us a sense of stability and purpose, and provide something that we can look forward to. Rituals are like traditions in that they serve the same purpose, but occur much more frequently. Selling, is filled with rituals, from the sales process we always follow, to those specific questions we always ask to those specific talking points, comparisons, and stories we always share. Why? They work!
So it is with that sense of tradition that for the 10th consecutive year, I republish my Nutcracker article which is always the most popular article each December.
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Surprising New Data on Salespeople Busts the Myths about Relationship Selling and Social Selling
- June 16, 2016
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
I had a theory about salespeople, but didn’t have the data to prove it out. I believed that social selling was a godsend to those in sales who were not great at relationship building – that by utilizing applications like LinkedIn and Twitter, they could reach out to new people, but with the benefit of hiding behind the glass screen. Do you think I was right? Or wrong?
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The Sales Success Secret Shared by Bill Walton and John Wooden
- May 24, 2016
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Bill talked about the basketball team’s practices and how they were so well scripted, incredibly challenging and the most fun. He called them symphonies! The practices were so powerful that the games, even against the best competition, were always much easier than practice. The games were so easy that the players did not need to remember plays or even think. All they had to do was execute. The team’s system of running the fast break was so well ingrained that executing was easy. This led to an 88-game winning streak!
Translating this story to selling, I need to point out that most salespeople not only hate to practice (read role-playing), but don’t believe it is necessary.
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Effective Selling is Less about the Words and More About How You Say Them
- April 25, 2016
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Whether you are trying to convince a prospect, customer or salesperson, make sure you emphasize the how over the what and your message has a much better chance of being accepted in the spirit you intended.
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How You Can Increase Sales During the Summer
- June 3, 2015
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
It is concert season and salespeople tend to drag out their own old and inappropriate beliefs about selling in the summer.
For one, they work much less. I understand the need for a summer vacation, but why is the summer any different from when they take their winter vacation? They return from their winter vacation and work really hard, but for some reason, before and after the summer vacation, they hardly work. That’s lazy!
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Whiplash on the Sales Force
- May 26, 2015
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
In many cases, difficult prospects are actually easier to sell because there isn’t a whole lot of competition. Most salespeople give up or lose the prospect’s respect before they get remotely close to doing any business with them.
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Salespeople as Closers & 10 Other Sales Myths
- May 14, 2015
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Just because you think it, that does not make it normal, correct, supportive or useful. Challenge everything you believe to be true in sales and ask whether or not it really needs to be that way. Could you change your results if you changed your beliefs, expectations and thinking?
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The Importance of Resiliency in Sales and Selling
- April 22, 2015
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
We saw Paul Blart – Mall Cop 2 and laughed a grand total of twice. It was inept comedy, a horrible sequel and a terrible movie. Despite that, it was a great example of resiliency as Blart is continually rejected, stopped, ridiculed and put-off, only to ignore those events, bear down and try even harder to accomplish his goals. From that perspective, the movie, and Kevin James, succeed at demonstrating what it is like to be a salesperson.
