sales
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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.
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Trust in Selling is Becoming More Important Than Ever
- February 26, 2014
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Trust is becoming more important than ever. Companies are focusing more on integrity and values, and that’s from both sides of the door. They are looking for salespeople, vendors, suppliers, partners and trusted advisors who have strong integrity. And they are also hiring the people (in this case, salespeople) who are deemed to be of a higher integrity. Trustworthy is the operative word here.
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Sales Execution – What Should You Pay Attention to?
- January 22, 2014
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Larry Bossidy and Ram Charan even wrote a best-selling business book titled, Execution. Yet in sales, we rarely hear anything as simple or basic. We’re far more likely to hear about competition, politics, relationships, price, marketing, or the product itself before we hear anyone utter execution as the reason for not winning an account or a deal. Why is that?
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10 Tips for Great Keynotes and Better Sales Presentations
- December 10, 2013
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
I thought I would share some tips that you could incorporate into your group sales presentations, lunch and learns, conference talks and appearances to make them more effective.
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Sales Coaching Lessons from the Baseball Files
- May 24, 2012
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
This sequence of analysis and tweaking works in exactly the same way when coaching salespeople. You should be able to immediately identify what went wrong, when it went wrong, how it went wrong and demonstrate how to prevent and fix it. The last two steps must take place through role-play. Are you doing that effectively?
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Non-Salespeople – Assets or Liabilities When They Face Customers?
- May 21, 2012
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
This is a tremendous example, and not the least bit unusual, of how non-selling, customer-facing employees, sell. Despite two effective customer-facing people doing their part on selling us to return, one was horrible and not so subtly sold us on not returning.