win rates
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10 Cringy Things Salespeople Do and 7 Reasons Why They Do It
- March 13, 2025
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Salespeople are responsible for a lot of cringy selling. In this article I share what I believe are the ten things salespeople do to elicit cringy reactions from their prospects and the top seven reasons for why half of all salespeople cause the cringe.
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How Indecisiveness Undermines Sales and Sales Leadership Effectiveness
- February 1, 2025
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
If you are driving down the road in your car, looking at your phone, fiddling with your radio, looking at people walking on the sidewalk, weaving in and out of traffic or speeding because you’re in a hurry, you are probably not a very good driver and bad things will happen.
If you have a pile of files on your desk, a to-do list that must be scrolled to read, past-due proposals, and an empty pipeline, you are probably not very well organized, don’t manage your time very well, and likely behind on quota.
We’re referring to things we do that prevent us from being as effective as we could be or need to be and there is another one we should discuss, and that’s when a sales leader has a Non-Supportive Buy Cycle attribute of needing to think things over. In the 4-minute video below, which you must watch to understand the concept, I explain how the indecisiveness of a sales leader prevents them from being able to develop, coach up and grow their sales team.
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Three Dog Night Classic is Foundation for Present Day Selling
- November 26, 2024
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
If you start with the having fun part you can’t go wrong. Most selling is WAY too serious, way too dependent on bullet points from slides, talking points from company narratives, and the oh, so boring vomiting of company and product information. Where’s the fun in all of that? And if you don’t bring the fun, who wants to spend any time with you? Differentiate!
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Could Lost Deals Correlate with Sales Success?
- September 20, 2024
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
I love looking for correlations and causation and we use causation to build predictive sales scorecards. Nobody closes 100% of their closable opportunities but with a properly constructed scorecard, you’ll know the opportunities on which to devote your resources, and which opportunities would be best to lose as fast as you can.
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Steam Vent Hack That Salespeople Can Use on Stalled Opportunities
- August 23, 2024
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
The guide simply lit a cigarette, lowered it slightly into the vent, it reacted with the air and the steam, and significantly increased the output of steam. A super simple hack that instantly causes a performance improvement gets your attention!
Of course, that got me thinking about a simple hack that will significantly improve sales performance and I present one to you in this article.
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250 Best Articles on Sales and Sales Leadership by Category
- April 4, 2024
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
These are the top 10 articles in 25 categories on sales, sales leadership, sales assessments, sales performance, sales excellence, sales process and more.
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Big Company Strategies That SMB Sales Teams Can Emulate
- July 11, 2022
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
I know. The previous paragraph was about branding and marketing; not sales. But there is a correlation to my theory that a slick, professionally designed logo, makes you look bigger and more successful. Give me a moment to explain how that applies to sales.
If a professionally designed logo makes you look bigger, more successful, and provides credibility, wouldn’t the same theory apply to a professionally trained sales team?
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How to Know if You Are You Really Selling Consultatively
- June 4, 2019
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Most of the CEOs and sales leaders I speak with agree that their sales organizations need to be more effective at taking a consultative approach to selling. At the same time, they insist that they talk about it often and that their salespeople are doing OK with a consultative approach. OMG’s Sales Force Evaluation usually reveals that they aren’t doing much more than talking about it, as their scores for the Consultative Seller competency are quite low.
How can you determine if you or your team are being effective at using a consultative approach? I created this list of outcomes that would be true if your consultative approach was working effectively. You and/or your salespeople are :
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How Top Salespeople Anticipate and Manage Resistance
- May 29, 2019
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Last week Tom Hopkins shared a post on LinkedIn that resembled what I have said so many times. He said, “The art of selling involves two jobs: Job One is to reduce sales resistance and the other is to increase sales acceptance.”
Many readers left comments about the importance of relationships as a means to preventing resistance from going up.
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Discovered – Data Reveals the Biggest Obstacle to Closing More Sales
- April 30, 2018
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Humans have been waiting for thousands of years to discover the secrets of life. Why are we here? Why do bad things happen? What happens after we die? Is Heaven real? What is God’s plan for us?
While many experts have attempted to answer all of these questions, most of us lack proof. There’s no data. If we wake up tomorrow morning and suddenly there are not only answers to these questions, but science-based proof, that would be a game-changer for us.
Likewise, every day most companies try to determine why their salespeople don’t close more business, why so many opportunities die on the vine, and what they need to do differently to change their results. They try everything! Most leaders think it’s an issue of closing skills. It’s not. Others think it’s about prospecting. While that has an impact on the size and quality of the pipeline, it has little to do with results. But I have discovered the cause, will show you the data, and discuss how to fix it.
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