Search Results
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New: The 21 Sales Core Competencies for 2020 And Beyond
- September 27, 2020
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Like Apple, OMG updates its assessments on a non-stop basis but rolls out significant updates a couple of times per year. Last week OMG introduced the latest revision to the 21 Sales Core Competencies.
There are thirty competencies in all, each with between six and twelve attributes but some are more important than others and OMG measures twenty-one of them in the following three categories:
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The Official 2017 List of 21 Sales Core Competencies
- March 15, 2017
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
These days, changes happen faster than ever and the same can be said about professional selling. Selling is evolving, the rules of business are changing, there is more information available on line than there was last week and sales organizations must evolve accordingly.
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Baseball, The Toad and Coaching Unresponsive Salespeople
- April 11, 2024
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Coaching salespeople is challenging. When they aren’t responsive to coaching it’s not only more difficult, it is downright frustrating. When you’re attempting to coach unresponsive salespeople to use the phone to directly talk with a decision maker, there isn’t much upside. Whether you’ve made this coaching attempt one time or one hundred times, the outcome will be the same, so the question we should be asking is, should this salesperson still be working for you?
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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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The Data: What Percentage of Salespeople are Really Coachable?
- April 3, 2024
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
While coaching is private, training is more public as it usually takes place in front of others. Salespeople who have the greatest incentive to change are those who are the most trainable. Those salespeople have high scores in Desire for additional sales success and Commitment to additional sales success. When a salesperson scores below 60 on Desire and/or Commitment, you aren’t likely to see much of a change in their effectiveness or performance. If they are already generating acceptable results and more of the same would be OK, then it doesn’t matter. On the other hand, if their performance is lacking, and more of the same would not be acceptable, then a salesperson lacking Desire/Commitment would be a great candidate for replacement.
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10 Unfavorable Selling Conditions That Prevent Sales Success
- March 25, 2024
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
When you encounter unfavorable selling conditions, refuse to accept them. This isn’t about moving forward with a couple of favorable conditions, it’s about NOT moving forward unless the conditions become more favorable. Whether or not you wish to admit it, the truth is that when the conditions don’t favor you, the business isn’t coming to you.
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New Data: Top Salespeople are 7562% Better at Winning RFPs
- March 13, 2024
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
RFPs aren’t going away, and there are two ways that salespeople can approach them, the companies that write them, and the people associated with them:
Passively – in this capacity, they are nothing more than facilitators, waiting for an RFP to drop in their inbox, so they can get it off to the folks who write the proposals. When complete, they email the proposal back to procurement and hope to win.
Proactively – in this capacity, they regularly meet and develop relationships with the appropriate CxO’s and Sr VP’s of manufacturing, engineering, design, IT, IS, Finance, Marketing, HR, R&D, Operations, Facilities, Fulfillment, Distribution, Sales, Learning and Development, Enablement, and any other organizational head they might possibly sell to. They become a resource, an asset, a partner and not only help to write the specifications of the next RFP, but write the specs in such a way that they are the only company that can win the business.It seems obvious, doesn’t it? Option 1 is stupid and Option 2 is brilliant. But if option 2 is so brilliant and obvious, then why do so many salespeople become so defensive and dug in to option 1?
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Opportunity Blindness – What’s in Your Sales Pipeline?
- February 28, 2024
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Some observations:
The data represents the forecast and funnel for 7 sales teams.
The gaps (A & G) are backwards and should say 72% (A) and 41% (G).
The quarterly forecast (C) is 58% short of the quarterly target (D).
The current closable opportunities (B) are 77% short of the forecast (C) and 90% short of the quarterly target (D).
Add columns G and H and together, all of those columns represent pathetic, old news.The question that should be asked is, “What can we do about this?”
We should be able to answer that question by looking at column F but that’s not possible. Can you see why?
Outside of telling us that there isn’t enough in the funnel, the data in column F doesn’t answer the question that must always be asked: Is the pipeline viable?
We know the assigned value of the pipeline but we don’t know the answers to these additional ten important factors:
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Combining Goal Setting with Sales Competencies
- January 4, 2024
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Allow me to introduce the first draft of the first innovation of 2024 from Kurlan & Associates: The Sales Goals Grid, which incorporates most of the 21 Sales Core Competencies. It is a great visual for every salesperson, regardless of what they sell, who they sell for, who they sell to, or the length of their sales cycle. You can even adapt it to your own needs.
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How to Always Respond Appropriately to Your Prospect
- December 21, 2023
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
When a salesperson experiences momentary panic, or forgets what to do or how to do it, that call, Zoom, or in-person meeting is over. It could even spell the end of that opportunity. I’ll explain how to Always Respond Appropriately to Your Prospect
Three ingredients influence events like these: