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The Biblical Sales Force Part 5 – Consequences and Some Baseball
- April 24, 2025
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
There are differences between the laws in Deuteronomy and the requirements in the strategic plan, with the major difference being consequences. God’s remedy for many crimes was getting stoned to death, while leadership’s remedy for failing the requirements in the strategic plan is to ignore the crime. Sell another day versus Death.
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Poison Ivy and 2 Powerful Lessons for Hiring Salespeople
- April 18, 2025
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Paul McCartney hoped it would work out with Linda in the band, and while Wings were very successful, let’s be honest. Linda would not have been hired to perform on vocals or keyboard in any other band – not even a local wedding band! Why? She was a photographer and shouldn’t have quit her day job.
We see nepotism in every family owned business where the founder/CEO/President gets the entire unqualified family involved. The family learns to adequately perform in most of the roles but the brother in charge of sales, the nephew managing major accounts, the daughter in account management, and the wife doing estimates just aren’t cutting it.
Let’s not forget the Hope part of this…
Hope is used when sales leaders interview and select sales candidates. They decide that from among the following 10 characteristics and qualifiers, the candidate:
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My Key to Building a Strong, Sustainable, Sales Pipeline
- April 16, 2025
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Building a strong, sustainable pipeline requires not only commitment and discipline from salespeople, it also requires commitment and discipline from their sales leaders who cannot allow them to give up, give in, or take short cuts. While excellence involves advanced sales training skills, extended practice sessions and coaching, the desire to improve is the most important element.
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Shania Twain’s Lesson for Sales Leaders Who Want to Hire Stronger Salespeople
- April 14, 2025
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Instead of seeking industry experience, a degree, and related characteristics, sales leaders must vet for the ability to succeed at selling to your specific audience, at your price point, and against your competition. That one difference takes the entire sourcing, screening, vetting, interviewing, selecting, hiring, and on-boarding process and turns it upside down. Different tools. Different process. Different sourcing. Different questions. Different answers. Different results.
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How to Master the Sales Discovery Call
- April 11, 2025
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Good salespeople know that the key to a sales process that will result in a sale, is uncovering their prospect’s compelling reason to buy. Period. Not “period” as in that’s all they have to do, but “period”, as in nothing else in the process will matter if they don’t uncover the compelling reason to buy. Easy (to state). For most salespeople, even the good ones, it’s not that easy. How can they determine if what they heard is actually compelling? Is it compelling to the prospect? Is it compelling to the salesperson? Do those two determinations have equal value?
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Executive Leadership is the Key to a Lasting and Successful Sales Transformation
- April 6, 2025
- Posted by: Kurlan & Associates, Inc.
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
A customized and optimized sales process should be a tipping point but most companies screw up the opportunity by believing that after the introduction to the sales team they are done. Unfortunately, it is only the beginning, not the end, and unless there is proper governance on required changes, nothing will actually change.
Sales Transformation occurs with Sales Process, but only when there is Governance on the associated requirements.
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Use a Custom Sales Process to Increase Sales by More Than 28%
- April 3, 2025
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
I could wax poetically about the many benefits of a sales process/scorecard that meets the requirements for sales best practices but suffice to say that with proper customization, integration into CRM, introduction to the sales team, utilization, governance and coaching in the context of your sales process by sales leadership, I can guarantee the following outcomes based on four decades of experience with such things:
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How To Double Your Sales Pipeline in 30 Days
- March 31, 2025
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Most salespeople who entered sales more than fifteen years ago and had to prospect for new business, have forgotten how to do it and if we are being honest, may not have been very willing or effective at this when they were expected to prospect.
Most new salespeople never had to make cold calls as that was delegated to BDRs and SDRs who have universally sucked at prospecting, averaging just 1.5 new meetings scheduled per week.
Yes, it’s that bad.
What’s worse is that most companies don’t consider pipeline quantity and quality the biggest challenge in the sales organization! Most would say it’s the low win rate or the percentage of opportunities that stall in the pipeline. Why do you think that is?
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Deadly Negotiation Strategies – The Bob Chronicles Part 8
- March 24, 2025
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
I asked Bob why he thought negotiations would be required and he told me that his prospect said they didn’t want to spend more than $50,000. You read that right. He knew they didn’t want to spend more than $50,000 and he proposed a solution for more than $1,000,000!
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10 Rules for Successful Sales Training and Revenue Growth
- March 17, 2025
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
The truth is that even the most media-rich, entertaining, engaging, memorable sales training can’t come close to holding people’s attention when compared to a series like “24.”
That’s why it is imperative that companies follow my top 10 rules for a successful sales training outcomes: