Search Results
-
Popularity Polls are Just Like Sales Management Tracking Metrics!
- January 8, 2019
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Have you ever watched a news program where they presented poll results, like the number of people in favor of legalizing marijuana? The poll shows popular opinion, but not the facts, logic, or impact on arrests, the economy, traffic accidents, unemployment, addiction, death rates, etc. There is a huge difference between people’s often uninformed opinions, versus what the facts might suggest. That’s the problem with the statistics I’m going to share in this article. The stats show what sales managers are doing but those managers are largely uninformed. They don’t know what’s good for them, haven’t been asked or held accountable to doing it differently, and aren’t in any way shape or form following best practices. John Pattison, Objective Management Group’s COO, mined some data on salespeople who report to sales managers. I was appalled by what I saw. Check this out!
-
Connecting the Dots on Sales Management
- May 28, 2015
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Do you remember the morning that you couldn’t find your keys, but they were right there on the counter? Or the time that you couldn’t find an article of clothing, but it was hanging right there in your closet the entire time you were looking for it? Or the time you couldn’t find your car in the airport parking garage? And yes, it was right where you parked it. Sometimes, things are right in front of you and you don’t notice them! And that brings us to this sales management topic.
-
Top 10 Sales Management Functions
- January 15, 2015
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
These aren’t the 10 sales competencies you read about and listen to all the time. No way! These 10 are hardly ever discussed, seldom, if ever written about, and the most difficult to learn. Ready?
-
Top 5 Sales Management Best Practices
- January 15, 2015
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
The first problem with today’s title is the “5” in “Top 5.”
They are not the 5 on which most sales managers spend their time, so let’s begin with the sales management practices on which most sales managers actually spend their time. By the way, that’s how so many “best practices” (that aren’t) actually get published. Authors ask (in this case sales managers) how they spend their time. The answers that are most often reported become best practices. So I repeat, the first list does not contain best practices, but includes those activities on which most sales managers spend their time.
-
Why CEOs/Presidents Tolerate Ineffective Sales Management
- January 14, 2015
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
One of the comments on my article, The Validiation of the Sales Assessment Validation, mentioned the reluctance of CEOs and Presidents to redeploy or terminate ineffective sales managers. That topic deserves an article of its own, making 3 of my last 4 posts about ineffective sales managers. That will surely upset and perhaps eliminate a significant number of my regular readers.
-
Are Sales and Sales Management Candidates Getting Worse?
- January 7, 2015
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Selling has changed more in the past 5 years than ever before.
With all that, shouldn’t the quality of sales, sales management and sales leadership candidates be on the rise? Yes, it should.
But there’s a problem. The quality has not risen. It seems to have worsened!
-
Training – Sales, Sales Management, Business Development and more
- January 5, 2015
- Posted by: Kurlan & Associates, Inc.
- Categories:
-
Starting with the Sales Management Team – Is it a Bad Decision?
- August 21, 2014
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Companies typically have 5 reasons for starting with the sales managers:
-
Finding the Right Sales and Sales Management Candidates
- May 22, 2014
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Seven years ago, a company may have wanted sales managers who were task masters, holding salespeople accountable to top of the funnel metrics. While that could still be true today, a company should be looking for a sales manager who is an extremely effective sales coach, who spends 50% of the available time coaching and developing salespeople.
-
The Best Top 10 Lists for Sales and Sales Management
- May 5, 2014
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Over the years, I have written the occasional Top 5, Top 10 and Top 20 Articles and they are now in a series of their own.