Search Results

  • The Data: What Percentage of Salespeople are Really Coachable?

    • April 3, 2024
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force
    coaching and training salespeople

    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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  • New Data: Top Salespeople are 7562% Better at Winning RFPs

    • March 13, 2024
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force
    mission critical

    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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  • These 6 Keys and New Data Help Your Sales Team Outperform The Rest

    • February 16, 2023
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    They found that top performers make 54% more switches – the back and forth in conversations – than everyone else and 78% more in their presentations.  The presentations made by top sales performers are not monologues!

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  • Made Up Sales Statistics and Their Contrast to Real Data

    • February 2, 2023
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    A sales consultant who knows that I geek out on sales data read that 84% of salespeople suck because they don’t enjoy what they do.  A huge percentage of salespeople do actually suck but the actual number is closer to 75%.  Is it really because they don’t enjoy selling?

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  • The Connection Between Road Signs, Sales Data, Consultative Selling and Sales Recruiting

    • December 6, 2022
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    Salespeople who are learning to take a consultative approach to selling hear a stated issue – the consultative selling version of a road sign – but think they have arrived at their destination – the compelling reason to buy.

    This is supported by the data.  Objective Management Group (OMG) has data on 2,280,260 salespeople that have been assessed from more than 30,000 companies.  The findings are horrific:

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  • New Data: Will Salespeople Hit Quota When Sales Managers Coach and Sell?

    • November 7, 2022
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    Instead of spending their time on coaching, sales managers are spending too much of their time on personal sales.  Sales managers with fewer than 5 salespeople may be required to carry a quota but generally speaking, sales managers are expected to spend no more than 5% of their time selling. OMG’s data shows that the percentage of time that sales managers sell is closer to 13%.

    Why do they sell instead of having more coaching conversations?  There are several reasons:

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  • New Data: Is Sales Compensation Aligned With Changing Motivational Needs?

    • October 31, 2022
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    When interviewing sales and sales leadership candidates, similar counter-intuitive discussions occur. Many candidates claim that money isn’t that important because they love sales – until they claim that the base salary isn’t high enough.  For others, even though they may not disclose it, the base salary is completely irrelevant as long as the company won’t cap the salesperson’s total earnings. We need to decode the topic of compensation so that we can be sure that both the base salary and the total on-plan earnings are acceptable to candidates.

    It is very important to make sense of the hidden and unpredictable compensation responses because many salespeople leave the company after a short time because they don’t believe earnings are equivalent to the compensation that was promised.

    It is crucial to understand that salespeople are motivated primarily by one of two motivational styles and unless you wish to hire only one type of salesperson, there must be two compensation plans that should be tailored accordingly.  Let’s discuss this.

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  • Data: The Top 10% of All Salespeople are 4200% Better at This

    • September 7, 2021
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    My wife and I entered the small jewelry shop and were greeted – not with a warm welcome – but with a matter of fact “my name is…and I’m the owner…and I created everything in the store” which was followed by fifteen minutes of non-stop presentation of everything she created.  

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  • A Home Run – How the Right Data Can Help You Hire Your Ideal Salespeople

    • July 13, 2021
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    From time to time I’ve posted some compelling top/bottom sales team analyses using sales assessment data from Objective Management Group (OMG).  From nearly 250 data points in 21 Sales Core Competencies, we identify the specific findings and scores that differentiate a company’s top 3 performers from their bottom 3 non-performers.

    There are several reasons for doing this:

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  • Data – Top Salespeople are 631% More Effective at This Than Weak Salespeople (The Bob Chronicles – Part 3)

    • January 26, 2021
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    Bob is up to his old tricks.  If you don’t know who Bob is, you can learn about his sales misadventures in this article on not properly selling a trial, and this article about not selling value.  Both articles are of the must-read variety.

    So what did Bob do to piss me off this week? 

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