Search Results
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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 Shows Sales Commitment and Motivation Changed During Quarantine
- July 22, 2020
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Steve Taback and I started our respective sales training firms at the same time back in 1985. We became great friends and he became the second licensee of Objective Management Group (OMG) in 1990. He emailed me asking if I had seen a change in any of the scores of the 21 Sales Core Competencies since the Pandemic had hit. Specifically, he was wondering if there was an increase in the number of salespeople who lacked Commitment or whose Outlook wasn’t good.
OMG! (the other version of OMG this time) Was he asking me to do some research on sales assessment statistics? God, I love that!
Damn that Steve is good. Turns out he was right. Below I’ll share the changes in Commitment, Outlook and Motivation, all of which fluctuated during the past several months.
Take a look at these three screen shots which tell one part of the story.
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Why You Should Care That Sales Motivation Data Correlates Perfectly With Sales Effectiveness
- September 13, 2017
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
I reviewed the data and in the table below you’ll see that extrinsic motivation is most prevalent in the top group of salespeople while altruistic motivation is most prevalent in the lowest group of salespeople.
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What We Can Learn from the Latest Data on Sales Motivation
- July 25, 2017
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Sales Motivation is just one of the 21 Sales Core Competencies that we measure, but as with all of the competencies, we go very deep.
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How to Eliminate the Need for Sales Motivation, Accountability and More!
- April 10, 2017
- Posted by: Kurlan & Associates, Inc.
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
What if I told you there was a way to completely eliminate the need to manage the pipeline, motivate, recruit and hold salespeople accountable? There is and I’m going to share it with you!
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How Coyotes are at the Heart of Sales Motivation
- April 21, 2016
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
My family lives west of Boston where it is not uncommon for us to see lots of squirrels, chipmunks, rabbits, deer, the family of foxes that live on our property, and on most nights, we hear coyotes. We usually hear them in the early morning hours, and always thought they were celebrating a kill. Recently, I did some research and learned that this is how coyotes greet each other when they are assembling before going out to hunt – before the kill! For those of you who don’t live in or alongside a forest, a group of wild coyotes usually looks and sounds just like in this 1-minute video that I found on YouTube. That got me thinking about the connection to sales motivation and more.
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What’s the Difference Between Sales Commitment and Motivation?
- September 8, 2011
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
“Which is more important in sales – commitment or motivation?”
Let’s discuss the difference first.
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But I’m a Sales Guy! The Story of Motivation and Compensation
- June 7, 2010
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
A Sales VP and his CEO were in the conference room and each time the CEO brought up a problem, we asked the Sales VP to elaborate. Each time he began with, “Well I’m a sales guy so I know this stuff…”
Yes and No.
Yes, he’s a sales guy. But no, he doesn’t know this stuff. If he knew this stuff the problems and challenges in their organization wouldn’t exist and the two of them wouldn’t be sitting in front of us in the conference room. This isn’t at all unusual either.
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How Does the Secret of Happiness Affect Sales Motivation?
- February 17, 2010
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Salespeople must be happy in order to succeed but we also know that they must want more than what they have in order to be motivated. What is the balance between being happy and being dissatisfied?
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Motivation – 3rd of the 10 Kurlan Sales Management Functions
- November 13, 2009
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
There is nothing more powerful than finishing every conversation, meeting and interaction with some kind of call to action.