Dave Kurlan

  • Getting Salespeople to Prospect When They Aren’t Prospecting

    • November 15, 2024
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force
    little leaguer

    While some growth can be expected to come from effective account management, the kind of growth desired by most companies comes from consistently finding and closing new accounts. While companies love their inbound lead-generation programs, and those programs do generate leads, the quality of the leads, and the quality of the meetings booked by those young and inexperienced top-of-funnel kids, leaves much to be desired.

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  • How I Learned I am a Sales Consulting Imposter

    • November 11, 2024
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force
    arrogant candidate

    I didn’t like this candidate.  He was way too cocky and aggressive, he wasn’t prepared, and he didn’t like all of my questions.  I ended the call after about a minute and a half because I already knew he wasn’t going to proceed in the process.  I told him that if he didn’t hear back from me by the end of business on the following day, then he didn’t make it to the next round (an interview with me).

    Considering the findings on his OMG assessment, imagine what could happen if he felt rejected from the way I ended the call, and when he didn’t get the follow up call the next day. Consider how his lack of patience, along with not being a relationship builder and not needing to be liked, could manifest.

    Did you imagine what could happen?  

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  • 3 Keys That Determine the Length of Your Sales Cycle

    • November 2, 2024
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    It’s easier to sell value when there is urgency.

    It’s easier to reach the decision maker when there is urgency.

    It’s easier to sell value to the decision maker.

    It’s easier to create urgency when you are talking with the decision maker.

    They are inter-related milestones and they are game changers.

    Let’s explore three scenarios:

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  • Magazine Discredits Their “Born to Sell” Article with Junk Science

    • October 25, 2024
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force
    junk science

    They identified five areas where those with genetic traits outperform others.  They claim that those are:

    Tailor Your Approach
    Conduct a Sales Debrief
    Refine Your Skills Through Practice and Experimentation
    Use Data Analytics to Inform Your Decision Making
    Invest in Ongoing Training and Mentorship

    Other than number 2 (of course we’re singling out #2 in an article that’s full of crap!), the other four are not sales or marketing specific but are simply common-sense goals for anyone interested in self-improvement.

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  • My Latest Sales Epiphany From Watching Playoff Baseball

    • October 20, 2024
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Categories: Uncategorized, Understanding the Sales Force
    Guardians pitcher Clase

    And that’s when it hit me as if I was hit in the face by a 95 MPH fastball.

    My fears are exclusive to the Red Sox and not to any other team – even if I am rooting for the other team!  This is huge!  And because this is my brain, this is actually about sales, not baseball!

    Is it fair to believe that a Sales Leader wants his salesperson to succeed with a big, important sales opportunity as much as I would want the Red Sox relief pitcher to succeed in a big, important game?

    If your answer is yes, we have a problem.

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  • The Biblical Sales Force Part 2 – On Boarding and Coaching Salespeople

    • October 14, 2024
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force
    God

    As I wrote in September, I’m reading the Bible from beginning to end for the first time.  In my first article using an analogy from the Bible, I wrote about scaling, hiring and firing salespeople, based on what I read in Genesis.  Today’s article is about on boarding and coaching salespeople, and is an analogy from Exodus.

    Early in Exodus, we are introduced to Moses, whose people have been slaves to Pharaoh and the Egyptians for hundreds of years.  God appears to Moses and commands him to approach Pharaoh and persuade him to release the Israelites so they can freely worship their God.  Moses lacks confidence in his ability to articulate the request, and questions God’s direction.  He wonders if there might be someone better to handle this important assignment.

    God had to build Moses’ confidence, and properly prepare him for the conversation he will have with Pharaoh.  This is the equivalent to pre-call strategizing, one of several methods for coaching salespeople.  God needed to provide Moses with talking points sufficient to give him gravitas with Pharaoh, so he provided Moses the God-like ability to turn his brother Aaron’s staff into a snake. We accomplish the same thing when we prepare a salesperson with powerful messaging and talking points.

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  • 7-Steps to Achieve Sales Team Excellence

    • October 9, 2024
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force
    sales excellence

    Any company and/or executive can initiate a sales transformation, but there is one dealbreaker that can cause a sales transformation initiative to fail. But you have to see it through.  You must be visible. You must lead by example.  You must be engaged.  You must show how important this is.  You must show your commitment.

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  • Cold Reach Outs: Do Email and LinkedIn Work?

    • October 6, 2024
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force
    email marketing

    Most marketing workflows and the messages created for those workflows absolutely suck! As a result, most of the cold messages that come through your email and LinkedIn messages are quickly and deliberately deleted. But there’s hope for something better.

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  • The Biblical Sales Team Part 1 – Hiring and Firing Salespeople

    • September 29, 2024
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force
    God

    Given that God used terminations to achieve his goals and eliminate mistakes, there should be no reason that sales leaders can’t better utilize terminations.  More than 50% of all salespeople don’t meet annual quotas and haven’t for years.  They should be terminating salespeople at scale, but instead, scared sales leaders create specialized roles, hoping that moving salespeople into a less demanding role will solve the problem. Unfortunately, the only thing it accomplishes is to create distraction from the real problem and noise, as more salespeople, in more roles, are failing than ever before.

    It is clear that God had expectations and goals, and was intolerant of non-performance, under-performance, and especially non-compliance.  If you lead a sales organization, why not follow God’s lead?

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  • Could Lost Deals Correlate with Sales Success?

    • September 20, 2024
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force
    Jerod Mayo

    I love looking for correlations and causation and we use causation to build predictive sales scorecards. Nobody closes 100% of their closable opportunities but with a properly constructed scorecard, you’ll know the opportunities on which to devote your resources, and which opportunities would be best to lose as fast as you can.

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