Dave Kurlan

  • The Magic of the Sales Force Evaluation

    • November 9, 2009
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    Companies that evaluate their sales forces benefit from the insights, predictions, and findings that come from the wealth of relevant information.  In addition to the many surprises, including problems they weren’t aware of, they learn of many opportunities too.  These opportunities appear in the form of “what ifs”, where if they make certain changes or modifications to the current people, systems, processes and strategies, they can have a major impact on revenue and profit.  Most executives view these opportunities as magic because where before there were only challenges and frustrations, they come to realize that with a different perspective they can achieve their desired growth and profit. This is pretty magical stuff!

    read more

  • Top 25 Prerequisites for Successful Sales Training and Sales Development

    • November 5, 2009
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    Before an inside or outside expert can help you develop your sales force, there are at least 25 milestones that must take place or the initiative will probably fail. 

    read more

  • Comparison of Sales, Personality and Behavioral Styles Assessments

    • October 30, 2009
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    This is my article series on sales assessments.  There are some incredible, demystifying, myth-busting exposes in the following articles.  Enjoy!

    read more

  • Stupid Choices in the Selection of Sales Assessments

    • October 30, 2009
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    We had a conversation with someone who was using the CPQ Assessment.  The person who was providing it to them claims it is a sales assessment but it’s a personality test marketed as a sales assessment. If you’re not familiar with my series on this then click here. They were also told that it was predictive, especially with insurance salespeople, and that they could use the same criteria for selecting their salespeople (selling a business consulting package to CEO’s) as is used for hiring life insurance salespeople.

    Yeah, right.

    Let’s compare the life insurance (LI) sale and this business consulting package sale (BCP):

    read more

  • Objections – 10th of the 10 Kurlan Sales Competencies that are Key to Building a Sales Culture

    • October 27, 2009
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    This is the 10th in my series of the 10 Kurlan Sales Competencies That Are Key to Building a Sales Culture.

    read more

  • Practice – 9th of the 10 Kurlan Sales Competencies That are Key to Building a Sales Culture

    • October 26, 2009
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    This is the 9th in the series of articles on the 10 Kurlan Sales Competencies That are Key to Building a Sales Culture.

    read more

  • The Numbers – 8th of the 10 Kurlan Sales Competencies That Are Key to Building a Sales Culture

    • October 23, 2009
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    This is the 8th in the series of articles based on the 10 Kurlan Sales Competencies that are Key to Building a Sales Culture.

    read more

  • Options – 7th of the 10 Kurlan Sales Competencies that are Key to Building a Sales Culture

    • October 22, 2009
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    This  the 7th in my series on the 10 Kurlan Sales Competencies that are Key to Building a Sales Culture.

    read more

  • Directors Want Better Boards – and Rightly So!

    • October 21, 2009
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    I’m off topic a little bit for this Blog, but not off topic for the work we do in companies each day.

    Frederic’ pointed me to the October 19 edition of Harvard’s Daily Stat – “Directors Want Better Boards”. One of the quotes from this article is, Boards should view the current crisis as an opportunity to review the way they function. A healthy self-assessment can go a long way toward improving a company’s performance.

    It’s that self-assessment phrase that makes this post only slightly off topic.

    read more