Dave Kurlan

  • Change Ready Companies Experience Faster Success in Sales Development

    • January 19, 2009
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    I was thinking about the difference between the clients that achieve rapid progress, with very measurable change, in the first six months of sales development versus those that show more typical progress where change has begun to take place but it might not be measurable yet.

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  • Experts Provide Sales Management Help for 2009

    • January 15, 2009
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    Here are my thoughts of the day: This economic climate isn’t impossible, it’s just not easy. 

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  • Personality Assessments for Sales – The Definitive Case Study

    • January 14, 2009
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    Believe it or not, our in-house team was able to accomplish in about one week of intensive work, what the team of PHD’s couldn’t complete in the last year and a half!  Test answers in our third round appeared to be coming in exactly where they should have been and all questions were accurately driving the desired findings.  Exciting stuff!

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  • Three Ways I Can Help You Feel Better about the Economy

    • January 14, 2009
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    Start with this. Thanks to my friend and best-selling author Dan Millman, of Peaceful Warrior fame, for turning me on to this light-hearted take on last year.

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  • Right Sales People in the Right Roles and the Right Seats

    • January 12, 2009
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    I was on site at a client’s last week to kick-off their training.  At the end of the kick-off I asked each salesperson for their three biggest lessons learned.  One salesperson had difficulty coming up with anything of substance.  It turned out that he was new to sales and when we assessed him two months earlier, our assessment indicated that he was not trainable.  The client wanted him in the program anyway because he had a hunch it would work out.  “Not trainable” manifests in different ways but usually has the same outcome – salespeople don’t improve.

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  • 10 Steps for your Sales Force to Survive and Thrive in The Recession

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

    Bernie is the President of a company that had experienced flat sales for the three strong economic years leading up to the recession. He had been looking for a VP of sales for two years but hadn’t found the right candidate or failed to pull the trigger.

    He attended an event where he heard me speak and asked me to contact him. He asked for my advice and I recommended that if he was serious about finding the ideal VP, then he should:

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  • Surprising Statistics from the Sales Force Grader

    • December 22, 2008
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    The actual results are even more surprising than the number of people (several hundred) that have already visited the FREE Sales Force Grader.

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  • Tale of Two Assessments – Comparing Value

    • December 18, 2008
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    A potential client wanted to know how Objective Management Group could justify the cost of a our license (unlimited candidate assessments for one year or until the specified number of salespeople are hired) versus what seemed at face value to be a lower cost for DISC assessments.

    There are several factors here but they are all worth noting.

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  • Leads for the Sales Force – Not

    • December 14, 2008
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    I received an email last week from a LinkedIn connection promoting his new super duper lead engine that connects salespeople with the most powerful buying influences in the world.

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  • Free Sales Content – Use at Your Own Risk

    • December 12, 2008
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    I can’t count and may not even know about all of the portals now on the web that feature subject matter experts, content, free downloads, articles and tips from people like me.  It’s generally a good thing, at first, until someone like me loses control of his intellectual property – the articles I write.

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