Dave Kurlan

  • Nothing Beats This One Tool When You Can’t Sell Face to Face

    • August 19, 2021
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    There are some misguided selling strategies that can be undone and in today’s article we’ll discuss the benefits of the single tool that is the real deal and a huge difference maker.

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  • Siri Can’t Help You Close the Deal but Doing These Three Things Can!

    • August 9, 2021
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    Sometimes Siri doesn’t actively listen and decides to send you somewhere different from where you asked her to navigate; a different city or town and/or a place that doesn’t sound remotely close to what you asked for. She gets in the way.

    So what do you do when Siri isn’t cooperating?  Do you give up and wing it?  Do you try again?  Do you stop navigating with Siri and switch to Google, Waze or your built-in system?  Do you persist until you get what you need?

    That’s exactly what salespeople are supposed to do.  Get creative, be persistent and find a way to reach the decision maker.  You do it with Siri, so why don’t you do it when someone in the company won’t introduce you to the decision maker, when they won’t give you the decision maker’s name or when they don’t cooperate?  Why do so many salespeople give up and plow forward with the contact they are speaking with right now?

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  • Salespeople Will Close 50% More Business By Changing This One Thing They Do!

    • August 5, 2021
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    At Objective Management Group (OMG), one of the 21 Sales Core Competencies we measure and report on also tends to confuse salespeople, is the cause of frequent pushback, but has thirty-five years of cumulative science to support the finding and our conclusions.  Allow me to introduce you the competency called Supportive BuyCycleTM.

    BuyCycleTM represents how salespeople go about the process of making a major purchase and there is a 100% correlation between how they buy and the behavior they accept from their prospects.  For example:

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  • A Key Competency That Differentiates Top Sales Performers From Posers

    • July 21, 2021
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    The bottom 50% of all salespeople are posers too.  In an article last week we discussed how data can help you hire the ideal salespeople.

    In that article I shared a top/bottom analysis where the top performers were 100% more effective reaching decision makers than the bottoms.  Below I’ve shared another top/bottom analysis with different findings. 

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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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  • Why More Salespeople Are Being Recommended for Difficult Selling Roles

    • June 24, 2021
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    Something else we haven’t done for quite a while is revisit Objective Management Group’s (OMG) sales selection statistics on the percentage of people that are recommended for various selling and sales management roles.

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  • The Bob Chronicles Part 5 – Bob Can’t Win This Argument Over a Sales Core Competency

    • June 22, 2021
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    OMG has assessed more than 2 million salespeople and measures their sales capabilities in 21 Sales Core Competencies.  While some might not like their scores, most salespeople agree with our findings because they are extremely accurate.  However, there is one competency of the 21 that causes salespeople to dig in, disagree, and push back.  Today I will explain the competency and share yesterday’s conversation with Bob.  For new readers, and those who don’t remember, Bob tends to get himself into trouble and is representative of all weak salespeople.

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  • A Properly Constructed Sales Process Can Help You Experience the Euphoria of a Walk-Off Win

    • June 15, 2021
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    The walk-off win in baseball, the buzzer beater in basketball and the field goal with no time on the clock in football are all terrific metaphors for certain types of wins in sales.  Some deals are sure things from the get go and others stand no chance of going your way.  However, some huge opportunities are truly nail-biters and could go either way.  When those opportunities are finally decided and you win, they too are euphoric.

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