Dave Kurlan

  • The Buyer Journey – Myth, Reality, Hybrid, or an Avoidable Part of Selling?

    • September 15, 2016
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    The Buyer Journey is front and center again.  Dan McDade posted the second in his 3-part series on Lies and Myths and part 2 is about the Buyer Journey.  8 Sales Experts weighed in with their thoughts about the Buyer Journey and you can read those here.  Don’t miss Mike Weinberg’s comment – I love it!  It’s pretty clear where the sales experts stand, so where is all of the Buyer Journey data coming from if not the sales experts?

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  • How This Awful Cold, Voicemail Message Could Have Actually Worked

    • September 12, 2016
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    The timing on these two events could not have been more perfect!  Both occurred last week and I wanted to share them with you today.  First came Dan McDade’s article – the first of three parts – on whether cold calling is dead.  He asked a number of sales experts to weight in and articulate whether it is truth or a lie.  It was very well done and you’ll want to read it.  Then came the comments – most notably on LinkedIn – from both sides of the argument.  And finally, I received a cold call from a salesperson who was following up on an email.  It’s a great example of a call that was a complete waste and I’ll share that call with you as well as how that call could have worked.

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  • The Biggest Secret to My Sales Success

    • September 9, 2016
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    In my most controversial article ever, I will share the biggest secret of my sales success.  Some will undoubtedly call this the Dave went crazy article.

    Some of you might be able to sense what my secret is.  Some of you won’t appreciate how simple it is.  But I’m guessing that most of you will love what I share in this article and if not, you don’t have to continue reading it.  Find something else that resonates for you.

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  • The Second Most Important Sales Lesson of My Life

    • September 8, 2016
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    Earlier this week I posted an article that told the story of the biggest sales lesson of my life.  I received so many emails about that article because it seemed to really resonate with my readers.  Yet, as much as it resonated, there was one question that several of them asked in their emails.  They wanted to know why we were in that tenement building in the first place.  And the answer to that question leads me to the second most important sales lesson of my life.

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  • Remembering The Most Powerful Sales Lesson of My Life

    • September 6, 2016
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    Which one thing helps almost every salesperson succeed, even when they have other challenges?

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  • Are Millennials Who Enter Sales Better or Worse Than the Rest of the Sales Population?

    • August 31, 2016
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    Millennials are more independent, more spoiled, have a shorter attention span, tend to be more into their technology than into people, don’t like working traditional hours, and don’t enjoy working in traditional ways.  That said, would you expect them to be better or worse suited for selling than the generations who came before them?

    I took to the data to see what story it might tell. I found data on more than 43,000 millennials in sales and here is what I learned.  This information should be very helpful for hiring new salespeople and developing them as well.

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  • Dissecting the #1 Sales Best Practice

    • August 26, 2016
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    One company is attempting to create a compilation of best sales practices by sending out a weekly survey to sales leaders and asking them to choose from multiple choice questions what they most often do and teach.  The topic changes each week.  This is silly because (1) it just isn’t that simple, (2) it’s different for each selling role, each vertical, the decision makers they call on, their price points, the length of their sales cycle, and their respective competition, just to name a few.  In addition, when you ask multiple choice questions like this, the answers will be so varied that there won’t be even a few, never mind a single best practice.  Here is an example of what they asked this week:

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  • Top 10 Reasons Why Sales Don’t Grow

    • August 24, 2016
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    Despite knowing that things don’t fix themselves, thousands of executives believe that sales problems will resolve themselves, change, and improve.  Why?

    That’s the key question.  Because when you don’t know exactly what’s wrong, it’s much easier to remain in denial.

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  • HBR or OMG – Whose Criteria Really Differentiate the Top and Bottom 10% of Salespeople?

    • August 22, 2016
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    In their June 20, 2016 article, A Portrait of the Overperforming Salesperson, HBR identified several traits, attitudes and actions that they claim differentiate the top from bottom performers.  I’ll summarize it for you below and then explain why I believe it is junk.  The findings include:

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  • The Craziest, Most Unusual Sales Selection Criteria and What Really Works

    • August 9, 2016
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    It was just last month that I wrote this hugely popular article about the tech buyer who hated salespeople.  In the first paragraph I mentioned that I had a crazy case of poison ivy.  At about the one-week point, I started searching Google to find anything that might help ease the itching and discomfort. As you might guess, the remedies I found included some very crazy things that common sense would tell you to stay away from.  Well, in the 31 years I’ve been in the sales consulting business, I have heard some very crazy sales selection criteria too.  When salespeople are hired but don’t work out, executives and in some cases, entire industries, stick their head in the sand and call it normal or acceptable.  Life insurance, where turnover can run as high as 90%, is a perfect example of this.  Insurance industry executives say that it’s perfectly normal.  However, outside of the insurance industry, most executives will try just about any remedy to stop the discomfort.  Here are some of the craziest I’ve seen.

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