Dave Kurlan

  • A Rare Paragraph or Two About Making Successful Sales Presentations

    • July 15, 2013
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    When everyone presents, salespeople and companies are perceived as commodities and the sale is driven by price.  When salespeople take a customer-focused, consultative approach and actually become the value added, salespeople and companies are able to effectively differentiate, solve problems, and get paid accordingly.

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  • Top 10 Reasons Salespeople Can’t Move the Conversation from Price

    • July 11, 2013
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    There are other factors that could contribute to salespeople regularly finding themselves in a price-sensitive discussion:

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  • Why You Don’t Have Enough New Opportunities in the Pipeline

    • July 10, 2013
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    More leads = smaller percentage of good leads.

    And the extremely easy ability to connect with your targets?  Just because they have accepted your invitation to become part of each other’s network does not mean they want to talk with you, meet with you or buy from you.  There’s a false sense of security there.

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  • Top 3 Reasons Why Salespeople Fail at Consultative Selling?

    • July 8, 2013
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    One of the challenges with a consultative approach is that while it is easier to close the sale, it is far more difficult to implement than the traditional, transactional approach that today makes it so much harder to get the sale closed.  The question is why?

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  • The Waffle Cone and the Mass Production of Salespeople

    • July 2, 2013
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    For me, today’s waffle cones are a constant disappointment because they always fail to meet my expectations.

    What does this have to do with selling?

    Think about salespeople as a version of the waffle cone.  In some companies, they are made fresh, and in other companies, especially bigger companies, they are mass-produced.

    There are many ways of looking at th

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  • What Google Might Know about Hiring Salespeople

    • June 22, 2013
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    The NY Times posted a story on June 20 about Google, their recruiting efforts, and big data.  The story really doesn’t reveal that much, but there is an interesting quote (that I will get to shortly) that is relevant to hiring salespeople.  When we help companies get the sales selection piece right, there are several components that we tweak.  We help them get the following things right:

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  • Personality Tests, Sales Candidate Selection – How Tests Measure Up

    • June 17, 2013
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    As with costumes, you only need to take off the mask and you’ll see what’s underneath.  No exceptions.  No apologies.

    Personality tests aren’t predictive either.  Oh, they say that they are?  Then why is their validation of choice “construct validity” rather than “predictive validity”?

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  • Baseball and Selling Revisited – A Powerful Analogy

    • June 12, 2013
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    A salesperson tells you about a great-looking opportunity that has been forecast to close this month.  “We’re definitely getting this and it’s an awesome opportunity for us.  We’re going to knock this one out of the park!”

    At the end of the month, the deal hasn’t closed and you question your salesperson about it.  You are told that the decision-maker has been away on vacation, but as soon as he returns, the deal is sure to get done.

    A month later, nothing has changed.  This time, the salesperson admits that he has had a little difficulty reaching the decision-maker, but he is sure that nothing has changed.  You are assured that everything is good.

    Six months later, when the deal still hasn’t closed, you force the salesperson to archive the opportunity with the salesperson still not understanding what went wrong.

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  • Sales Leadership Observations about Pipeline and Terminations

    • June 3, 2013
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    It gets a bit scary when people who are experts in one thing write about another.  Today’s example was sent to me by OMG partner Mike Shannon.  He sent along a recent BtoBonline.com post by Jeff Perkins.  Jeff suggests that the sales funnel is a thing of the past, but his examples, and therefore reasons, are way off base.  He seems confused about what the sales pipeline or funnel is supposed to do for us.  

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  • Inc Magazine Gets it Wrong on Sales Prospecting

    • May 31, 2013
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    In his article, he shares a systematic approach for prospecting “loosely based upon a conversation with Thomas Ray Crowel.”  My interpretation of his use of the word “loosely” is that he contributed his own opinions to this systematic approach.  That makes the article all the more disappointing.

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