Dave Kurlan

  • You Can Help Salespeople Burdened with Sales Weaknesses

    • January 23, 2012
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    Sadly, most sales training and sales trainers are unable to help salespeople overcome these weaknesses because their focus is primarily the sales skills and methodology that they teach.  That puts tremendous pressure on sales managers who are simply not equipped to help salespeople overcome things like:

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  • 10 Reasons – Don’t Worry When Sales Candidates Don’t Take the Test

    • January 19, 2012
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    Recent statistics show that only 34% of the candidates are taking the assessment without additional prompts.  Isn’t that awful?

    Maybe – let’s explore it further.

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  • After Accepting the Sales Job Will the Salesperson Back Out?

    • January 17, 2012
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    Did a sales candidate ever accept your job offer only to back out prior to the agreed upon start date because the individual decided to stay with the current employer?

    This happened to a client and it had a tremendous ripple effect.

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  • 5,000 Reasons to Hire Salespeople Today

    • January 12, 2012
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    If you don’t use OMG’s Sales Candidate Assessments early in the process you will waste a tremendous amount of time and money interviewing and hiring imposters. If you don’t get started hiring salespeople now the pickings will be even slimmer as spring approaches.

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  • How Many of Your Salespeople are Receiving Welfare?

    • January 9, 2012
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    Money motivation tends to be very confusing to people but there is a huge distinction between being motivated to perform versus feeling entitled to more money.  What do you have on your sales force?

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  • New Penn State Coach – Just Like Dysfunctional Sales Management

    • January 6, 2012
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    Bill O’Brien. One coach – two full time jobs.  Both teams need his immediate, undivided attention and won’t get all that they need.  Given the dual roles, how do you feel about the Patriots’ chances of another Super Bowl?  Given this conflict of interest, how do you feel about Penn State’s ability to have a quality recruiting season?

    This happens quite frequently in my world – the sales force.

    In most small businesses, the President or owner is responsible for running the company and by default, manages the sales force too.  The problem?  Unskilled sales management is being provided on demand and that is always quite ineffective.

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  • Get Your Sales Force to Perform Magic and Make Sales Appear!

    • January 5, 2012
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    We don’t talk about it much but sales has a lot of magic to it.

    We disguise the magic and call it art, but when people are unable to describe how it actually works it must be magic.  Want an example?

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  • Sales Courage and Resilience

    • January 3, 2012
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    Hope isn’t enough, but faith and courage are.  If salespeople can apply the 20 seconds of courage rule to every challenging or scary situation they encounter, and simply do what they are afraid of, good things will happen.  When things go wrong – and they surely will – if they can have the faith to hang in there for one more minute, one more hour or one more day, knowing that if they do everything in their power (with their fate in their control) rather than relying on hope, they will achieve the desired outcome.

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  • Only 11% of Salespeople Do This at the End of a Sales Call

    • December 20, 2011
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    This is the time of year for traditions. While most are family traditions, an analysis would reveal that the processes for buyers and sellers alike are filled with traditions: habits, learned behaviors, and standardized questions and comments. Today I am initiating a tradition on my Blog by republishing this holiday flavored article (from exactly one year ago today) that addresses those buying and selling traditions.

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  • Every Sales Assessment Tells a Story – This is Fred’s Story

    • December 19, 2011
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    When his boss couldn’t understand why Fred wasn’t performing, we performed a sales force evaluation and among the things we focused in on was Fred.

    Fred’s Sales DNA was generally quite good but when it came to his selling skills, there were a few problems that explained everything.

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