Blog
-
When Their Best Isn’t Good Enough
- September 29, 2005
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
What good are great closing skills when you struggle to get your closers to find new opportunities? Refined skills are great but committed, consistent, goal orientated over-achievers are better.
-
Embracing Assessments
- September 27, 2005
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
A sales VP from a Fortune 500 company asked what it takes for a company to embrace assessments when the company’s culture was not to use “such things.” Surely, there are some assessments that do fall into the category of “such things” but let us first separate the assessment into two categories: Pre-employment, where most of them fit, and diagnostic, where most don’t fit well unless someone learns how to connect dots that can’t be connected.
-
I Want Sales Training
- September 13, 2005
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Evaluate your sales force FIRST to determine exactly what needs to be fixed and keep in mind that sales training may be just one of several things that need to be addressed. You may be able to train while you are fixing the other problems or training may come after your infrastructure has been improved.
-
More on the Pipeline
- September 4, 2005
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
I recently wrote about the importance of a balanced pipeline but, in that article, didn’t comment on the required size of the pipeline. Size will vary by company, industry, average order, and salesperson but I’ll attempt to provide a common formula that should work for everyone.
-
That’s The Way It’s Supposed to Be
- September 1, 2005
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Just two weeks after beginning to use our Sales Candidate Assessments when we also delivered our proprietary STAR Training, a comprehensive, consistent, effective sales recruiting process, this client was in heaven. Plenty of candidates, a third of them were recommended, and they feel like they’re in control again.
-
Pay Attention to the Pipeline
- August 30, 2005
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
I’ll bet you don’t know whether each of your salespeople have enough opportunities in the pipeline. Oh, you do know that one? Sorry. That’s right. None of them have enough opportunities in the pipeline. And lastly, I’m sure you don’t know whether each salesperson’s pipeline is balanced. What is a balanced pipeline?
-
Compensation Stupidity Again?
- August 18, 2005
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
The candidates are out there. But when you offer to pay little more than entry level money yet expect your candidate to have a $250K pedigree, you will consistently fail to attract, select and retain top talent.
-
Change for Change’s Sake
- August 17, 2005
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
It’s important to assess your candidates but it’s equally important to surround that assessment with a proven, effective process that assures a flow of quality candidates and a successful hand-off to sales management.
-
Excuse Making
- August 16, 2005
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Sales Managers often don’t recognize the excuses but they are aware of the reasons why performance or results fail to meet expectations. In some cases, those very managers are the ones providing the ‘reasons’ for this month’s numbers. Reasons are essentially rationalizations and therefore, one in the same with excuses, and until we recognize that, excuses will continue to mount.
-
Deja vu All Over Again
- August 12, 2005
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
The single issue that seems to occur most often is the company which, early on in their use of our sales specific, pre-employment assessment (Express Screen) learns that the lion share of their candidates are not recommended for hiring. For some reason, rather than being thankful for avoiding another hiring mistake, they become angry, at the assessment, for discounting their candidates.