Blog

  • Glue – The Missing Element That Makes Every Sales Training Initiative Successful

    • February 26, 2018
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    I find that even the most seasoned and resistant of salespeople get to this point: When they realize how much more there is to selling, how much more effective they can be, how much more business they could generate, how they don’t need to have the best price, and how much easier selling can be, they become eager learners.  That brings us to the question to be answered in today’s article: If most salespeople become eager learners and embrace good sales training, why don’t all companies experience equally tremendous revenue growth from sales training?

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  • Can Sales Statistics be Bad and Good at the Same Time?

    • February 21, 2018
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    I received two pieces of bad news relative to statistics.  

    The first is about my award-winning Blog.  It seems that readers stay with an article for an average of only one-minute or so.  That means that most readers don’t finish the article, fail to get to my summary, and often don’t read long enough to get my point.  Basically, everything that comes after the fourth paragraph is not being read.  This could also be good news.  It could mean that I can actually write shorter articles and that would be great for me!

    The other piece of bad news relates to my award-winning sales training company, Kurlan & Associates.  I reviewed 5 years worth of statistics on opportunities that weren’t closed and it seems that prospects were 6 times more likely to do nothing than to do business with a competitor.  We don’t lose very often and I can count on two hands the number of opportunities I have personally lost in the past 5 years.  But it’s one thing to rarely lose, and another to learn that 6 times more often than not, a company failed to act.   But these statistics are very misleading. Let me explain why.

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  • Easiest Way to Assess Degree of Sales Success

    • February 13, 2018
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    Recently, I published an article that introduced a way to measure sales progress by means other than conventional numbers and metrics. 

    Today, I received an email from a property leasing salesperson who had his own question about sales effectiveness.  He asked, “How do I determine if I am seeing results from me being a good salesman or if it’s from my sheer volume and what kind of selling would you say a Real Estate Salesperson uses most?”

    I explained that there are four types of sales conversations and by conducting some self-analysis you can determine whether success or failure is the result of your own effectiveness, or because of your company’s reputation, quality and features of your product or service, the timing of your conversation, or that you happen to have the lowest price.

    These are the four types of sales conversations and potential outcomes that I shared:

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  • What Salespeople Can Learn from Josh McDaniels Gutsy Reversal

    • February 9, 2018
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    What compelling reason might your prospect have for changing their mind?  Let’s assume that they won’t reverse their decision if they were happy with the incumbent vendor and decided to remain with them.  But they could change their mind if you were in the mix the entire way and on this opportunity they decided to go with your primary competitor.   How would you do it?

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  • Is the Sales Force Getting Dressed Up or are Real Changes Taking Place?

    • February 7, 2018
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    Yesterday I received an email from Richardson Training, letting me know that they have completed their 2018 Selling Challenges Study.  The data in the report, which you can download here, hasn’t changed a great deal since 2017, but the report’s new look is awesome.  I reported on last year’s report in detail here, but my conclusion for 2018 is the exact same conclusion I came to in 2017.

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  • Measure Change in Sales Effectiveness without Numbers and Metrics

    • February 2, 2018
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    We want to get better at selling and as sales leaders we want our salespeople to improve.  We need them to improve.  We hope that training and coaching and sales ennablement tools will get us there.  We have also been told that there is more than one way to skin a cat but it might come as a surprise that there is more than one way to measure the progress being made by your salespeople.

    There are traditional lagging indicators, like revenue generated, and there are traditional forward looking indicators, like new meetings, pipeline value and pipeline quantity compared to a prior period.  Conversion ratios – calls to meetings, meetings to qualified opportunities, qualified opportunities to closable, and win rates, all compared with the same ratios from a prior period.

    These metrics tell a story, individually and together, but forward looking indicators tell a more timely story, especially if you have a long sales cycle.  However, as you’ll read below, measuring sales progress doesn’t stop with metrics because there is another powerful way to get instant feedback on a salesperson’s progress.

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  • Predictions for 2018 – The Sales Triad Will Provide Record Sales Growth

    • January 29, 2018
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    With and additional competition, I can tell you this.  If you aren’t the low price leader, the best-known company, or the safest decision that a buyer can make, you will have to do some real SELLING to get that business.  And not just selling, but thoughtfully, effectively, efficiently, and articulately selling value.  What?  You already sell value?  Really?  I’ll bet you don’t. 

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  • When Good Prospects Can be Worse Than Tough Prospects

    • January 17, 2018
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    Comparing stop and go traffic to the other conditions I have driven in got me thinking about a sales analogy that you might find helpful.

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  • What You Should Know When Your Cold Prospect Suddenly Returns From the Dead

    • January 15, 2018
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    Last week I wrote about the deep freeze, why prospects suddenly go cold, and how you can prevent that from happening. That article was instantly as popular as any I have ever written.  I also posted a 6-minute  cold-calling rant on LinkedIn that had more than five-thousand views after just a couple of days. The video, like the article, was about mindset, not scripting and tactics.  And last week I also posted an article about writing a good prospecting email.  It seems that there was a theme to the week and it resonated really well with the readers.

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  • 7 Reasons Why Prospects Go Cold and How to Avoid it

    • January 5, 2018
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    If you change your perspective about prospects going cold, you might discover that you caused them to go cold, rather than the myriad of other possibilities.  I’ll explain.

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