Search Results
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Insider Opinion – Why Sales Experts Can’t Agree on Anything
- November 11, 2013
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Good things are happening in the world of sales and some of those things are coming your way. Just keep both eyes open, your nose to the ground and your antenna up. You’ll intuitively know whether or not what you are reading is a bunch of bunk or the real deal.
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Are Sales and Sales Management Candidates Getting Worse?
- September 10, 2013
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
There are more sales experts, self-professed and otherwise, than ever before. There is more free content on sales and selling than anyone could have imagined. There are probably twice as many books on the subject than just 10 years ago. There are categories of sales tools and CRM applications where none existed a few years ago. Companies are spending more money on sales force evaluations, sales training, consulting, sales leadership development, sales process, infrastructure and sales recruiting services than 5 years ago. And selling has changed more in the past 5 years than ever before.
With all that, shouldn’t the quality of sales, sales management and sales leadership candidates be on the rise? Yes, it should.
But there’s a problem. The quality has not risen. It seems to have worsened!
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Motivating Your Sales Team – Secrets to Success
- September 9, 2013
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
My first post-vacation post is a collection of announcements that have been sitting in my note-taking app, inbox, and calendar.
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Which Industries Need the Most Help to Get Sales to the Next Level?
- August 15, 2013
- Posted by: Kurlan & Associates, Inc.
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
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When Sales Coaching, Best Practices and Books are Ignored
- May 6, 2013
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Coaching is crucial to the success of any sales force; however, coaching without the context of an effective sales process, pipeline, metrics to drive revenue, motivation and accountability aren’t enough. So, our events integrate these additional elements to make for a well-rounded, comprehensive two days.
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Sales Management Best Practices – Are Top Salespeople Challengers?
- April 29, 2013
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
I don’t promote an approach based on either Relationships or Solution Selling, but both must be incorporated into an appropriate sales approach. Also worth noting, the approach or methodology is only one part of selling. Without a sales process and a sales model, no methodology will work very well on its own.
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The Latest and Greatest in Sales Force Effectiveness
- April 24, 2013
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
We have introduced our share of evaluation and assessment tools during the past 23 years, but this introduction was completely different. My team worked tirelessly for nearly an entire year on our latest gem and our Partners received it, with even more enthusiasm than we felt, when we completed the project just 48 hours earlier.
Why all the excitement?
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Top 5 Reasons Why Salespeople Don’t Qualify Effectively
- April 17, 2013
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Last week, I posted this article in reference to an Inc. Magazine article that was way off base about Consultative Selling. It led to a significant number of comments with one of them being this question:
“Dave, in your opinion, with all the training that is available and has been delivered to sales people over the years, how come sales people still fail at executing an effective approach to qualifying a prospect. Forget what we want to call the approach. Just basic fundamentals like asking questions. This is known throughout the selling universe but sales people still suck at this. How come?”
Great question. Here are my top 6 reasons why:
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Top 20 Reasons Why Sales Managers Suck at Coaching
- April 4, 2013
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
So why aren’t more sales managers effective at coaching salespeople? Here are my top 19 reasons and I left #20 open so that you could add your two-cents worth.
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Best Example of Value-Added vs. Commodity Selling
- March 7, 2013
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
I wrote an article for the March 2013 issue of Top Sales World Magazine that debriefs an actual sales call. I’ve written more than 1,000 articles and I believe this one is the best yet! The article effectively details an actual value-added consultative sales call which, because of a single incorrect question, quickly became a transactional, commodity-based, price-driven call. The example is really striking because it so clearly shows that you can do everything correctly but asking even one question the wrong way can cause a salesperson to lose the opportunity to be a trusted advisor, and fall into the abyss of commodity sellers.