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Can You Find The Perfect Sales Candidates for Your Sales Team?
- December 1, 2021
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
I am helping one company find a single needle-in-a-haystack sales leadership candidate and it has taken nearly six months. I am helping another company find 3 sales leaders and received 3,765 applications. What’s the difference?
For the answer to be meaningful, we have to look at the entire job market, not just sales candidates.
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Salesenomics – Many Sales Organizations Are Stuck in the 1980’s
- November 22, 2021
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
When was the last time you saw a black and white television or even a console color TV?
How about an electric typewriter?
Or a car that didn’t have anti-lock brakes?
You would have to return to the 1980’s to see those things and when it comes to their operations, some sales organizations are still in the 1980’s.
For example, check out these statistics from OMG’s evaluations of 30,000 sales teams and more than two million salespeople.
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2 Questions That Will End Every Request for a Better Price
- November 15, 2021
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
What’s the point? When prospects tell you that they’re going with the lowest price, it’s total crap. They might be saying that, but are they required to do that? If they have any bottled water in the kitchen, pay for any streaming, or software then it’s simply not true. Can you say bluffing?
I don’t blame companies for trying to buy for less, but it doesn’t mean you have to sell for less, or match or beat someone’s price. They’re just saying the words and waiting to see if you’ll bite. Just about a year ago at this time, I wrote another article about selling value where I used Dunkin Donuts coffee as an example.
So what should you do when a prospect asks for a lower price?
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Sales Forecasts Do Not Have to Be as Wrong as Fortune Cookies
- October 29, 2021
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
With all of these forecasts having the chance to be completely wrong, it makes me wonder about the way sales leaders and CEOs react to sales forecasts. After all, should we expect anything different when it comes to sales?
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When Your Sales Opportunity Stalls, Do You Call Roadside Assistance?
- October 18, 2021
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
When salespeople get into trouble and an opportunity stalls out or goes off the rails, their sales managers are the sales version of roadside assistance. In the context of a sales opportunity, there are typically three possibilities:
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Most Salespeople are Underdogs Like the Boston Red Sox
- October 13, 2021
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
If your company is not the brand leader, market leader, or price leader; if you have a complex sale, a story to tell, a new technology, a new brand, a new product, a much higher price or a much tougher sale, then you are an underdog too.
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Most Sales Processes, Funnels and Pipelines are How Old?
- September 29, 2021
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
I was looking for an image of a sales funnel and couldn’t believe what I found! My search results can be found here. Can you believe all of those images of sales funnels? Look them over and see if you can recognize the problem with all of them.
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Hidden Sales Competition and Why it Could Happen to You
- September 27, 2021
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Have you ever had a sales opportunity that was completely under control, you were following your sales process, everything was looking great, and then, from out of nowhere and without warning, surprise competitors appeared?
Yes, the magic mushroom competitors!
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How to Prepare for the Coming Sales Team Super Storm
- September 22, 2021
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
My first reaction was that this must have been something from 2016 – right before the boom that lasted until the pandemic slammed the economy to the ground. Or, from the 4th quarter of 2020, when we expected the economy to come roaring back. But it simply can’t be something that is remotely relevant to what we are about to experience. Here’s what we know, and how that will impact companies and their sales teams in 2022.
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The Sales Compensation Plan from Hell and How to Improve It
- September 17, 2021
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Have you ever seen a compensation plan so complicated, so illogical and so detailed that all you could do was stare at it and wonder, WTF?
I did. This week. Couldn’t make heads or tails of it. There were several sales groups selling different services to different audiences, several roles in each group, different plans for each role, different percentages, some of the compensation was guaranteed but some was variable and had to be earned by achieving quantitative and qualitative goals consisting of variable weighted goals, some of which were based on revenue while others were based on percentage achievement of goal. The only way to figure it all out was to draw a table on the white board and start filling it in. When we were done it looked like the monstrosity below: