Search Results
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College Basketball vs. the Pros & Sales Management & Selling
- March 3, 2014
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
If you live in fear and follow the path laid out by NBA head coaches, and just try to make everyone happy, you get the wrong outcome. Additionally, you show that you are not a good leader, you are not a good coach, you are not a good sales manager, and you are not a good role model. You are, in essence, a babysitter with all of the power of the 13-year old who can watch and entertain, but cannot make a decision.
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Why CEOs/Presidents Tolerate Ineffective Sales Management
- October 7, 2013
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Lack of overall sales performance is an easily recognized problem. A savvy President or CEO may correctly identify the symptoms: inaccurate forecasts, a lack of new opportunities, new salespeople failing to ramp-up quickly enough, delayed closings, and complacency. However, they usually fail to understand that these issues are not sales issues, but sales management issues.
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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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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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Vote the Best Top Article on Sales and Sales Management
- December 17, 2012
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
This is a pretty exciting time for us. We reviewed 1,000 articles which I’ve posted on this Blog since 2006 in an effort to present you with the Top 15 Sales Articles of the past six years, and later this week, the Top Sales Article of the last six years. It was not quick, easy, fun or obvious. They aren’t necessarily the most viewed and they do not have the most inbound links. But we did pick fifteen of the more serious articles. Some are articles backed by science and some are assessment comparisons. Five are on selling and two are articles where I debunked other published articles. Missing are the articles with analogies, humor and comparisons to children, but other than that, it’s a nice cross-section.
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Terrific New Sales Management Book
- October 3, 2012
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
My colleague, Steven Rosen, has published a new Sales Management Book which you should read. It’s called 52 Sales Management Tips and it’s the kind of book that you can read in less than an hour! Each page has a very useful tip, every tip is consistent with what you read here three times most weeks, and every tip is time-tested and proven.
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Top 5 Sales Management Best Practices
- July 24, 2012
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Let’s see how those actually compare with the Top 5 Sales Management Best Practices – not the things sales managers necessarily do, but the things sales managers should do:
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Great Sales Management Advice from Football’s Greatest
- February 3, 2012
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Sales Managers could learn a thing or two from Bill Belichick! Like:
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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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Sales and Sales Management Simplified
- December 2, 2010
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
In this article I make sales and sales management as simple as possible using some baseball analogies.