Search Results
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25 or 6 to 4 and your Sales Force
- August 1, 2011
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
That 14-year swing is huge. You can’t afford to have your salespeople behaving like facilitators, order takers, account managers and amateurs – ever. You need them to be proactive – selling consultatively, everywhere, and always.
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If You Structure Your Sales Force Like the Big Companies…
- July 13, 2011
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Yesterday I read a White Paper about structuring sales forces and it got my blood boiling. It wasn’t that it was a study about sales forces, and it wasn’t that it was a study using large companies. I got upset because of the conclusion – that you should structure your sales force like the big companies.
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Can Sales Candidate Assessments Drive Results?
- May 13, 2011
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
They claimed that salespeople who scored highest on their assessments had 69% higher close rates. That’s impressive, right? But their assessment didn’t drive the results. Those salespeople drove the results. Their assessment simply indicated that those salespeople would be more successful. That is what an assessment is supposed to do! They could just as easily said, “Our assessments do what they’re supposed to do!”
So let’s take a closer look at a 69% higher close. It means that if the salespeople with a lower score close 1 of every 10 opportunities, then the strong salespeople, who scored highest on the assessment, will close 69% more of their 10 opportunities, or 1.69. It’s not nearly as impressive as it sounds, is it?
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Bad Things That Happen When You Leave it Up to Your Salespeople
- April 27, 2011
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Here are the 10 most common things that your salespeople will do when they aren’t managed effectively, or, in many cases, when they are only managed on an as needed basis.
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Does Fear Prevent Salespeople From Executing Your Sales Plan?
- April 22, 2011
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
These are just a few examples of self-limiting sales management beliefs! Is it possible that you or your sales managers have some of them?
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How Many Salespeople Made Quota in 2010?
- February 21, 2011
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
This study is basically saying that during one of the worst recessions ever, an all-time high percentage of salespeople hit their numbers. I don’t buy it and here’s why.
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What Are Sales Intangibles?
- February 16, 2011
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Once in while an individual will fall outside the normal range of assessment results. That usually means either one of two things;
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Analogies for Boosting Sales
- January 21, 2011
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
I’ve created a series of some of my better analogies in the hope that they provide some of those “ah-ha” moments which are so valuable to improving your sales force.
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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.
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Top 10 Reasons Consultative Sellers Outsell Everyone Else
- October 1, 2010
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Have you ever worked with salespeople that were so bad you thought, “She couldn’t close a door!”? And have you ever worked with salespeople that were so good that you thought, “She could sell white to rice!”?
There’s a good chance that the difference has less to do with their closing skills and much more to do with their ability to build a late stage relationship in the earliest stage of the sales process – the first meeting.
So what do they do? Here are the top ten things they do: