Search Results
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Don’t Make Assumptions About Sales Candidates
- March 31, 2009
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
I have previously shared many instances of sales candidate assessments coming to life with their email, voice mails and interview antics following the taking of our assessment. While the following email is another example of that, it is an even better example of what happens when a skeptical client finally realizes it:
The client wrote:
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The Sales Force with Over Achievers That Don’t
- March 26, 2009
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
I heard about a CEO who told one of my colleagues that all of his salespeople over achieve. In the same phone conversation he mentioned that sales are down 20%. Can you imagine where sales would be if his salespeople under achieved?
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Media is to Fuel as the Recession is to Fire – How Does it Impact the Sales Force?
- March 11, 2009
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
The media – they didn’t cause the banking crisis but they have surely capitalized on it, dramatized it, chronically reported every devastating development and turned a serious but contained fire into a wildfire.
I don’t want to hear how many jobs have been lost. Who does that help?
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The CEO Who Needed to Hire Salespeople
- February 25, 2009
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Yesterday I spoke with a CEO who asked for some help recruiting salespeople. It seems that the salespeople they had previously hired had failed. As I learned more about their business, a few things became obvious to me:
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Personality Assessments – They Still Don’t Get it
- February 18, 2009
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
The following email was recently forwarded to me. As you read it, look at the descriptors which the client references in the personality assessments. They’re not sales descriptors, so in essence, we have another example of an assessment which claims to be measuring one thing, but actually is measuring another:
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Exposed – Personality Tests Disguised as Sales Assessments
- January 28, 2009
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Yesterday, I met with a long-time client who, in his previous company, used OMG’s Assessments to identify what needed to change in order to double revenue from $30 million to $60 million. In his new company, which is already about 12x that size, he wants to double revenue again. He said, “I just wasted two years with the _____ Assessment.” The assessment to which he referred was a personality assessment marketed as a sales assessment. It could have referred to any personality or behavioral-styles assessment.
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10 Steps for your Sales Force to Survive and Thrive in The Recession
- January 5, 2009
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Bernie is the President of a company that had experienced flat sales for the three strong economic years leading up to the recession. He had been looking for a VP of sales for two years but hadn’t found the right candidate or failed to pull the trigger.
He attended an event where he heard me speak and asked me to contact him. He asked for my advice and I recommended that if he was serious about finding the ideal VP, then he should:
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Improve Sales Performance with More Effective Pipeline Management
- November 10, 2008
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Related to pipeline, I hate inappropriate blog commenting. That’s when people seek out a blog only to use it as an excuse to write about what they’re promoting on their site. It’s the other form of SPAM. The way it manifests itself on this blog is when someone targets one of my posts on closing or pipeline management and then adds their comment about how you can solve this problem by using lead analytics software or search engine optimization. I’m all for tools of this type and I love Hubspot’s lead analytics and SEO but let’s be real. SEO and on line analytics help to generate leads; they have as much to do with closing effectiveness as Michael Jordan has credentials for baseball’s Hall of Fame! Over achievers, using their sales competencies, create improved sales performance.
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Who Are Better Salespeople – Men or Women?
- October 23, 2008
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Tom Peters said women are better salespeople than men.
I wrote that Objective Management Group’s data proves that a greater percentage of women are stronger than men.
Here is how that data breaks down:
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The Sales Assessment as Crystal Ball
- October 16, 2008
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Not all sales assessments are created equal.
That’s an understatement.
Yet it’s when a client pushes back – not when they look at the recommendation or prediction and accept it – that we get an opportunity to bring our sales assessment to life.