Search Results
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What Companies Don’t Know About Sales
- November 10, 2023
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
We heard that the “Sound of Freedom” was a good movie but waited until we could stream it at home. We loved the movie, but we were moved even more by the closing messages displayed on the screen. The statistics are astounding, where as a result of human trafficking, mostly at the southern border, more children are enslaved today than when slavery was legal! We didn’t know what we didn’t know.
“Companies don’t know what they don’t know about sales” is true in most companies and sales organizations.
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Top 5 Keys to Hire Ideal Sales Candidates at Your Company
- September 11, 2023
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
There’s no time like the present to hire salespeople but your sales recruiting strategy must consider the ever changing ebb and flow of the candidate pool. This article explains the five keys to hiring ideal salespeople for your company and has lots of data to back it up.
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Top 15 Categories of Reading to Improve Sales Team Effectiveness
- August 21, 2023
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Bookmark this article so that over time, if you want to improve your sales effectiveness, you can read articles from the topics listed below
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The Science of Predicting Sales Turnover
- March 1, 2023
- Posted by: Kurlan & Associates, Inc.
- Categories:
Between 1985 and 2010, my continued research, assessments, studies and analyses of more than 500,000 salespeople and sales managers, has yielded consistent, predictive recommendations about the performance of salespeople.
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What If Pay Equity Comes to Sales Teams?
- February 28, 2023
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
When pay equity comes to sales teams, top performers will be the group that is most affected. While it is too early to know whether their incomes will be reduced, they will be compensated equally with the worst performers on the team. If you are a top performer, and you are no longer earning significantly more than the worst performers in the company, what would you do? Here are some possibilities:
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This Company’s Best Salesperson was 2500% Stronger Than Their Worst
- February 1, 2023
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
It’s been four months since the baseball season ended but college baseball begins in less than 4 weeks and it will be fun to watch our son play for his college team (while freezing our asses off!). It’s also been a while since the last time I shared a top/bottom analysis but I completed one this week that I had to share.
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The Connection Between Road Signs, Sales Data, Consultative Selling and Sales Recruiting
- December 6, 2022
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Salespeople who are learning to take a consultative approach to selling hear a stated issue – the consultative selling version of a road sign – but think they have arrived at their destination – the compelling reason to buy.
This is supported by the data. Objective Management Group (OMG) has data on 2,280,260 salespeople that have been assessed from more than 30,000 companies. The findings are horrific:
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“Spirited” Has So Much in Common with Most Salespeople
- November 29, 2022
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Only 13% of all salespeople take a consultative approach to selling and almost none of them can be found in the bottom 50% – the group that fails to meet quota each year. A coincidence? On the other end of the spectrum, the top 10% of all salespeople are 4300% more likely to have the Consultative Seller competency as a strength!
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New Data: Will Salespeople Hit Quota When Sales Managers Coach and Sell?
- November 7, 2022
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Instead of spending their time on coaching, sales managers are spending too much of their time on personal sales. Sales managers with fewer than 5 salespeople may be required to carry a quota but generally speaking, sales managers are expected to spend no more than 5% of their time selling. OMG’s data shows that the percentage of time that sales managers sell is closer to 13%.
Why do they sell instead of having more coaching conversations? There are several reasons:
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You Can’t Lose Customers or Salespeople – 2 Secrets to Their Retention
- July 6, 2022
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
There were lots of articles that had the top 5, 7, 10, 12, and 15 reasons why salespeople leave or quit their jobs. Most of those lists were simply subsets of other lists and the reasons included things like compensation, morale, workload, changing quotas, culture, toxic management, the job was misrepresented, too much pressure and lack of growth opportunity. While there were no surprises to these lists of reasons, I think there is a more pervasive reason that is not represented on the lists created by marketers and recruiters:
Sales Selection.