Search Results
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Sales Pipeline – Reality vs. What Your Salespeople Know and Think
- January 8, 2015
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
They are three separate things but not three distinct data points:
What your salespeople know – for certain – a data point. This is the information that prospects and customers provide – that proves to be valid – in response to your salespeople’s questions. For example, if one of your salespeople asks which competitors the prospect is speaking with, the answers could be as varied as:
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Top 10 Ways To Accelerate The Sales Process – The Need For Speed
- January 6, 2015
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Have you ever noticed that when you choose the Express Checkout it always seems to have either the slowest register clerk, or there’s an old lady paying who has already taken 10 minutes to find her wallet?
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Solitaire and Modern Sales Training – What Should it Cover and Include?
- October 6, 2014
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
I’ve been playing one of those Solitaire games on my iPad and I can routinely score in the neighborhood of 2 minutes and 30 seconds, with my best time being just under 2 minutes. I thought I was doing pretty well until I realized that my wife routinely scores between 1 minute and 1:20 seconds with her best scores (not score) being under 1 minute. She has scored as low as 48 seconds.
If not for my wife, I would have thought I was a real pro at Solitaire!
This is exactly how many CEO’s, Presidents and Sales VP’s view their sales forces. Without anything or anyone with whom to compare, they form their judgements on sales effectiveness in a vacuum. I routinely hear things like, “We have a custom sales process.”, and “We’ve been working on consultative selling.” Yet, after a sales force evaluation has been completed, those same companies are routinely found to have been lagging, not leading, in those areas.
When it comes to providing sales training for your sales force, what exactly, should modern training include?
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Top 20 Reasons Why Data May Not be the Key to Boosting Sales
- June 11, 2014
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
I read somewhere that data was the key to boosting sales. Really? Says who?
When you look into the “who”, it should come as no surprise that it’s the companies that provide data analytics that say so. Don’t get me wrong; data (and especially the right data) can be very useful. But data, by itself, doesn’t boost anything.
If you are getting the right data…
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Top 3 Reasons Why Salespeople Fail at Consultative Selling?
- July 8, 2013
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
One of the challenges with a consultative approach is that while it is easier to close the sale, it is far more difficult to implement than the traditional, transactional approach that today makes it so much harder to get the sale closed. The question is why?
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Salespeople Must Stop Snorkeling and Start Scuba Diving
- May 15, 2013
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
We talk a lot about the importance of using a consultative approach instead of a transactional approach to better differentiate and sell value instead of price. When we explain consultative selling, we usually emphasize the importance of listening and questioning. When we further explain effective listening and questioning, it becomes much more difficult to describe in a paragraph or in the absence of a demonstration or role-play.
Until today.
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Why Salespeople Won’t Abandon the Early Demo and Presentation
- March 4, 2013
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
If you want your sales force to strive for sales excellence, the bottom line is that your salespeople won’t drive this transition and neither will a sales manager. You have to drive it. You must commit to it and it must be a sustained commitment. It’s not a do-it-yourself project, so you must also be prepared to do it correctly, get help from a results-oriented firm, and lead by example.
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Dan Pink Hits and Then Misses the New Key to Sales Performance
- February 6, 2013
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Why do brilliant people, like Dan Pink, look at research and then reach faulty conclusions?
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6 Keys to Make All Sales Calls Easy Sales Calls
- August 28, 2012
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Your salespeople can have more easy calls, but you’ll have to change up a few things.
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Effective Selling Can’t Occur Until Salespeople Perfect This
- June 20, 2012
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
In today’s article, we discuss five examples of what salespeople must do to sell more effectively.