Search Results
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Dell, The Economy, Their SalesForce and You
- December 8, 2008
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Last week I received an email from my Dell representative’s sales manager. It was five paragraphs, and started out great:
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Sales Competencies and Your Competition
- November 6, 2008
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Companies don’t invest enough time and energy being strategic and tactical about competition. The approach shouldn’t be economic as much as it should be tactical. Your approach should revolve around neutralizing your competition as opposed to being competitive with your competition.
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10 Types of Sales Advisers and How to Choose the One That’s Best For You
- October 9, 2008
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
I’ll bet you know plenty about agreements, contracts, and legal compliance in your industry. You probably know enough about accounting, taxes and audits to get by too. And I bet you know your way around insurance, investments and real estate.
Despite all of that knowledge, I’m certain you have a great corporate attorney, corporate accountant, insurance advisers for commercial, benefits and personal lines, and a Realtor. Some of these people may even sit on your board.
Do you have a sales expert on your board? On retainer? Working with your sales team? Your sales management team? On your sales infrastructure? On compensation and incentives?
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Sales Pipeline Can Provide Sight for Blind Executives
- October 1, 2008
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
In a struggling economy, executives of sales driven companies are able to see weaknesses and shortcomings on their sales forces that they were previously either blind to or chose to ignore when the orders were coming in.
Now that these executives have sight, the question to be answered is can they invest the money to improve their revenue making machine or, is it too late because there isn’t any money left and what they see is what they get.
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Bad Apples on the Sales Force – Sales or Sanity?
- August 19, 2008
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Chubby, we hardly know you, and until we do, we’ll use your invaluable comments and insights to crusade for functionality and sanity on sales forces around the world.
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How to Find the Compelling Reasons for Seth Godin’s Intangibles
- August 15, 2008
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Seth Godin’s recent column on Intangibles was great. As a matter of fact, I haven’t disagreed in more than two years with anything he has written about selling. Today he provided many examples – great examples – of how your intangibles create value. I’d like to explain how your salespeople can uncover these, and other reasons why prospects would pay more to do business with you.
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Sales – What the Data Tells Us – The Series
- August 14, 2008
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
This article series is called Sales – What the Data Tells Us. While some of the articles simply report the research and/or data, others share either my insights about the data or provide data to support my insights. Here are the articles:
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Improve Sales Effectiveness at the Salesperson’s Hall of Fame
- June 16, 2008
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
This weekend we visited the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown NY and I was struck by a few things:
1) Why don’t we have a Hall of Fame for Salespeople? I know that companies provide awards for their own salespeople but is that limited recognition enough for those who are motivated most by recognition?
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Obama and McCain – Competing Salespeople Fighting for the Big Sale
- June 10, 2008
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
This afternoon, Chris Mott and I were discussing Obama and McCain. Since I don’t like either candidate, I feel somewhat protected and free to provide my political sales correlation. I’ve never dared to venture into a political editorial and I don’t mean for this to be one either. Please read the following thoughts as they would apply to competing salespeople fighting for the same big account.
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Maximum Effort is the Key to Sales Success
- June 4, 2008
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
When companies attempt to improve sales they often look first to sales skills. If you’ve been reading this Blog for a while, you know that I believe skills are important, but only to a certain degree. The problem with putting an emphasis on developing only the skills is that without the proper combination of strengths and incentive to support the use of those skills, the skills alone don’t get it done.