Search Results
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Denial Over a Sales Force Evaluation
- October 3, 2007
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Sales Managers have a difficult time with the results of a sales force evaluation. While some handle it quite well, a significant percentage just can’t deal with the fact that some of their “superstars” are weak salespeople who have succeeded because they are good account managers and have been able to get some growth from the accounts they inherited.
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Misleading Sales Numbers Part 2
- June 15, 2007
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Big numbers don’t impress me. How come the salesperson who always reports 40 dials, 10 conversations and 3 appointments never seems to have any meetings and never seems to be adding anything to the pipeline?
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What Do Sales Managers Do with Their Time?
- May 12, 2007
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
If you’ve been reading my Blog for a while you’ve probably learned that sales managers should be spending about 85% of their time on Accountability, Coaching, Motivation, Growth and Recruiting. We mined some of our never ending data to see what sales managers actually spend their time on.
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Myths About Top Performing Salespeople
- February 28, 2007
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Most companies have “them”. Most managers brag about “them”. Most of “them” toot their own horns. Most are their company’s role models. Most companies would love to have more like “them”. They masquerade as the top salespeople in their companies, a claim supported by data, spreadsheets, commission statements, awards and accolades. But who are they really?
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10 Reasons for HR and Sales Management to Hire Winning Salespeople Using Assessments
- December 15, 2006
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
There are two variables that have a huge impact on your success using an assessment in the hiring process. The first is which assessment you use. The second is where in the process you use it.
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Sales Force Accountability
- December 10, 2006
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
For those of you who are afraid to hold their salespeople accountable, let this lesson prove that the worst that can happen is already happening. In response to the likely, “What if it backfires?” question, how can it backfire any worse than most of your sales force making excuses and underperforming.
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Pfizer Reducing Size of Sales Force by 20%
- November 29, 2006
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Based on the data we have collected on salespeople from 32,000 companies, it would be fair to say that 20% of the salespeople in most companies can be eliminated without a loss of revenue. But the real key is in choosing the right 20% and most companies use the wrong information to make those decisions.
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Terminating Salespeople for Non Performance
- August 30, 2006
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
More than any other employees in the company, you can easily prove it when salespeople are underachievers.
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CRM – The Frontier Less Traveled
- July 24, 2006
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
CRM should be a no-brainer. That is, it should be highly evident, to even the most doubting of all Thomases, that being able to display the following information is not only helpful, but necessary.
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How to Eliminate the Effect of the 80/20 Rule on your Sales Force
- June 29, 2006
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
When I shared this with Jeff, he told me how consistent that is with his statistics about bell curves in general. He told me that in most cases, bell curves do not reflect reality. Wow, our statistics line up with Angus’ Law of Distribution!