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 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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Grow Revenue During a Recession by Being Counter-Intuitive
- May 10, 2023
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
We know what doesn’t work in a recession.
The economic crisis of 2008-9, and the Covid lockdowns of 2020-2021 showed us that when companies focus on cost-cutting instead of growing revenue, revenue declines – sharply. Who would have guessed that smart people wouldn’t see that coming?
You know what to do when dry weather conditions aren’t favorable for growing trees, flowers, and shrubs. You don’t pull the plants out of the ground or let them succumb to the dry conditions. You add water. It’s a very simple concept.
Can companies add water to grow revenue when the economic conditions are evaporating? Yes, but it’s counter-intuitive.
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The Challenger Style and its Impact on Sales Selection
- March 1, 2023
- Posted by: Kurlan & Associates, Inc.
- Categories:
This White Paper responds to this article, which appeared on the Harvard Business Review Blog. The HBR article introduced a new selling style called the Challenger.
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Home
- January 18, 2023
- Posted by: Kurlan & Associates, Inc.
- Categories:
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Can a New Sales Manager Be a Difference Maker?
- November 9, 2022
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
I speak with so many sales leaders who tell me about the four sales managers they went through in the last two years. I speak with CEOs who tell me about the three sales VPs they went through in the last eighteen months.
There is tremendous pressure to fill these roles because your team’s performance will suffer without someone at the helm. Or is that misinformation? How much worse could a team perform than how they perform under a sucky sales manager?
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New Data: Is Sales Compensation Aligned With Changing Motivational Needs?
- October 31, 2022
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
When interviewing sales and sales leadership candidates, similar counter-intuitive discussions occur. Many candidates claim that money isn’t that important because they love sales – until they claim that the base salary isn’t high enough. For others, even though they may not disclose it, the base salary is completely irrelevant as long as the company won’t cap the salesperson’s total earnings. We need to decode the topic of compensation so that we can be sure that both the base salary and the total on-plan earnings are acceptable to candidates.
It is very important to make sense of the hidden and unpredictable compensation responses because many salespeople leave the company after a short time because they don’t believe earnings are equivalent to the compensation that was promised.
It is crucial to understand that salespeople are motivated primarily by one of two motivational styles and unless you wish to hire only one type of salesperson, there must be two compensation plans that should be tailored accordingly. Let’s discuss this.
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Found: A Great Article About How Important Salespeople Are
- September 7, 2022
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Yesterday, although I wasn’t looking for it, I found my laptop charger that I misplaced a few weeks ago. Today, I found a shirt I wasn’t looking for. It was purchased in May, but I had forgotten about it. Later today, a post appeared in my LinkedIn feed and although I wasn’t looking for an article by a physician, I read it and am so glad I did.
Would you like to know what I loved about that article? I’ll share, but first, consider that…
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Understanding Competency Based Assessments – What Ditch Diggers and Salespeople Have in Common!
- June 24, 2022
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
As an example, let’s say you were seeking to hire a ditch digger. While you must identify someone who is strong, can use tools and dig holes, the width and depth of the hole, as well as the difficulty of the digging is more important. Will this individual dig in sand, screened loom, compacted soil, clay, gravel, or rock? If an assessment, even one that was specific to ditch-digging, only looked at the tools they had available and their ability to dig in general, it would not necessarily identify someone who could dig monumentally huge holes in soil with large rocks.
It’s the same with a sales assessment.
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Top 12 Sales Blogs of 2022 That Make You Think and Sell More
- May 20, 2022
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
The most common criteria is personal choice as in “These are my favorite Sales Blogs!” And that’s OK as long as readers know they are your favorites and as such, won’t necessarily have the best content.