Search Results

  • Data Shows 1st Year Sales Improvement of 51% in this Competency

    • September 18, 2018
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    I looked at the before and after scores for eight of the 21 Sales Core Competencies as well as the Reaches Decision Makers, Account Manager and Farmer competencies for a total of 11.  See the table below:

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  • New Data Shows Sales Weaknesses Cause Powerful Chain Reactions in Salespeople

    • May 30, 2018
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    I have written extensively about Sales DNA over the years and today we will view Sales DNA from the perspective of sitting inside of a chemistry lab.

    Sales DNA is the combination of strengths (or weaknesses) that support (or sabotage) the execution of sales process, sales strategy and sales tactics.  Objective Management Group (OMG) measures and includes the 6 most powerful of those strands of Sales DNA in its 21 Sales Core Competencies.  While I usually discuss the impact of these weaknesses, we have never conducted a lab experiment like this before! 

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  • Persistence Over Polish – What the Top 10% of All Salespeople Do Better

    • March 12, 2018
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    The best athletes in the world know exactly how they do the things they do that make them so great.  In addition to their God-given talent, they outworked everyone else to master the mechanics and nuances of their sport, the mindset required for greatness, and competed at a high level from a very young age.  When they falter they can easily make the adjustments necessary to get back on track.

    Interestingly, most top salespeople don’t know what it is that they do that makes them so successful! That’s surprise #1.  If you look through the data on the 2,.3 million salespeople that Objective Management Group (OMG) has assessed, you will see that the top 10% of all salespeople have better average scores than their colleagues in each of the 21 Sales Core Competencies.  Their average scores are listed below for 5 Sales Core Competencies in which they have the best scores.  They are:

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  • Why You Should Care That Sales Motivation Data Correlates Perfectly With Sales Effectiveness

    • September 13, 2017
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    I reviewed the data and in the table below you’ll see that extrinsic motivation is most prevalent in the top group of salespeople while altruistic motivation is most prevalent in the lowest group of salespeople.

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  • How Your Salespeople Measure Up in the 21 Most Crucial Sales Competencies for Modern Selling

    • April 4, 2017
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    This is really about sales professionals who place more faith in the traits that are consistent with their beliefs, fearing that their actual capabilities won’t match up with the science.  People want to see themselves in the most popular, positive way.  They don’t want to discover that they might be lacking in 10 of the 21 Sales Core Competencies or have gaps in all 21.

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  • 21,000 People Agree That These are the Top 5 Traits of the Best Salespeople

    • February 24, 2017
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    Readers are always referring me to articles that list top sales traits, that discuss what makes salespeople great, that name the most important selling skills, or that otherwise contradict the science-based findings and statistics that I share in my articles.

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  • Those Who Follow Sales Best Practices Don’t Necessarily Become Top Performers

    • June 24, 2016
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    You’ll regularly find me writing about the science – the data – that differentiates top sales performers from the bottom.  But today, I’ll move into the world from which everyone else in this space operates – anecdotal evidence and opinions. 

    I will cite two sources for this article:

    The 130 sales consulting firms that partner with me at Objective Management Group (OMG) and provide our award-winning sales force evaluations and sales candidate assessments;
    The tens of thousands of salespeople, sales managers and sales leaders that I have personally trained.

    In both groups of people I have noticed a few things that are common to the tops and not so much the bottoms and I’m certain that if you paid attention, you would recognize some of the same patterns in your organization.

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  • Are These the Best Roles for Shy People in Sales?

    • May 12, 2016
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force
    shy

    I received an email inviting me to review and share an infographic on shy people in sales.  Being an introvert myself, I thought it would be interesting to check it out and see if it resonated.  When I finally got around to reading it, I was surprised by several things I read…and I’m sure you’ll be surprised too…

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  • Why Inbound and Inside Sales Experts Think Sales Process is Dead Too

    • August 18, 2015
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    I love and use some of their tools and services and recommend them to clients too. But the key word here is tools. They support and enhance selling. Tools don’t replace selling.

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  • More Junk Sales Science in HBR Blog

    • April 14, 2015
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    What do donuts, chips, cake and ice cream have in common with some of the articles that are written and published about salespeople, sales selection and assessments? That’s right, they are all junk and junk is bad for you to consume. Over the years, there has been no better source of junk science written about sales and salespeople than the reputable Harvard Business Review Blog. Recently, they put out another absurdly awful piece, this one written by sales consultant, Steve Martin. As most of these articles do, “What Separates the Strongest Salespeople from the Weakest” attempts to use personality and conditions to differentiate the two groups. This comes on the heels of another horrible article I called out in March 2015, which led to this amazing epic debate on the science of sales, sales assessments, and sales selection. This is why this latest HBR article is yet another example of junk science.

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