Search Results

  • 62% Less Turnover and 80% Higher Quota Attainment When You Hire Salespeople the Right Way

    • February 3, 2022
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    If you have a sales cycle of several months or more, subsidize your salespeople until they are self-sufficient, and in early 2022 it takes 3 months to find a suitable candidate, you are screwed before you start!  Once you finally identify a decent candidate, you have hours, not days or weeks, to make a decision and pull the trigger and what’s the worst that can happen?  Six months or more pass before you realize that salesperson won’t make it and you not only wasted a half year’s salary, you lost six months, have an empty territory or vertical, and have to start over from the beginning!

    It doesn’t have to be that way and here’s why.

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  • Can You Find The Perfect Sales Candidates for Your Sales Team?

    • December 1, 2021
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

     I am helping one company find a single needle-in-a-haystack sales leadership candidate and it has taken nearly six months.  I am helping another company find 3 sales leaders and received 3,765 applications.  What’s the difference?

    For the answer to be meaningful, we have to look at the entire job market, not just sales candidates.

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  • Data: The Top 10% of All Salespeople are 4200% Better at This

    • September 7, 2021
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    My wife and I entered the small jewelry shop and were greeted – not with a warm welcome – but with a matter of fact “my name is…and I’m the owner…and I created everything in the store” which was followed by fifteen minutes of non-stop presentation of everything she created.  

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  • How a Mug of Dunkin Can Help You More Effectively Sell Value

    • December 9, 2020
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    This is another Bob story. Bob was on a sales call and the prospect told him that they were looking for the lowest price.  I hope you hate it when that happens.  It’s a bad thing because while Bob was supposed to be selling value, a price-based conversation is transactional yet he’s supposed to be taking a consultative approach to support the value he provides.  Would you like to guess what Bob did instead?  Yup, he got them his best price.  Ugh!

    So what should Bob have done instead to turn this around and not waste everyone’s time?

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  • New Data Shows an Overlooked Finding Correlates to Sales Effectiveness

    • October 15, 2020
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    Compatibility is not only important, it could be one of the most overlooked criteria in hiring sales candidates.  Let’s do a deep dive! 

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  • Top 10 Reasons Not to Test Your Sales Candidates

    • October 5, 2020
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    Testing is not only normal, it’s expected.

    So why in the world is it so difficult to get Sales Leaders and HR professionals to test sales candidates?

    We hear everything, including this week’s top 10 reasons for not assessing:

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  • Masks and Sales Assessments – You Lose a Little Freedom and Control for Safety and Confidence

    • September 18, 2020
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    The same thing happens when clients use Objective Management Group’s (OMG) accurate and predictive sales candidate assessments.  They lose a little freedom because they no longer arbitrarily interview salespeople who they feel like interviewing, and refrain from simply offering positions to people because they have a gut feeling about a candidate.   However, they lose some control because one half to two-thirds of the candidates will not be recommended when they aren’t great fits for the particular sales role for which the company is hiring, or simply aren’t very good salespeople – period.

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  • Why it is so Difficult to Compare Sales Effectiveness from One Salesperson to Another

    • July 15, 2020
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    Today we’ll discuss how to measure sales effectiveness of different salespeople despite there being so many variables to confuse the matter.  You can scroll directly to that topic or, if you don’t mind, please read my 3 paragraphs of context.

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  • One Thing Your Company Must Do Right Now to Increase Sales

    • May 13, 2020
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    For example, since the 30 million who temporarily lost their jobs are receiving unemployment at more than 100% of what they were earning before, they aren’t facing the hardship the media would lead you to believe and the money is there for a reboot when it comes.  But the really good news is for companies that are able to hire salespeople.  Consider this!

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  • What is the Sales Stack and Do You Need it?

    • October 2, 2019
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    You bought a really nice, new, laptop computer and you thought to yourself, “Now I’m all set!”  But are you?  You needed a case to carry it around, a thumb drive for quickly moving files from your laptop to another, and a printer and if you have a Mac notebook, a port that will serve as adapters to your various cables.  These are your accessories.

    You’ll also need cloud storage, a broadband connection, email, a browser and 20 or so software applications so your computer can help you do the things you purchased it to do.  This is your technology stack.

    But now there is a sales stack too.  What is the sales stack, and should you have one for your salespeople?

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