Search Results

  • How Many of Your Salespeople are Addicted to This?

    • December 14, 2011
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    Do your salespeople have a hopium addiction?

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  • Sales Pipeline – Reality vs. What Your Salespeople Know and Think

    • November 28, 2011
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    What your salespeople think or believe – not a data point.  

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  • How to Prevent Crashing and Burning in a Sales Presentation

    • July 19, 2011
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    So the increasingly difficult challenge for salespeople, even if they recognize it (and most don’t), is this: When they are invited in to present capabilities, they must compare it to driving into a dead-end alley.  They must shift gears into reverse because if they push forward they will crash, burn, blow-up and die.  

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  • Top 8 Reasons Your Biggest Sale May Not be Your Best Sale

    • July 12, 2011
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    Sometimes your biggest sale isn’t your best sale.  When biggest isn’t best, sometimes it is because:

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  • Get Your Veteran Salespeople to Take Baby Steps

    • May 12, 2011
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    You cannot script these questions.  Your salespeople must be able to identify the questioning opportunities in real time while their prospects are responding to the question currently in play.  This requires VERY focused listening, note taking, and patience.  And the biggest challenge?  Your salespeople must avoid the temptation to jump to a different question topic, jump to presentation, or jump in with a solution!

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  • Top 10 Ways to Accelerate the Sales Process – The Need for Speed

    • January 28, 2011
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    You’ve heard the expression “Speed Kills”.

    All four scenarios lead to lousy sales outcomes.  The surest way to create urgency, accelerate the sales process, eliminate the competition, get the prospect to self-qualify and spend more money on your solution, is to A B A N D O N the need for speed.  You can do that by:

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  • Top 20 Requirements – How Salespeople Can be Better at Closing

    • June 10, 2010
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    If you were to ask most executives for one thing that they would like their sales force to do better, you would likely get one of two answers:

    Close
    Prospect 

    Nothing wrong with those two choices – or is there? 

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  • What Sales Leaders Don’t Know About Ego and Empathy

    • May 12, 2010
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    In the past week, three people had discussions with me about recruiting salespeople and suggested that the difference between successful and unsuccessful salespeople is that effective salespeople have empathy and ego.

    These people probably use personality and behavioral styles assessments too.  Those assessments, always poorly adapted for sales, feature empathy and ego.  There are three things you must know when it comes to salespeople and their empathy and ego.

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  • Sales Coaching – Are Sales Managers Any Good at This Function?

    • March 10, 2010
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    I’ve written extensively about sales coaching before. Yesterday, a fairly typical day, I coached 4 different sales experts and 2 clients on how to more effectively coach salespeople and sales managers.  I have noticed that most sales managers believe that they’re fairly good at coaching when, in reality, most of them are very ineffective at it.  Why?

    First, let’s look at what’s required for effective coaching. Some of it is tangible and measurable while some isn’t. Effective Sales Coaching requires:

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  • Top 10 Rules for Getting Salespeople to Follow Your Sales Process

    • March 8, 2010
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    A lady approached the priest after the service and felt terrible because she had been leaving early to tend to her sick husband.  The priest said that this didn’t apply to her; she was already making a sacrifice by attending, and should care for her husband.  She paused and finally said, “But he passed away three years ago!”

    This story got me wondering about the widespread misuse of the sales process. 

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