Search Results
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The Science Behind One Company’s Top Sales Performers and Why They’re So Much Better
- January 16, 2020
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
There are comparisons of apples to oranges, red or green, black or white, stop and go, and the most relevant and current of all, liberals to conservatives.
In today’s article, I’ll share a hot/cold comparison of my own, but this one is about sales candidates. Back on January 9, my article about why 3 good salespeople failed and 3 so-so candidates succeeded, used the results of a top/bottom analysis to identify the reasons why.
Those results were unusual because many of the differentiators came from outside the 21 Sales Core Competencies. What does it look like when the differentiators come from within the 21 Sales Core Competencies? Take a look at this top/bottom analysis and you’ll quickly see the difference!
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How to Raise the Incomes of Minimum Wage Workers Without Wealth Distribution or Socialism
- June 5, 2019
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Minimum wage employees are forced into those low paying jobs and the wealthiest Americans are to blame. Why can’t low hourly wage workers seek and earn better paying jobs? Is it lack of skills? Lack of motivation? Lack of commitment? Lack of education? Lack of opportunity? Lack of training?
Why not sales? Selling is a profession that employs 16 million in the US alone and for most sales jobs, especially with today’s lack of candidates, there is a laundry list of qualifications that are NOT required:
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The New Salesenomics
- May 24, 2019
- Posted by: Kurlan & Associates, Inc.
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
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The Wrong Salespeople are Hired 77% of the Time
- November 13, 2018
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
94% of sales managers are optimistic about their salespeople. That’s a very surprising statistic for a couple of reasons:
50% or more of their salespeople won’t hit their quotas this year and haven’t since at least 2008.
Objective Management Group’s (OMG’s) findings from the evaluations and assessments of salespeople show that 50% of all salespeople are weak.Sales managers believe that 50% of their salespeople are good and 44% of their salespeople have potential. Of course, they are using subjective, rather than objective approaches to measuring what “good” is.
How do you measure good?
Salespeople consistently meet or exceed quota or expectations
You like your salespeople, they work hard, don’t give you any trouble, are positive, don’t miss quota by too much, sometimes bring in good customers, are advocates of the company and brand, and are good influences, etc.Unfortunately, a lot of sales managers choose the second option.
Why? Many sales managers aren’t very good at what they do! Only 10% of all sales managers are effective at both coaching and coaching consistently and when it comes to holding salespeople accountable, they aren’t much better. Review the table below:
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Golden Nuggets from the CSO Insights 2018 Sales Talent Study
- October 25, 2018
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
I had a chance to review the CSO Insights 2018 Sales Talent Study and extracted some fascinating data. I thought it might be interesting to take their data, overlay some of Objective Management Group’s (OMG) data, and see what we can take away from that.
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New Data Shows How Relationships and the Need to be Liked Impact Sales Performance
- June 4, 2018
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
In my most recent article, I shared data that showed a chain reaction would occur when salespeople have more than one major weakness in their Sales DNA and the second major weakness is their tendency to become emotional. As a trigger, the first major weakness causes the salesperson to become emotional, at which time their listening skills become compromised.
That article can be found here and as of this writing nearly 6 dozen LinkedIn subscribers have contributed some very insightful comments here. Their comments inspired me to dig even further and look into the correlation between relationship building that salespeople do and their need to be liked. In this study, even I was surprised by what I found!
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Selling Power Features Kurlan & Associates, Inc. on 2018 Top 20 Sales Training Companies List
- May 14, 2018
- Posted by: Kurlan & Associates, Inc.
- Category: News
Westborough/May 14, 2018 — Today, Kurlan & Associates, Inc. announced it has been included on Selling Power’s 2018 list of the Top 20 Sales Training Companies that excel in helping sales leaders improve the performance of their sales teams. The list appears in the May 2018 issue of Selling Power magazine, which will be available to subscribers on May 9th.
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New Data Reveals Why Veteran Salespeople Are Not Better Than New Salespeople
- April 17, 2018
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
I mined Objective Management Group (OMG) data and compared salespeople who have been with their company for 10 years or more, with salespeople who have been with their company for five years or less. Theoretically, the veteran salespeople should be better and stronger in every way. But are they? Let’s take a look and then let’s discuss exactly what we are seeing and why.
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What Happens When You Force a Square Sales Peg into a Round Sales Hole?
- March 2, 2018
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Can you imagine attaching a snow plow to a Lamborghini and hiring yourself out to clear parking lots? Back in April I wrote about our new puppy. Now he’s 1-year old and has grown to 60 pounds, but could you imagine putting a saddle on him and selling rides on the beach? Could you imagine if the US arsenal of nuclear weapons consisted of putting 1,000’s of firecrackers into a plastic cylinder and then saying to North Korea, “try us!”
These are all examples of trying to put a square peg into a round hole – things you just don’t do. And that’s how I felt when I received an email asking how to deal with the following sales challenge.
The reader asked me to write an article explaining how to improve the sales effectiveness of their mostly altruistically motivated salespeople.
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14 Sales Topics That Readers Cared About Most in 2017
- December 14, 2017
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
