Search Results
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Discovered – Data Reveals the Biggest Obstacle to Closing More Sales
- April 30, 2018
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Humans have been waiting for thousands of years to discover the secrets of life. Why are we here? Why do bad things happen? What happens after we die? Is Heaven real? What is God’s plan for us?
While many experts have attempted to answer all of these questions, most of us lack proof. There’s no data. If we wake up tomorrow morning and suddenly there are not only answers to these questions, but science-based proof, that would be a game-changer for us.
Likewise, every day most companies try to determine why their salespeople don’t close more business, why so many opportunities die on the vine, and what they need to do differently to change their results. They try everything! Most leaders think it’s an issue of closing skills. It’s not. Others think it’s about prospecting. While that has an impact on the size and quality of the pipeline, it has little to do with results. But I have discovered the cause, will show you the data, and discuss how to fix it.
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Sales Success is Like Making Great Tasting Soup
- November 3, 2014
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Sales success is no more about any one competency than great-tasting soup is about one ingredient. If you omit one ingredient, like salt, the soup will taste bland. If you omit one competency, like Qualifying, your sales effectiveness will suffer. While you can’t leave one ingredient out of the soup, it’s also not possible to make soup by focusing on and including only one ingredient. Likewise, with sales, you can’t expect to succeed, dominate your market, and celebrate your results if you focus on and include only one of the competencies on my list.
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Your Salespeople Can’t Even Do That?
- February 3, 2010
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
The biggest concern is that the VP/Sales Manager should have known about and solved this problem the first week it was an issue – months ago – right after the salespeople began with the company.
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Sales – What the Data Tells Us – The Series
- August 14, 2008
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
This article series is called Sales – What the Data Tells Us. While some of the articles simply report the research and/or data, others share either my insights about the data or provide data to support my insights. Here are the articles:
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Steam Vent Hack That Salespeople Can Use on Stalled Opportunities
- August 23, 2024
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
The guide simply lit a cigarette, lowered it slightly into the vent, it reacted with the air and the steam, and significantly increased the output of steam. A super simple hack that instantly causes a performance improvement gets your attention!
Of course, that got me thinking about a simple hack that will significantly improve sales performance and I present one to you in this article.
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Sales Presentations to Big Companies – the Same as Political Theater
- September 22, 2023
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
What really happens on presentation day? Theater. Salespeople validate what the individuals on the committee already believe to be true. If you’re not the one getting the business, nothing you do on that day will change that UNLESS the one who is getting the business screws up big time.
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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 Science of Sales Effectiveness
- March 1, 2023
- Posted by: Kurlan & Associates, Inc.
- Categories:
The Modern Science Behind Sales Force Excellence provides insights, commentary and conclusions reached from our Sales Force Effectiveness Study, conducted during the latter part of 2014.
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Made Up Sales Statistics and Their Contrast to Real Data
- February 2, 2023
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
A sales consultant who knows that I geek out on sales data read that 84% of salespeople suck because they don’t enjoy what they do. A huge percentage of salespeople do actually suck but the actual number is closer to 75%. Is it really because they don’t enjoy selling?
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The Wall Street Journal Shares News About What it Takes to Succeed in Sales
- November 14, 2022
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
I’m not anti-Wall Street Journal – at least I wasn’t. I haven’t written about their articles before. After all, they aren’t known for writing the kind of crap that the Harvard Business Review writes with regard to sales and selling.
While reviewing the article, I identified two themes – how much harder it is to sell today versus years ago and how millennials have adapted to changing times.