Search Results
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A Properly Constructed Sales Process Can Help You Experience the Euphoria of a Walk-Off Win
- June 15, 2021
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
The walk-off win in baseball, the buzzer beater in basketball and the field goal with no time on the clock in football are all terrific metaphors for certain types of wins in sales. Some deals are sure things from the get go and others stand no chance of going your way. However, some huge opportunities are truly nail-biters and could go either way. When those opportunities are finally decided and you win, they too are euphoric.
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Self Directed Courses
- June 3, 2021
- Posted by: Kurlan & Associates, Inc.
- Categories:
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How to Become More Successful One Day at a Time
- April 13, 2021
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
You can find inspiration anywhere. Even in a book called, A Year of Playing Catch. Tom Schaff was nice enough to send me a copy of this book and there was the inspiration, right there on page 128. Why would someone from the world of sales care about a page out of a baseball book? I’ll give you fourteen really good reasons. You see, the book is much less about baseball and much more about the following fourteen integral competencies of sales success:
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How Pitchers Fielding Practice is Exactly the Same as Salespeople Role-Playing
- February 26, 2021
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
My Twitter feed had the funniest 1-minute baseball video I have ever seen. It was pitcher fielding practice (PFP) and the coach was miked up. It illustrated just how bad most professional major league pitchers are at fielding their position and how a coach can keep it light – even make it funny – when the pitchers are struggling so badly.
When professional salespeople are asked to role-play the salesperson’s part of a sales conversation they sound eve
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The Baseball Experience That Continues to Generate a 28% Increases in Sales
- February 10, 2021
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
The challenge isn’t whether or not they’ll enjoy and benefit greatly from the training. The challenge is getting sales leaders to attend the training! There’s a little matter of ego. Most successful sales leaders have fairly large egos and while their egos helped spur them on to their current roles, now that they’re in their current roles, their egos sometimes obstruct their ability to improve, ask for help, and bring professional training into their companies. The voice in their head whispers thoughts like:
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Data – Top Salespeople are 631% More Effective at This Than Weak Salespeople (The Bob Chronicles – Part 3)
- January 26, 2021
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Bob is up to his old tricks. If you don’t know who Bob is, you can learn about his sales misadventures in this article on not properly selling a trial, and this article about not selling value. Both articles are of the must-read variety.
So what did Bob do to piss me off this week?
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New Movie Has 3 Great Lessons for Salespeople and Sales Managers
- January 18, 2021
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Among all the product shortages we have experienced in the past ten months, there has been no shortage of crappy movies. It’s almost like the movie studios decided to release all the movies filmed in the past several years that weren’t ready for prime time and hope that people would stream them at home during the pandemic because we had watched everything else.
One exception to the crappiness of 2020 movies is The Trial of the Chicago 7. This article is not a review of the movie but it was a terrific film and worth the time to watch it. As good as this movie is, it comes with a bonus because it also provides three exceptional lessons for salespeople and sales managers. Let’s take a look!
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Are Sales Managers Coaching More Frequently Now That Everyone is at Their Desks?
- January 14, 2021
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
We know how sales managers were doing before the pandemic. It wasn’t very good and I wrote about it in November which had data for the last 10 years. What do you think would be different if I filtered the data to show only the last six months of 2020, the time during which sales managers should have already made changes? Do you think it got better, worse, or stayed the same?
Let’s find out.
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3 Selling Characteristics for the Age of Covid, Politics and Recession
- September 8, 2020
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Thanks to the non-stop political news cycle, I went from averaging just over one article that mentioned politics per year to two!
This article will be different. For the first time in fourteen years of blogging, I am going to share what I think, uncensored, and despite some concern for what you think, not quite enough concern to stop me from writing about it. There will still be a sales tie-in so stay with me as I build the case for 3 powerful sales characteristics.
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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.