Search Results
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Coaches Benefit from Tryouts, Sales Managers Fail Using Gut Instinct
- April 27, 2023
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Sports teams hold tryouts which serve as auditions. Coaches know what to look for. Sales Managers use resumes, interviews, and hire on gut instinct.
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The Philosophy of the Red Sox and Gallop Will Lead to Increased Revenue
- March 30, 2023
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Leadership believed they were very good at doing these things. However, everything is relative. The key question is, good compared to who?
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Derek Baer, Vice President, Corporate Training
- March 23, 2023
- Posted by: Kurlan & Associates, Inc.
- Categories:
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The Difference Between Sales Competencies, Sales Capabilities and Sales Outcomes
- February 14, 2023
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
If you watched Super Bowl 57, you observed two teams that simply refused to give up or give in. Sometimes, that’s the feeling I get when I’m writing articles and I have solid data on my side, while dozens of competing authors just won’t stop their constant barrage of articles using junk science, anecdotal evidence, and alternate facts.
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This Company’s Best Salesperson was 2500% Stronger Than Their Worst
- February 1, 2023
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
It’s been four months since the baseball season ended but college baseball begins in less than 4 weeks and it will be fun to watch our son play for his college team (while freezing our asses off!). It’s also been a while since the last time I shared a top/bottom analysis but I completed one this week that I had to share.
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“Spirited” Has So Much in Common with Most Salespeople
- November 29, 2022
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Only 13% of all salespeople take a consultative approach to selling and almost none of them can be found in the bottom 50% – the group that fails to meet quota each year. A coincidence? On the other end of the spectrum, the top 10% of all salespeople are 4300% more likely to have the Consultative Seller competency as a strength!
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New Data: Will Salespeople Hit Quota When Sales Managers Coach and Sell?
- November 7, 2022
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Instead of spending their time on coaching, sales managers are spending too much of their time on personal sales. Sales managers with fewer than 5 salespeople may be required to carry a quota but generally speaking, sales managers are expected to spend no more than 5% of their time selling. OMG’s data shows that the percentage of time that sales managers sell is closer to 13%.
Why do they sell instead of having more coaching conversations? There are several reasons:
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New Data: Is Sales Compensation Aligned With Changing Motivational Needs?
- October 31, 2022
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
When interviewing sales and sales leadership candidates, similar counter-intuitive discussions occur. Many candidates claim that money isn’t that important because they love sales – until they claim that the base salary isn’t high enough. For others, even though they may not disclose it, the base salary is completely irrelevant as long as the company won’t cap the salesperson’s total earnings. We need to decode the topic of compensation so that we can be sure that both the base salary and the total on-plan earnings are acceptable to candidates.
It is very important to make sense of the hidden and unpredictable compensation responses because many salespeople leave the company after a short time because they don’t believe earnings are equivalent to the compensation that was promised.
It is crucial to understand that salespeople are motivated primarily by one of two motivational styles and unless you wish to hire only one type of salesperson, there must be two compensation plans that should be tailored accordingly. Let’s discuss this.
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How Closing a Tough Sale is Nearly Identical to Hitting a Home Run
- August 25, 2022
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
You’re watching a baseball game on television and the announcer says, “And here’s the pitch and there’s a long drive hit deep to left field and it’s deep, it’s up, it’s way back and GONE!!!!! Home Run Dave Kurlan!” OK, the announcer never said the Dave Kurlan part. Not even close. I was a singles hitter. And I never played at a level that had announcers. So there’s that. For entertainment sake, watch this classic 2-minute clip of Robert Redford as Roy Hobbs hitting the magical home run at the end of the movie, The Natural, one of my all-time favorite baseball movies right up there with The Sandlot and Field of Dreams.
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Which is Worse – The Boston Red Sox or Your Sales Team?
- August 23, 2022
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
The construction of the Red Sox roster is simply a Stupid as Shit Strategy or SaSS. Use of the word strategy means that it’s intentional and is a disservice to the word stupid!
Sales team construction usually lacks formal strategy and that suggests something accidental is at play. We tend to see the “we already had these salespeople” and then “these are the new salespeople who were willing to work for us.” New is a relative term as the newest 30% of the team continues to churn when and if they find candidates.