Search Results

  • “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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  • The Bob Chronicles – The Difference Between Selling Skills and Effectiveness

    • October 12, 2022
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    Today a client asked me to explain the difference between skills and effectiveness. You won’t find the answer by doing a Google search as that search turns up exactly nothing on the subject.  This article will discuss the similarity between symptoms/causes and skills/effectiveness. Do you remember Bob, the subject of many articles and my favorite weak salesperson to write about?

    Bob strikes again!

    I’ve written 10 articles about Bob and everyone says that the Bob series is their favorite.

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  • How to Hire the Right Salespeople Using This Jeep vs. Infiniti Analogy

    • October 7, 2022
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    Usually, the overall score, relative strength of a candidate’s capabilities, and recommendation are more important than any specific scores.  Usually.  But with the assessment of Mary, it was an entirely different story.  

    Let’s review the scores and findings from Mary’s OMG Sales Candidate Assessment. She had really good scores.  Really good. Her Sales Percentile was 82 so she was stronger than 82% of the salespeople in the world. So was OMG wrong?  Why did the company hire her?  Why did she fail?

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  • How Your Sales Team Can Double its Win Rate in a Recession

    • September 26, 2022
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    A client was having great success using OMG (Objective Management Group) to assess their sales candidates and they assumed the sales candidate assessment was the only thing OMG offered.  When they learned that our core offering is evaluating their existing sales team they became excited about what that would mean for addressing their two biggest selling challenges.  

    One of their issues was their 20% win rate was much lower than they thought it should be and they believed their salespeople needed some refresher training on closing.  They also had a large number of opportunities stalled in the pipeline and they believed that training on more effective techniques to conduct follow up calls would help.

    In this article, I thought it might help if I share a bit of what they learned about their sales team.

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  • 10 Sales Attributes That Don’t Differentiate Top Salespeople from Bottom Salespeople

    • September 12, 2022
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    I’ve written several articles (same as always) about OMG (Objective Management Group) Tailored Fits/Proofs of Concept where I analyze the differences between a company’s top producers and bottom producers to identify the findings/scores that differentiate their tops from their bottoms.  That is the science of sales performance and sales selection and the last time I wrote about it was in this article from February of 2022.  For comparison, the most recent example of a blowhard writing junk science without being scientific about what top salespeople do differently can be found in this article from August of 2022.

    Today’s article (new article) will go in the opposite direction and discuss strengths and skills that don’t differentiate tops from bottoms.  

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  • Must Read – How a 15% Corporate Minimum Tax Will Impact Companies and Sales Teams

    • August 10, 2022
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    The primary point of today’s article is to point out the irony of hiring 80,000 agents but you’ll have to read a bit of background before I can point out the irony.

    So why are they hiring 80,000 IRS agents?

    They want the rich to pay their fair share and that sounds fair, but let’s go beyond the headline and general talking point.  There are 724 billionaires in the US (of 2,775 worldwide) and it’s not that hard to find a millionaire because there are 20 million of them in the US (50 million worldwide).  If they target billionaires it would work out to 110 new agents per billionaire.  Sounds like overkill.  They also want to make sure that corporations pay their fair share so this legislation imposes a minimum 15% tax on corporations. 

    Let’s focus on the 15% tax for a moment. I can think of only three ways for corporations to deal with that surcharge:

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  • The Many Different Selling Roles and How They Differ – Part 1

    • July 27, 2022
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    The same kind of thinking is required when thinking about the various roles of salespeople.  We can name them: Account Executive, Territory Manager, Business Development Rep, Sales Development Rep, Account Manager, Key Account Manager, National Account Manager, Channel Manager, Application Engineer, Sales Consultant, Inside Sales, Outside Sales, and more.

    To further complicate things, in some companies and industries, Sales Managers function as salespeople and Sales VPs function as Sales Managers.

    While the above roles have selling as a primary responsibility, there are as many differences to selling roles as there are differences to the class or style of cars.  Today, we’ll explore the difference between an Account Executive and a Business Development Rep.

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  • 5 Steps to Grow Sales by 33% in 12 Months

    • May 11, 2022
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    Sales teams go through periods like this too but sales leaders rarely seek out the data that would immediately point to the real problem.  They tend to hope things will improve and go from there. However, there are several levels of data to be reviewed so let’s take a look.

    As the article title suggests, there are five steps you must take to grow sales by 33% in 12 months.  You can’t pick and choose as all five are required.

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  • The Philosophy of a Pitching Coach Will Improve Your Sales Team

    • April 4, 2022
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    I find ideas and material for this Blog everywhere, especially when I’m not looking for them. Yesterday I received a daily email from a Paul Reddick, a baseball coach who was drumming up some business for his baseball institute. It resonated – not for its baseball coaching – but as sales coaching.  Here’s what it said:

    If your coach is talking about any of the pitching flaws that you see listed above…

    Run… Run Fast!

    That Coach is working on “flaws” that will have no impact on your pitching.  He is working on symptoms… not the illness!  He is trying to fix things that are happening as a byproduct of incorrect movement early in your delivery. If you get the first second of your delivery right, almost all of these flaws get fixed instantly. 

    Do you know how this applies to sales? 

    I’ll explain exactly how it applies and I promise you will be surprised!  Click here to read last year’s fun article comparing pitcher’s fielding practice (PFP) to role-playing in sales.

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  • Bob Chronicles Part 6 – When Salespeople Suddenly Make Things Your Problem

    • January 20, 2022
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    Bob was informed 2 weeks ago that an important customer proposal would be due by the end of business today. At 4pm, Bob was in a panic, screaming that he needed pricing in the next 10 minutes or you’ll lose the business.  Suddenly it has become your problem.

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