Search Results
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Is BANT a Sales Process or a Man-Made Disaster?
- January 15, 2025
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Last week, I noticed that people are still using this archaic and overly simplistic sales qualifying process, and too many are still writing about the benefits of BANT (Acronym for Budget, Authority, Need, Timing). The first page of a Google search revealed 10 articles were written about BANT in 2024 alone.
How is it that in 2024, people are still hailing BANT as a relevant sales tool?
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The Nutcracker and 3 Sales Competencies That Cause Low Win Rates
- December 6, 2024
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
During a first sales call, suppose your salespeople hear one prospect say, “This has been a very interesting and productive conversation and we might have some interest in this.” And imagine another prospect at the same meeting says, “We’ll get back to you next month and let you know what kind of progress we’ve made.” And still a third might say, “In the meantime, please send us a proposal with references and timeline.”
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Three Dog Night Classic is Foundation for Present Day Selling
- November 26, 2024
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
If you start with the having fun part you can’t go wrong. Most selling is WAY too serious, way too dependent on bullet points from slides, talking points from company narratives, and the oh, so boring vomiting of company and product information. Where’s the fun in all of that? And if you don’t bring the fun, who wants to spend any time with you? Differentiate!
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Getting Salespeople to Prospect When They Aren’t Prospecting
- November 15, 2024
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
While some growth can be expected to come from effective account management, the kind of growth desired by most companies comes from consistently finding and closing new accounts. While companies love their inbound lead-generation programs, and those programs do generate leads, the quality of the leads, and the quality of the meetings booked by those young and inexperienced top-of-funnel kids, leaves much to be desired.
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How I Learned I am a Sales Consulting Imposter
- November 11, 2024
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
I didn’t like this candidate. He was way too cocky and aggressive, he wasn’t prepared, and he didn’t like all of my questions. I ended the call after about a minute and a half because I already knew he wasn’t going to proceed in the process. I told him that if he didn’t hear back from me by the end of business on the following day, then he didn’t make it to the next round (an interview with me).
Considering the findings on his OMG assessment, imagine what could happen if he felt rejected from the way I ended the call, and when he didn’t get the follow up call the next day. Consider how his lack of patience, along with not being a relationship builder and not needing to be liked, could manifest.
Did you imagine what could happen?
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Magazine Discredits Their “Born to Sell” Article with Junk Science
- October 25, 2024
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
They identified five areas where those with genetic traits outperform others. They claim that those are:
Tailor Your Approach
Conduct a Sales Debrief
Refine Your Skills Through Practice and Experimentation
Use Data Analytics to Inform Your Decision Making
Invest in Ongoing Training and MentorshipOther than number 2 (of course we’re singling out #2 in an article that’s full of crap!), the other four are not sales or marketing specific but are simply common-sense goals for anyone interested in self-improvement.
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Cold Reach Outs: Do Email and LinkedIn Work?
- October 6, 2024
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Most marketing workflows and the messages created for those workflows absolutely suck! As a result, most of the cold messages that come through your email and LinkedIn messages are quickly and deliberately deleted. But there’s hope for something better.
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Could Lost Deals Correlate with Sales Success?
- September 20, 2024
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
I love looking for correlations and causation and we use causation to build predictive sales scorecards. Nobody closes 100% of their closable opportunities but with a properly constructed scorecard, you’ll know the opportunities on which to devote your resources, and which opportunities would be best to lose as fast as you can.
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Baby Fish and New Salespeople Experience the Same Fate
- August 1, 2024
- Posted by: Kurlan & Associates, Inc.
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
If your turnover is less than 10% you have a turnover problem – not enough turnover! If your turnover is between 10-20% you’re good. If it’s greater than 20% it’s worth exploring what is contributing to your high turnover rate and how to fix it. Sometimes it’s because you are hiring the wrong salespeople. Sometimes it’s lack of effective onboarding, lack of effective sales training, lack of coaching, lack of accountability, or lack of leadership.
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How Practice Can Increase Sales and Commissions by 33%
- July 9, 2024
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Categories: Uncategorized, Understanding the Sales Force
According to data from more than 2.5 million salespeople assessed by Objective Management Group (OMG), only 72% of all salespeople are committed to their sales success and if we look at the largest population – the weakest 50% – only a little more than half of that group are committed. Why would they practice?