Search Results
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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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Has Buying Changed and Has B2B Selling Adapted?
- January 5, 2022
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Today’s buyers are self-educated and salespeople mistake that knowledge for readiness. Salespeople tend to take the path of least resistance and the knowledge they mistake for readiness lulls them into the quote, proposal and order taking mode. As a result, they don’t follow their company’s sales process or worse, the company’s sales process has been modified to reflect buyers being ready. If the buyers were truly ready at this point they would actually buy but the additional options prolong instead of shorten the sales process.
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Most Salespeople are Underdogs Like the Boston Red Sox
- October 13, 2021
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
If your company is not the brand leader, market leader, or price leader; if you have a complex sale, a story to tell, a new technology, a new brand, a new product, a much higher price or a much tougher sale, then you are an underdog too.
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Follow This Advice to Schedule More Meetings and Spend Less Time Doing It
- August 25, 2021
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Regular readers know that I’m all about the data and I have written nearly two thousand articles based on data from Objective Management Group’s (OMG) assessments of more than two million salespeople. Occasionally however, I see data where incorrect conclusions have been reached and like the toad on the window, my conclusions run counter to theirs. One such example is a beautiful infographic from sales playbook company Xant. I am going to share some of their data, graphics and conclusions and I’ll provide my counter argument to their conclusions.
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A Home Run – How the Right Data Can Help You Hire Your Ideal Salespeople
- July 13, 2021
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
From time to time I’ve posted some compelling top/bottom sales team analyses using sales assessment data from Objective Management Group (OMG). From nearly 250 data points in 21 Sales Core Competencies, we identify the specific findings and scores that differentiate a company’s top 3 performers from their bottom 3 non-performers.
There are several reasons for doing this:
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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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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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Two Selling Strategies That are More Effective Than Facts and Figures
- January 29, 2021
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Most of my articles begin with a Story and despite not writing about story telling very often, it is a very important part of selling.