Search Results

  • 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.

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  • 2021 Challenge:  Put a Little Beatles Into Your Selling!

    • January 4, 2021
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    The only thing that would make the Beatles different today is technology.  The sound quality would be SO much better.  It wouldn’t change their songs but the songs would sound better.  It wouldn’t eliminate the work they did to write the songs but they would get the songs transcribed and notated more quickly.  They would still have to record their music but the recording would be digital which would make mixing much easier.

    Isn’t this all pretty much the same as sales?  Let’s take a run-through.

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  • The Problem With Having Crappy Sales Managers

    • November 11, 2020
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    Sales Managers underperform at a mind boggling level.  Let me show you the degree to which most sales managers are unqualified.

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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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  • 15 Things Salespeople Must Do to Make up for a Lackluster 2nd Quarter

    • August 12, 2020
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    Last week we moved our son into his dorm to begin his freshman year of college. The college President’s opening remarks were virtual, so we joined the Zoom stream from our hotel room and listened in.  He had some really useful things to share with the new freshmen and while his thoughts were targeted to the students, they apply quite equally to salespeople.

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