Search Results

  • Can Sales Statistics be Bad and Good at the Same Time?

    • February 21, 2018
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    I received two pieces of bad news relative to statistics.  

    The first is about my award-winning Blog.  It seems that readers stay with an article for an average of only one-minute or so.  That means that most readers don’t finish the article, fail to get to my summary, and often don’t read long enough to get my point.  Basically, everything that comes after the fourth paragraph is not being read.  This could also be good news.  It could mean that I can actually write shorter articles and that would be great for me!

    The other piece of bad news relates to my award-winning sales training company, Kurlan & Associates.  I reviewed 5 years worth of statistics on opportunities that weren’t closed and it seems that prospects were 6 times more likely to do nothing than to do business with a competitor.  We don’t lose very often and I can count on two hands the number of opportunities I have personally lost in the past 5 years.  But it’s one thing to rarely lose, and another to learn that 6 times more often than not, a company failed to act.   But these statistics are very misleading. Let me explain why.

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  • 4 Reasons Why Salespeople Suck at Consultative Selling.

    • September 26, 2017
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    Yesterday, a sales manager I was coaching asked me to explain the difference between a great question and a tough question.  I gave him the one-minute version but this article has the expanded version of that answer.

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  • 9 Reasons Why Salespeople Lack the Urgency Necessary to Succeed

    • September 25, 2017
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    I coach a lot of sales leaders and their most common frustration is that they can’t understand why their salespeople don’t seem to have the same urgency as they did when they were selling.

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  • How Executives Fail to Understand the Reasons for Poor Sales and Revenue Performance

    • August 11, 2017
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    I can tell you that once in a blue moon, after we evaluate a sales force and present our findings, a rare CEO can become defensive and react poorly to the results.  When it happens, it’s usually a sign that the CEO is out of touch with the sales force.  I’ll share some of the things to which they sometimes react badly:

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  • What We Can Learn from the Latest Data on Sales Motivation

    • July 25, 2017
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    Sales Motivation is just one of the 21 Sales Core Competencies that we measure, but as with all of the competencies, we go very deep.

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  • New Analysis Shows the 5 Biggest Gaps Between Top and Bottom Sales Performers

    • May 1, 2017
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    It didn’t take very long for this to happen.  When Objective Management Group (OMG) announced that it was making its findings data available to the public, we knew that it wouldn’t take long for someone with a flair for analytics to dig in and come up with something cool.  Last week, John Cousineau, creator of Amacus, got me on a video conference and shared what he came up with.  Hint:  Another way to differentiate top performers.

    He

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  • The Future of Selling – Understanding This Crucial Sales Competency is More Important Than Ever

    • April 12, 2017
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    Sales Motivation is one competency where the changes have been dramatic over a very short period of time and today I want to share those changes, as well as how the changes impact salespeople, sales leaders and sales organizations.

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  • Veteran’s Great Quote Makes News and Has Terrific Lessons for the Sales Profession

    • February 21, 2017
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    I might not have nailed his quote word for word, but I’m sure I captured the gist of it. Just think of the sales lessons that can be taken from this!  The short video below is from the interview and below that I will share some lessons for the sales profession.

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  • 7 More Tips on How I Sell More and Get More Done Part 3

    • January 9, 2017
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    Part 1 and Part 2 were very popular and centered around productivity and technology, but not selling competencies.  This post presents Part 3, which although having a different perspective on selling more and getting more done,  stays away from selling-specific competencies like the other two entries.

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  • What it Takes to be an Elite (Top 7%) Salesperson

    • October 11, 2016
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    Last week I received a call from a young, motivated salesperson – we’ll call him Jim – who desperately wanted to be one of the elite 7% of all salespeople.  Despite being just 26 years old, he believed that he was already in the top 7%.  During our call, he asked me a great question.  He asked, “How many of the top 7% have you actually met and where are they today?”  I didn’t have to think very long or hard to answer that question because it was one of the easiest questions I have ever been asked.

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