Search Results

  • Is Your Sales Force More Like a Dunkin’, Starbucks or Panera Drive Thru?

    • January 21, 2020
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    This all begs the question, is the sales force at your company more like the Dunkin’, Starbucks, or Panera drive-thru?  Today’s article will explain how to answer that question.

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  • The Science Behind One Company’s Top Sales Performers and Why They’re So Much Better

    • January 16, 2020
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    There are comparisons of apples to oranges, red or green, black or white, stop and go, and the most relevant and current of all, liberals to conservatives.

    In today’s article, I’ll share a hot/cold comparison of my own, but this one is about sales candidates.  Back on January 9, my article about why 3 good salespeople failed and 3 so-so candidates succeeded, used the results of a top/bottom analysis to identify the reasons why.  

    Those results were unusual because many of  the differentiators came from outside the 21 Sales Core Competencies.  What does it look like when the differentiators come from within the 21 Sales Core Competencies?  Take a look at this top/bottom analysis and you’ll quickly see the difference!

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  • The Deal Breaker That Prevents you From Hiring a Great Salesperson

    • January 13, 2020
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    One of the questions we are often asked by HR Directors is, “Can people game the OMG assessment?”  Of course they can try, but we have a very effective algorithm that smokes out those who attempt to cheat.  It doesn’t happen very often that somebody attempts a big cheat but when it does, it’s almost magical in the way we uncover them.

    There is a very small percentage of salespeople who attempt an all out cheat.  This unethical group can usually be found in the category of weak salespeople – the bottom 50% – which explains why they think they need to cheat.  But what happens if a good salesperson attempts to game the system?  What would that look like?

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  • An Inside Look at Why 3 Good Salespeople Failed and 3 So-So Salespeople Succeeded

    • January 9, 2020
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    You hired a great salesperson that didn’t work out.  You hired a so-so salesperson that did work out.  You hired another great one that kicked ass, and another one that was so-so.  That’s the story of hiring salespeople.  It’s mostly hit or miss with an emphasis on miss.

    In this article I’m going to share an actual example that illustrates why this happens so frequently.  I’ll show you tangible differences between three salespeople who succeeded and three who failed in the same role at the same company.

    Most of the time when we perform these analyses the differences are usually seen inside of the 21 Sales Core Competencies – the performers are strong in the necessary competencies and the failures are not.

    So let’s dig into some data, shall we?

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  • The Most Successful Negotiation is The Negotiation That Isn’t Needed

    • December 9, 2019
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    This week, one company said that their terms are Net 75.  I said, “I’m sorry, but we can’t solve your problem and be your bank.  Our terms are due on receipt of invoice and it’s non-negotiable.” 

    They said, “Oh, OK.”

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  • How All Those Trucks on the Road Can Help You Stop Discounting

    • August 5, 2019
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    I have an awful lot to say about incentives to buy!
    The occurrences are as predictable as the 6pm news beginning exactly at 6pm.  If you have opportunities in the pipeline during the last week of the month, the last week of the quarter and the last two weeks of the year, and your prospects showed a strong likelihood of moving forward, they’ll be sitting back waiting for a call from a salesperson or sales manager to sweeten the pot so that you can get this deal in before the end of whenever.  How lame.  

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  • How to Transform Your Sales Pipeline Today

    • July 8, 2019
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    Flower gardens can be large, colorful, impressive and calming to look at.  Unfortunately, most sales pipelines are full of weeds, not large enough, and certainly not impressive.  From its evaluations and assessments of 1,875,978 salespeople, Objective Management Group (OMG) has found that only 46% of all salespeople maintain a full pipeline.  It breaks down as follows:

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  • Your Last Chance to Make a Good First Impression

    • June 14, 2019
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    Most salespeople don’t take first impressions seriously enough. If they did, their first impressions would be much more favorable.

    I can still remember my first (unintentional) lesson about first impressions.  My family was gathered at my grandfather’s house to watch the debut of the Beatles on The Ed Sullivan show.  It was February 9, 1964 and at 8 years old, I was one of seventy-three million people watching the show that night.  I was as excited about this show as I would be later that same year when I attended my first Red Sox baseball game at Fenway Park.  That is pretty excited! 

    Sitting on the carpet, I was completely focused on seeing and hearing The Beatles play five of their hit songs, but my mother was doing color commentary from the plastic covered sofa behind me.

    She said, “He’s cleaner than the other 3”, referring to Paul McCartney, who had straighter teeth, and a face more suitable for the mop top hair style shared by the four of them.

    There it was, my first lesson in judging people by how they looked, and more specifically, what “clean” did and did not look like.

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  • How to Know if You Are You Really Selling Consultatively

    • June 4, 2019
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    Most of the CEOs and sales leaders I speak with agree that their sales organizations need to be more effective at taking a consultative approach to selling. At the same time, they insist that they talk about it often and that their salespeople are doing OK with a consultative approach.  OMG’s Sales Force Evaluation usually reveals that they aren’t doing much more than talking about it, as their scores for the Consultative Seller competency are quite low.

    How can you determine if you or your team are being effective at using a consultative approach?  I created this list of outcomes that would be true if your consultative approach was working effectively.  You and/or your salespeople are :

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  • How Top Salespeople Anticipate and Manage Resistance

    • May 29, 2019
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    Last week Tom Hopkins shared a post on LinkedIn that resembled what I have said so many times.  He said, “The art of selling involves two jobs: Job One is to reduce sales resistance and the other is to increase sales acceptance.”

    Many readers left comments about the importance of relationships as a means to preventing resistance from going up.

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