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Winning and Retaining Business When There is Competition
- April 30, 2024
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
We were away for most of April, watching our son play his senior year of college baseball. When we left Massachusetts, the calendar said early April, the grass and gardens were still dormant and the weather felt like mid-January with some games played in 25-degree wind chills!
When we returned home three weeks later, we looked outside and saw life! Flowers were in bloom, the Bradford Pears and Crab Apple trees had blossoms, and the green grass had already been mowed a couple of times. Although we weren’t there, nature did its thing without us.
Pivot to sales.
It doesn’t matter whether salespeople are in account management or account executive roles. The sales equivalent of nature at work occurs at both target accounts and existing accounts. When salespeople aren’t physically present or on the phone with decision makers at the account, it is likely that one of their competitors is physically present or on the phone competing for the business or trying to take their business away. Just because a salesperson doesn’t see or hear about it, doesn’t mean it isn’t happening.
What can you do?
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250 Best Articles on Sales and Sales Leadership by Category
- April 4, 2024
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
These are the top 10 articles in 25 categories on sales, sales leadership, sales assessments, sales performance, sales excellence, sales process and more.
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Focus on Winning to Drive More Sales and Revenue
- February 20, 2024
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
In baseball, the coaching staff gets a report from their advanced scouts and from that report the coaches create a game plan. How to pitch to that hitter, how to get this hitter out, what to expect from this pitcher, what pitch he likes to throw when he’s ahead in the count, the strength and accuracy of the outfield arms, etc.
Some companies do some account planning for major accounts, but not nearly enough of this takes place.
What will happen to your business if you spend more time thinking about how to win, and less time focusing on your numbers?
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Trump, The Iowa Caucus, and Sales Improvement
- January 16, 2024
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
This course is the most fun you could ever have while going through sales training! But it is so much more than fun and entertainment. There are powerful selling lessons in each clip, and despite the fun, you will become more effective at all aspects of selling. It doesn’t matter how long you have been in sales, what you sell, who you sell it to, the length of your sales cycle or the cost of your product or service. Nor does it matter where your competency gaps are.
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The Top 10 Sales and Sales Leadership Articles of 2022
- December 12, 2022
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Criteria: Popularity (views) is nice but quality of content is nicer. Likes are cool but engagement is cooler. Entertainment value counts and my opinion matters because I’m judging the articles. In the end, I’m applying popularity, quality of the content, likes, entertainment, comments, engagement and my opinion to create this list of the top 10 articles.
Enjoy!
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The Top 10% of All Salespeople are 4,000% Better at this than the Bottom 10%
- March 3, 2022
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
I found Dinger with his nose glued to my front bumper where some of the deer’s hair was still attached to my car. Dinger, who loves to bark at deer from the safety of our home, seemed to be saying, “Ohhhh, so THIS is what a deer smells like!”
The exact same thing happened to a salesperson I was training. It wasn’t a deer or a dog, it was about Jim’s sales aha moment.
His team was asked to send me an email with their five biggest lessons from their first six months of training. Among Jim’s top five was this one:
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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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The $225,000 Selling Mistake Most Salespeople Make
- December 7, 2020
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
While colleagues and supervisors shared their enthusiasm for this exciting moment, my first reaction was, “And why do you think this is good news?”
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FDR and Sir Isaac Newton on Why Salespeople Fail
- August 25, 2020
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Unlike the made up fears that prevent salespeople from asking tough questions, qualifying more thoroughly, or picking up the phone and making a cold call, the fear of burning alive in a hotel fire seemed like a pretty justifiable one.
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Squirrels Explain the Differences Between Top and Bottom Salespeople
- October 28, 2019
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
This morning I was watching 3 squirrels each doing their thing.
Squirrel #1, who I named Ernest, was finding lots of nuts and burying them. His nest was full and he will reap the benefits of his hard work over the winter.
Squirrels #2 and #3, who I named MT and LayZ, were playing. They were running up and down tree trunks, jumping from limb to limb, running in circles and generally chasing their tails. They don’t yet have nests and unless they make a commitment, become disciplined, and get to work, they will starve to death this winter.
Ernest, MT and LayZ are no different than their human counterparts who find themselves in sales roles. The top salespeople are like Ernest and the bottom salespeople are like MT and LayZ. For evidence of that claim, take a look at the table below with a sprinkling of data from Objective Management Group (OMG) which has evaluated 1,910,915 salespeople from companies.