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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.
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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. -
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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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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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.