Consultative Selling
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Dissecting the #1 Sales Best Practice
- August 26, 2016
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
One company is attempting to create a compilation of best sales practices by sending out a weekly survey to sales leaders and asking them to choose from multiple choice questions what they most often do and teach. The topic changes each week. This is silly because (1) it just isn’t that simple, (2) it’s different for each selling role, each vertical, the decision makers they call on, their price points, the length of their sales cycle, and their respective competition, just to name a few. In addition, when you ask multiple choice questions like this, the answers will be so varied that there won’t be even a few, never mind a single best practice. Here is an example of what they asked this week:
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4 Critical Changes to Go from Failure to Success in Sales Today
- July 18, 2016
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Today I’m in Florida, preparing to speak at a company’s national meeting. Like many companies, they have not only realized that selling has changed dramatically, but that their salespeople may not have adapted, developed new skills, and changed the way they sell. If you’re a regular reader, active on LinkedIn or Social Media, then you have certainly read about the many ways that selling has changed. But most senior executives haven’t put two and two together yet. They know that win rates are down and sales cycles are longer, they know it’s more difficult than ever before, they see that their salespeople are struggling to meet quotas, but they don’t realize the extent to which things have changed. There are four critical requirements which, together are the difference between success and failure.
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Tech Buyer Explains Why He Has No Use for Salespeople – Must Read
- July 11, 2016
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
I managed to develop a case of poison ivy that is so bad it is making my blood boil. Earlier this year I wrote an article explaining why more salespeople suck than ever before. (You’ll need to read that article for the rest of this article to make any sense.) Last week, a reader provided a comment that also made my blood boil and I wrote a response to it. I think you’ll get as riled up over his comment as I did and I hope you’ll love my response, but first, read that article, return here and read his comment which I have included below, and then continue reading for my reply. You won’t be sorry!
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Breaking News – More Salespeople Suck Than Ever Before (and Why)
- February 29, 2016
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Salespeople always seem to get a bad rap and obviously that’s bad for business. But it’s always been that way and nobody has made a very big deal about it, so what has changed?
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A Perfect Way to Handle Objections, Challenges and Push Back
- November 11, 2015
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
We watched the GOP Debate last night (I know the photo is from an earlier debate). I remember saying to my wife, “This isn’t a debate – all they’re doing is answering the questions being asked.” And then, all of a sudden, a debate broke out, and what did the brilliant moderator do? He said, “I’m sorry, we need to move to the next topic.” We finally got ourselves a debate and they want to stop it!”
Consider the majority of salespeople and their single biggest skill gap. Even when they are aware that today, a consultative approach to selling is necessary, and even if they actually use a consultative approach, all too often, this is what happens:
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Price Quotes and the Inability of Salespeople to Sell Value
- October 19, 2015
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Last week, I was training a sales force to sell value – an absolutely revolutionary concept – when the unthinkable happened, not once, but twice in the same training. As incredible as it was to me, it clearly illustrates why it is so darn hard for companies to get their salespeople to sell value.
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Why Inbound and Inside Sales Experts Think Sales Process is Dead Too
- August 18, 2015
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
I love and use some of their tools and services and recommend them to clients too. But the key word here is tools. They support and enhance selling. Tools don’t replace selling.
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The Science of Sales Selection vs. the Marketing of Modern Selling
- August 14, 2015
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
I started with more than 100 sales-specific findings and narrowed them down to the 18 findings and scores that clearly differentiated their tops from their bottoms. A mistake made by behavioral scientists and sellers of personality and behavioral styles assessments is that they only look at top performers and identify common traits. They fail to realize that the bottom performers have the same personality traits and behavioral styles as the top performers and none of those traits or styles are predictive of sales performance.
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12 Proven Sales Hacks to Increase Sales
- June 25, 2015
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
It seems that these days, things are changing faster than we can recognize. Cosby is finally out of the news, but the Marathon Bomber is back in. The terrible winter weather is in our rear view mirror, but now we are dealing with droughts and tornadoes! And in our world, Sales 2.0, a term we haven’t heard in a while, is making the rounds again. In today’s article, we’ll talk about the sales improvements that readers are most interested in.
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How Can Consultative Selling Already be Dead?
- April 30, 2015
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
In this article for Middle Market Executive,Tom Searcy insists that Consultative Selling is dead. He says that consultative sellers end up with buyers who can only make small decisions, experts end up in purchasing and only industry authorities can reach executive decision-makers. He also says that consultative sellers ask, “What is your pain?”, experts say, “Here is your pain.”, and authorities say, “Here is the pain your industry is having and how you can uniquely overcome it.”
Is he right?
Let’s discuss that right now before your clothes go out of style…