Dave Kurlan

  • Sales 2.0 – The Answer to our Prayers or a Costly Distraction?

    • May 5, 2010
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    Let’s take a look at this phenomenon from another perspective.  Sales 2.0 is simply a high-tech, 21st Century version of the low-tech, 20th Century method for approaching, engaging and getting in front of prospects.  You know what I’m referring to:

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  • Anatomy of the Million Dollar Producer

    • May 3, 2010
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    Do you have salespeople that aren’t profitable, don’t contribute enough to overhead, won’t change what they’re doing and simply aren’t benefiting the company?

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  • How Do Companies Retain Their Underperforming Salespeople?

    • April 30, 2010
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    I explain the difference between lousy salespeople and good salespeople in terms of line items and investments in this article.

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  • One Hidden Gem in 10 Sales Management Challenges

    • April 28, 2010
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    You have a sales force and some of your salespeople are difficult to manage.  There are varying reasons for the challenges.  They could include, but aren’t limited to these 10:

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  • Anatomy of the Worst Sales Call Ever

    • April 23, 2010
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    It’s easier to talk about some of the things he failed to do since he didn’t do anything correctly. If we were to perform an analysis working backwards from the end of his (can’t really call what he did a) sales process:

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  • Football’s Pitch Count and its Connection to Sales Management

    • April 22, 2010
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    Herm Edwards, currently of ESPN and formerly the Head Coach of the Kansas City Chiefs, was interviewed on WEEI, Boston’s Sports Talk Radio station today. He said a couple of things that were quite compelling:

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  • Who Do You Call When Your Sales Forecast is Busted?

    • April 20, 2010
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    When your short-term sales forecast indicates that you’ll come up short this period (month), what do you direct your salespeople to do in order to fill the gap?

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  • Call Reluctance in Salespeople – Causes, Factors, and Predictors

    • April 15, 2010
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    Objective Management Group (OMG) has always been able to accurately (to 95%) predict whether a salesperson would succeed and provide conditions for employment. Over the years, we’ve been able to fine tune our accuracy even more as we incorporated some additional non-sales factors that made strong salespeople poor candidates for a particular role or company.  Three of the most important, recent factors were:

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  • Customer Service Neutralizes Efforts of Your Sales Force

    • April 14, 2010
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    I am more convinced every day that the most overlooked and under-rated sales function in most companies is their customer service department.

    This extends beyond toll-free phone numbers and includes the people you meet when you walk into a company’s retail locations too.

    When was the last time you ended a conversation with customer service feeling thrilled that you were a customer of companies like Dell, Verizon, USAirways, Charter or Microsoft?  Would that change if I typed Apple instead of Dell?

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  • Sales Advice Hits the Spot in April Inc. Magazine

    • April 13, 2010
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    Here’s one quote I liked from the director of supplier diversity from UPS:

    “People will say, ‘I’ve got this really exciting proposal I want you to look at.’  I’ll say, ‘send it to me.’ Then they send it to me by FedEx. It happens every day. Just be smart. Know the company you are pitching to and know their likes and dislikes.  You get such brownie points with me when you come in with a UPS envelope and have an account all set up.  It’s just the little things like that, the icing on the cake.”

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