Dave Kurlan

  • What Happens When You Develop Sales Competencies?

    • April 10, 2009
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    Earlier this week I wrote an article for my Baseline Selling Tips Newsletter. It was about What Sleep Apnea and Sales Improvement Have in Common. If you don’t get my Newsletter, you’ll need to read that article in order for the rest of this post to make sense.

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  • Good News Not a Substitute for Sales Force Competencies

    • April 8, 2009
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    Do you want to hear something crazy?

    I’m a very prolific writer – not to say I’m a good writer, just that I post a lot. And of the dozens and dozens of posts from the last three months, would you like to guess what the LEAST read post was?

    It was the one where I wrote about signs that the economy was improving! And one of the MOST read posts was the one where I wrote about the media making the economy worse.

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  • Top 6 Tests to Determine if Your Sales Process Supports Sales Competencies

    • April 6, 2009
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    Do your salespeople sound like these folks working the deli counter? Three of the four had some kind of process, but are the processes effective?

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  • Don’t Make Assumptions About Sales Candidates

    • March 31, 2009
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    I have previously shared many instances of sales candidate assessments coming to life with their email, voice mails and interview antics following the taking of our assessment.  While the following email is another example of that, it is an even better example of what happens when a skeptical client finally realizes it:

    The client wrote:

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  • The Sales Force with Over Achievers That Don’t

    • March 26, 2009
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    I heard about a CEO who told one of my colleagues that all of his salespeople over achieve.  In the same phone conversation he mentioned that sales are down 20%.  Can you imagine where sales would be if his salespeople under achieved?  

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  • The Secret – The Ancient Scrolls and its Impact on the Sales Force

    • March 24, 2009
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    Since this book is not the Kabbalah itself, rather a Cliff Notes version, it tends to read more like a self-help book. It is far more powerful than a self-help book though as it points to a number of rules that will cause a transformation in one’s life.

    Seven of the desired behaviors are consistent with the philosophies in Baseline Selling – How to Become a Sales Superstar by Using What You Already Know about the Game of Baseball as well as Objective Management Group’s Sales Assessments:

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  • Media is to Fuel as the Recession is to Fire – How Does it Impact the Sales Force?

    • March 11, 2009
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    The media – they didn’t cause the banking crisis but they have surely capitalized on it, dramatized it, chronically reported every devastating development and turned a serious but contained fire into a wildfire.

    I don’t want to hear how many jobs have been lost.  Who does that help? 

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  • Sales VP’s and Marketing VP’s – Combine Them or Not?

    • March 11, 2009
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    Pete Caputa pointed me to an article on the Revenue Journal Blog about why you should combine the VP of Marketing and VP of Sales Roles and what the sales part of that role should be.

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  • Seth Godin Reinforces the Proper Sales Process

    • March 5, 2009
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    Seth Godin posted this article last week.  Read it it’s very short and a very good story.

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  • Jim Collins Fortune Interview Translated for the Sales Force

    • March 2, 2009
    • Posted by: Kurlan & Associates, Inc.
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    So, if you must do something, as opposed to nothing, what can you do? You can only cut so many costs.  You can only sit back and wait for so long.  You can only hope so much.  At some point, you must do something about the one thing you can control – your sales force – the single connecting point between you and your revenue.

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