Dave Kurlan

  • Discovered – Data Reveals the Biggest Obstacle to Closing More Sales

    • April 30, 2018
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    Humans have been waiting for thousands of years to discover the secrets of life.  Why are we here?  Why do bad things happen?  What happens after we die?  Is Heaven real?  What is God’s plan for us?

    While many experts have attempted to answer all of these questions, most of us lack proof. There’s no data.  If we wake up tomorrow morning and suddenly there are not only answers to these questions, but science-based proof, that would be a game-changer for us.

    Likewise, every day most companies try to determine why their salespeople don’t close more business, why so many opportunities die on the vine, and what they need to do differently to change their results.  They try everything!  Most leaders think it’s an issue of closing skills.  It’s not.  Others think it’s about prospecting.  While that has an impact on the size and quality of the pipeline, it has little to do with results.  But I have discovered the cause, will show you the data, and discuss how to fix it.

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  • Improper Use of BANT Will Cause You to Kill Opportunities

    • April 26, 2018
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    I received an email asking me to check out an article on the Salesforce.com blog that features an infographic they hoped I would promote.

    The article focuses on the middle of the funnel and the handoff between marketing and sales.  In doing so, they discuss MQL’s (Marketing Qualified Leads) and SQL’s (Sales Qualified Leads).  While I don’t have an issue with the infographic, I have huge issues with the content of the article and if you follow the advice in this article, you’ll have far fewer MQL’s that your salespeople can turn into SQL’s.

    Here’s why.

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  • Great Example of Why Sales Success Is Not Always Transferable

    • April 24, 2018
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    Would a NFL Quarterback make a good MLB pitcher?  Would a star MLB hitter be a great Pro Golfer?  Would an all-star NBA Center be an effective Lacrosse player?

    Right now, an event is occurring on the world stage that shows, in a very persuasive way, why success in sales isn’t always transferrable from one company, industry or role to another.

    For example, a startup storage technology company hired all the salespeople they could get from the most well-known and well-respected company in their space.  The leadership team expected that these experienced and credible salespeople would leverage the new company’s great new technology and cause sales to take off like a rocket for Storageville (made up name).  It didn’t happen.

    Another company hired a Sales VP from a well-known Fortune 1000 company and believed that his experience would make it easy for him to build a top-performing sales organization like the one he ran at Fortuneville (made up name).  It didn’t happen.

    These two examples aren’t exceptions to the rule.  They are the rule.  But the rule to what?  I’ll explain the context for the rule and explain the event that serves as such a great example.

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  • New Data Reveals Why Veteran Salespeople Are Not Better Than New Salespeople

    • April 17, 2018
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    I mined Objective Management Group (OMG) data and compared salespeople who have been with their company for 10 years or more, with salespeople who have been with their company for five years or less.  Theoretically, the veteran salespeople should be better and stronger in every way.  But are they?  Let’s take a look and then let’s discuss exactly what we are seeing and why.

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  • Improve Your Win Rate and Shorten Your Sales Cycle by Doing This

    • April 11, 2018
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    In September I wrote this article on the difference between asking good, tough and great questions.

    I included examples all three types of question in the article.

    There is also a proper sequence:  Good question.  Tough Question.  Great question.

    You will get immediate feedback on how effective your questions are:  Your prospects will say, “Good question” when you ask one.  They will say, “Great question” when you ask one.  And they will stop and struggle before answering one of your tough questions.

    Many salespeople make the mistake of preparing questions in advance. Salespeople who do that might be able to stumble onto one good question.  But great questions and tough questions must be spontaneous and in response to something your prospect already said when they answered prior questions.  

    I’ll share a role-play from a training program that wonderfully demonstrates what I’m talking about as well as the kind of listening skills required in order to ask good, tough and great questions. 

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  • Data Shows Most Salespeople are Dinosaurs When it Comes to Social Selling

    • April 2, 2018
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    I have data that shows that the very people who don’t score well at hunting (reluctant, ineffective or both) also score poorly at Social Selling while those who score the highest for Hunting score higher for Social Selling too.  Check out this data from Objective Management Group’s (OMG) evaluations of more than 1.7 million salespeople:

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  • 3 Tweaks to Your Sales Approach Are Steps Toward Sales Greatness

    • March 19, 2018
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    Consider how frustrating it is to approach a traffic circle, or as we call them in Massachusetts, a rotary, during rush hour.  You very slowly make your way towards the circle in a long line of traffic, attempt to merge into a congested circle, travel around to the other side of the circle, and finally exit the other end.  Being a bit impatient, I’m usually screaming to myself, “Come on – don’t stop! – let’s get moving – let’s go!”

    Hold that thought.

    I believe that role-playing is the single most important thing I can do with salespeople to help them to become great.  There are three kinds of role-plays:

    I play the salesperson’s part and the salesperson plays the prospect. This is my preferred method as it demonstrates exactly what the conversation should sound like.
    I play the prospect and the salesperson plays the salesperson.  This approach works best when conducting pre-call strategy and usually serves to show me how ill-equipped the salesperson is to have the desired conversation.
    The salesperson plays the salesperson and another salesperson plays the prospect.  This type of role-play occurs later in training when the salesperson has the foundational skills to execute the sales process correctly and to play the sales part with some confidence.

    When I finally reach scenario 3 with salespeople playing their own part, it seems a lot like approaching the traffic circle. Let me explain.

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  • Persistence Over Polish – What the Top 10% of All Salespeople Do Better

    • March 12, 2018
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    The best athletes in the world know exactly how they do the things they do that make them so great.  In addition to their God-given talent, they outworked everyone else to master the mechanics and nuances of their sport, the mindset required for greatness, and competed at a high level from a very young age.  When they falter they can easily make the adjustments necessary to get back on track.

    Interestingly, most top salespeople don’t know what it is that they do that makes them so successful! That’s surprise #1.  If you look through the data on the 2,.3 million salespeople that Objective Management Group (OMG) has assessed, you will see that the top 10% of all salespeople have better average scores than their colleagues in each of the 21 Sales Core Competencies.  Their average scores are listed below for 5 Sales Core Competencies in which they have the best scores.  They are:

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  • 10 Ways to Determine if Your Sales Prospect was Engaged

    • March 8, 2018
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    A sales manager asking, “So, how did your meeting go?”

    The salesperson always replies, “It went great.”  It’s the same response a retail clerk gets when they ask shoppers if they need any help.  “Just looking.”  “It went great.”  It’s the default answer.

    The sales manager says, “Good, good.”

    I wish that sales managers wouldn’t ask how meetings and calls went.  They should say,

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  • What Happens When You Force a Square Sales Peg into a Round Sales Hole?

    • March 2, 2018
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    Can you imagine attaching a snow plow to a Lamborghini and hiring yourself out to clear parking lots?  Back in April I wrote about our new puppy.  Now he’s 1-year old and has grown to 60 pounds, but could you imagine putting a saddle on him and selling rides on the beach?  Could you imagine if the US arsenal of nuclear weapons consisted of putting 1,000’s of firecrackers into a plastic cylinder and then saying to North Korea, “try us!”

    These are all examples of trying to put a square peg into a round hole – things you just don’t do.  And that’s how I felt when I received an email asking how to deal with the following sales challenge.

    The reader asked me to write an article explaining how to improve the sales effectiveness of their mostly altruistically motivated salespeople.

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