Dave Kurlan
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10 Unfavorable Selling Conditions That Prevent Sales Success
- March 25, 2024
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
When you encounter unfavorable selling conditions, refuse to accept them. This isn’t about moving forward with a couple of favorable conditions, it’s about NOT moving forward unless the conditions become more favorable. Whether or not you wish to admit it, the truth is that when the conditions don’t favor you, the business isn’t coming to you.
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Homicide Detective Makes Best Case for Sales Process
- March 21, 2024
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
The author admits that until he conducted his “cold-case investigation” of the New Testament, he was an atheist who always followed the evidence to find the truth. Similarly, a lot of prospects are also non-believers – not necessarily in Jesus – in your product or service. As I read and learned about the author’s methods for uncovering truth, or proof, I felt that salespeople could learn a lot about proof of concept, presenting facts, backing up claims, return on investment, and offering credible testimonials. That’s not nearly the analogy I’m going to make.
Wallace shared a story in the Forward about the time he was shot by a criminal who was on parole, and was not allowed to have a firearm. Up until the moment of the shooting, Wallace believed that a bullet-proof vest would stop a bullet. In the moment of the shooting, he believed in the bullet proof vest. At that moment his belief changed from “belief that” to “belief in.” That was the analogy he wished to apply to the gospels. He wondered if he could find the evidence to replace faith (belief that the miracles occurred) with proof (belief in both Jesus and the miracles).
That also happens to be my analogy from the book. Most salespeople believe that a sales process can help them succeed while the very best salespeople believe in their sales process.
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New Data: Top Salespeople are 7562% Better at Winning RFPs
- March 13, 2024
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
RFPs aren’t going away, and there are two ways that salespeople can approach them, the companies that write them, and the people associated with them:
Passively – in this capacity, they are nothing more than facilitators, waiting for an RFP to drop in their inbox, so they can get it off to the folks who write the proposals. When complete, they email the proposal back to procurement and hope to win.
Proactively – in this capacity, they regularly meet and develop relationships with the appropriate CxO’s and Sr VP’s of manufacturing, engineering, design, IT, IS, Finance, Marketing, HR, R&D, Operations, Facilities, Fulfillment, Distribution, Sales, Learning and Development, Enablement, and any other organizational head they might possibly sell to. They become a resource, an asset, a partner and not only help to write the specifications of the next RFP, but write the specs in such a way that they are the only company that can win the business.It seems obvious, doesn’t it? Option 1 is stupid and Option 2 is brilliant. But if option 2 is so brilliant and obvious, then why do so many salespeople become so defensive and dug in to option 1?
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Opportunity Blindness – What’s in Your Sales Pipeline?
- February 28, 2024
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Some observations:
The data represents the forecast and funnel for 7 sales teams.
The gaps (A & G) are backwards and should say 72% (A) and 41% (G).
The quarterly forecast (C) is 58% short of the quarterly target (D).
The current closable opportunities (B) are 77% short of the forecast (C) and 90% short of the quarterly target (D).
Add columns G and H and together, all of those columns represent pathetic, old news.The question that should be asked is, “What can we do about this?”
We should be able to answer that question by looking at column F but that’s not possible. Can you see why?
Outside of telling us that there isn’t enough in the funnel, the data in column F doesn’t answer the question that must always be asked: Is the pipeline viable?
We know the assigned value of the pipeline but we don’t know the answers to these additional ten important factors:
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25 Sales Experts on the Importance of Coaching Salespeople
- February 25, 2024
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Sales managers are still not coaching – at least not consistently or effectively. As a reminder, consistent daily coaching increases revenue by 28% and when it is paired with effective coaching, revenue increases by 43%. It’s simply incomprehensible that sales managers aren’t picking up the clue phone.
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Focus on Winning to Drive More Sales and Revenue
- February 20, 2024
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
In baseball, the coaching staff gets a report from their advanced scouts and from that report the coaches create a game plan. How to pitch to that hitter, how to get this hitter out, what to expect from this pitcher, what pitch he likes to throw when he’s ahead in the count, the strength and accuracy of the outfield arms, etc.
Some companies do some account planning for major accounts, but not nearly enough of this takes place.
What will happen to your business if you spend more time thinking about how to win, and less time focusing on your numbers?
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Don Kent and My 8 Reasons For Inaccurate Sales Forecasts
- February 15, 2024
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
1960’s Don Kent is like a 2020’s salesperson. Excited about an opportunity, but wrong. And they don’t have to be wrong, shouldn’t be wrong, and honestly, can’t be wrong. The 2020’s salesperson may not have computer models, but they do have technology and it’s not the technology getting the forecast wrong. It’s the salesperson. There are a number of reasons they get so excited and get it so wrong but here are eight good ones:
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Whipped Cream! The Easiest Way to Lower Sales Resistance
- February 13, 2024
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Most sales training fails to address the single most important condition of a sales cycle – resistance – thereby rendering the sales training semi-useless. When resistance appears, it does not matter if the sales process, methodology, tactics and strategies are good or even great, unless salespeople are equally great at lowering the resistance.
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How to Identify Candidates Who Will Succeed in Your Sales Roles
- February 9, 2024
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Suppose you have a project or task that you don’t particularly enjoy doing, but despite your lackluster feeling, must complete it. Do you seek out the most efficient way to complete the project or task, or default to the most inefficient way to complete it?
Let’s take recruiting, selecting and hiring salespeople. For HR, that’s part of their job. Despite how important new salespeople are to the future of a company, Sales Leadership attempts to get recruiting over with as quickly as possible, often prioritizing speed to hire over cost to hire, talent and capabilities. Why? They aren’t using the most efficient process and tools to hire the best salespeople.
I’m hiring a salesperson for a client and using my time-tested process which we also train clients to use (so that WE DON’T have to recruit!). My experience shows that 10% of the candidates will be viable but, of more importance, how do we know which 10% to focus on? The stats for the first week were:
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12 Powerful Sales Lessons from “The Chosen”
- February 6, 2024
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
I’ve written hundreds of articles with analogies to sales using athletes, musicians, actors, CEOs, politicians, inventors, songs, movies, TV Shows and their characters and you didn’t need to be a fan of them to appreciate the sales lessons. While watching this enjoyable TV series, I identified eleven solid analogies to sales and selling so we’ll get right to them because I’m sure you aren’t reading my sales articles for my opinions on faith or religion!