empty pipeline

  • Speed Limits, the Flow of Traffic, and Sales Pipelines

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

    I don’t get stressed anymore when I’m driving.  All it took was for me to not exceed the speed limit.  I’m not sure whether it was my navigation system repeatedly telling me to “obey all traffic laws” each time I started the car, or my wife reminding me that I needed to be a good role model for our soon-to-be driving 16 year-old son.  I admit that this was much easier for me to do after I gave up my Jaguar for a Lincoln Navigator.  It holds much more baseball equipment!

    There is an exception to not exceeding the speed limit.  When the flow of traffic in all lanes is moving exponentially faster than you are, you must increase your speed to match the flow of traffic or risk getting run over!

    That brings me to pipeline flow.

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  • Which 4 Sales Competencies Best Differentiate Top from Bottom Salespeople?

    • October 9, 2018
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    I reviewed data from nearly 511,000 sales evaluations and assessments from among the that Objective Management Group (OMG) has produced to date.  I compared 21 Sales Core Competencies (you can see much of that data here) of the top 5% (elite) with the bottom 50% of all salespeople.  Then I identified the 4 competencies with the biggest gaps and you can see those in the image below.

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  • What Do You Blame When Salespeople Don’t Schedule Enough New Meetings?

    • May 23, 2016
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    Most salespeople suck on the phone. If you read that article, you learned about 10 common mistakes that salespeople make on the phone. But those are strategic and tactical mistakes – they are skill-based. What happens when you have salespeople who won’t even make calls? Could they be suffering from call reluctance? Objective Management Group (OMG) measures 21 Sales Core Competencies and one of them is the Hunter Competency.

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  • A Hidden Weakness that Makes Salespeople Procrastinate

    • May 15, 2014
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    Yesterday, I was on three separate calls with sales managers whose salespeople needed to fill their pipelines, but hadn’t.  They needed those salespeople to schedule meetings, but they weren’t doing it.  They needed those salespeople to make calls, but they wouldn’t make them.  They needed to get those salespeople moving, but those salespeople were stuck.  

    For the salespeople, it was their own doing.  Self-imposed.  And they knew it!

    Would you like to know which mysterious, hidden weakness was holding them hostage, preventing them from taking the action they knew was crucial to their success?

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