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  • Getting Salespeople to Prospect When They Aren’t Prospecting

    • November 15, 2024
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force
    little leaguer

    While some growth can be expected to come from effective account management, the kind of growth desired by most companies comes from consistently finding and closing new accounts. While companies love their inbound lead-generation programs, and those programs do generate leads, the quality of the leads, and the quality of the meetings booked by those young and inexperienced top-of-funnel kids, leaves much to be desired.

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  • My Latest on Using Email to Book New Meetings

    • November 29, 2023
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force
    Email to Book Meetings

    Salespeople have been spoiled by inbound leads, outbound emails, and BDRs generating leads for them.  As a result, those in sales for fewer than ten years never learned how and suck at cold calling.  Those who used to cold call but have since stopped, forgot how to and also suck at cold calling.

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  • The Bearded Lady, My Shaving Pattern and Your Sales Pipeline

    • August 8, 2019
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    I can grow a pretty decent five o’clock shadow  – above my upper lip and only after about a week.  Unlike the bearded lady at the circus, when it comes to facial hair, there’s really not much there!

    Can you think of something else which, at first glance, appears to be OK but upon closer inspection, there’s really not much there?

    Did you guess sales pipelines?

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  • Do the Best Sales Managers Have the Best Salespeople?

    • August 27, 2018
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    We all see the effects that strong leaders have when they surround themselves with either strong, mediocre or weak people.  What happens when strong leaders inherit a mixed team?  What happens when they hire a mixed team?  What happens when we ask the same questions about weak leaders?

    I dug into a subset of data from Objective Management Group’s (OMG) evaluations of the salespeople who report to more than 15,000 sales managers to determine whether the best sales managers actually have the best salespeople.  I was surprised and disappointed by what I found.  Check this out!

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  • Prospecting Trends for the Sales Force

    • July 19, 2012
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    Three salespeople left voice-mail messages for me today.  They were all cold calls, they were all bad, and they were all following up on brochures they dropped off last week.  Nothing out of the ordinary here, as one of the callers wanted to know when our copier leases expire, one wanted to know when our commercial real estate lease expires and two wanted to introduce themselves as our new reps.

    There are several reasons why they were so bad:  

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