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How to End the Sales & Marketing Argument
- May 11, 2015
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Republicans and Democrats argue all the time. Fans of long-time rival sports teams argue too, regardless of whether the rivalry is at the high school, college or pro level. Players argue with umpires, referees and judges. Kids argue with their parents and everyone argues with their cable company and wireless phone providers. So why is it so hard to understand why marketing argues with sales?
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Social Selling – I’m a Proponent, Not a Detractor – Look at The Stats
- November 15, 2013
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Bob Thompson left several comments on the article at the CustomerThink site. In his last comment, he asked what the stats would look like if we only reported on what the best salespeople did with social media. I think that’s a terrific idea, Bob, and while it’s much more difficult to isolate those statistics, I did the research and report on it here.
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Has the Death of Selling Finally Arrived?
- September 23, 2013
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
eople in inbound marketing would have you believe that if you create the right content, get people to raise their hands, complete a form, and request something, then inbound marketers, formerly known as inside salespeople, can take it from there. If you are selling something in great demand (iPhone 5), really inexpensive (monthly subscription of $20 or less), significantly lower-priced than your competition (by 20% or more), or that people must have (wireless service), then you can easily replace salespeople with marketers.
However, there are 15 scenarios where you do need salespeople if you are selling something that:
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Sales Incentives, Awards, Lead Follow-Up and Sales Effectiveness
- December 19, 2012
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
In the case of appointment setters, as in the email above, training them to be more effective with the appointment-setting conversation will pay dividends too. Not only will the appointments be more qualified, there will actually be more, better-qualified appointments!
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What Makes a Lead a Good Lead?
- February 22, 2012
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
A dozen leads came in today and among them were leads from DELL and Bose. Both are large companies and might even make great clients but are they good leads? That all depends on who you ask.
So I pretended to ask 6 salespeople that I’ve worked with over the past several years. I pretended to say, “I have leads from DELL and Bose – are you interested in either of them?” And here is how the imaginary conversation went from there: