prospecting
-
First Steps to Generate More Sales Opportunities Today
- November 5, 2020
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
-
FDR and Sir Isaac Newton on Why Salespeople Fail
- August 25, 2020
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Unlike the made up fears that prevent salespeople from asking tough questions, qualifying more thoroughly, or picking up the phone and making a cold call, the fear of burning alive in a hotel fire seemed like a pretty justifiable one.
-
Are You Using This New Technology to Generate New Opportunities?
- November 13, 2019
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Do you have Rainbow flatware? Biomagnetic ear stickers? A diamond-shaped ice cube tray? Baby feather wings? Yah, these things exist here. You don’t? Me neither.
Have you signed up to use a company that uses AI to generate leads for you? You haven’t? Me neither.
It seems to me that the only companies using AI to generate leads are the companies trying to sell you their services using AI to generate leads. How ironic!
-
Squirrels Explain the Differences Between Top and Bottom Salespeople
- October 28, 2019
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
This morning I was watching 3 squirrels each doing their thing.
Squirrel #1, who I named Ernest, was finding lots of nuts and burying them. His nest was full and he will reap the benefits of his hard work over the winter.
Squirrels #2 and #3, who I named MT and LayZ, were playing. They were running up and down tree trunks, jumping from limb to limb, running in circles and generally chasing their tails. They don’t yet have nests and unless they make a commitment, become disciplined, and get to work, they will starve to death this winter.
Ernest, MT and LayZ are no different than their human counterparts who find themselves in sales roles. The top salespeople are like Ernest and the bottom salespeople are like MT and LayZ. For evidence of that claim, take a look at the table below with a sprinkling of data from Objective Management Group (OMG) which has evaluated 1,910,915 salespeople from companies.
-
How to Transform Your Sales Pipeline Today
- July 8, 2019
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Flower gardens can be large, colorful, impressive and calming to look at. Unfortunately, most sales pipelines are full of weeds, not large enough, and certainly not impressive. From its evaluations and assessments of 1,875,978 salespeople, Objective Management Group (OMG) has found that only 46% of all salespeople maintain a full pipeline. It breaks down as follows:
-
What You Should Never Do on LinkedIn to Do Business with Your LinkedIn Network
- May 16, 2018
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
I don’t know about you but for every benefit I get from LinkedIn, I get an equal amount of frustration. Some people, like me, have criteria for who they will invite and whose invitation they will accept on LinkedIn. How many times has this happened to you?
Someone invites you to join their LinkedIn network or asks if they can join yours. You accept. And then it happens…
-
Have the Promises of Inbound Sales Come to Fruition?
- November 14, 2016
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Last week, I spoke at Inbound, where 19,000 people attended this sold-out event in Boston. Ironically, I spoke to a crowd that wanted to learn how to be more effective at engaging prospects by phone and converting those conversations to meetings. Why is it ironic? Well, the promise of the Inbound movement is that cold calling is dead. Salespeople will reap the benefits of inbound leads from prospects who had already expressed interest. Has that happened?
-
The 5 Questions That Get Prospects to Buy so You Don’t Have to Sell
- March 30, 2016
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
It’s a catch-22 that I find myself in all of the time. In this business, I can’t ever be better at training, coaching, evaluating, consulting, and general sales expertise than I am when actually selling. If I am less expert at selling, I will lack credibility. I become one of those people who, if they can’t do it, they teach it. On the other hand, I can’t be better at selling than at providing expertise because it is often very threatening to potential clients. They fear being sold something – especially consulting services – from someone who could possibly fail to meet expectations, and my business would fail if I caused that to happen. So what is a sales expert to do? Let’s answer that question, discuss how it applies to you, and share some questions that will help you sell more of what you have!
-
Can These 5 Keys Determine the Fate of Cold Calling?
- May 7, 2014
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
When marketers and writers tell us that cold calling is dead, they never remember to qualify what they are trying to sell us. The amount of death in cold calling is dependent on a number of variables that never seem to be discussed. If we take a good hard look at these variables, we can see that taking a broad brush stroke to cold calling is a mistake: