RFP’s

  • Baseball, The Toad and Coaching Unresponsive Salespeople

    • April 11, 2024
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force
    resistant salesperson

    Coaching salespeople is challenging.  When they aren’t responsive to coaching it’s not only more difficult, it is downright frustrating. When you’re attempting to coach unresponsive salespeople to use the phone to directly talk with a decision maker, there isn’t much upside.  Whether you’ve made this coaching attempt one time or one hundred times, the outcome will be the same, so the question we should be asking is, should this salesperson still be working for you?

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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
    mission critical

    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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  • The Prospect Isn’t Talking with Any Other Salespeople

    • April 4, 2011
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    It’s not that this can’t happen.  Some people don’t need to compare, talk with three companies, look at several options or get three quotes.  I don’t.  Most great salespeople don’t.  And your salespeople should never assume that a prospect NEEDS to shop around.

    On the other hand, when the salesperson says, “They aren’t talking with anyone else”, and it turns out that they were, you have to wonder how the salesperson missed it.

    There are several reasons why it could get missed.  They include:

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