sales assessment
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One Thing Missing from The New Way of Selling – Part 2
- July 2, 2014
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Selling is still selling and while a lot has changed in the last 10 years, a lot of it hasn’t. I’m a social seller. Social sellers get found, find prospects and connect using a myriad of social selling tools. But once a meeting has been scheduled, the social must be dropped in favor of the selling. A prospect should only be aware of a terrific conversation, but process and methodology must be hidden backstage.
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The Sales Conversation CEO’s & Sales VP’s Must Have with HR
- June 2, 2014
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
I had to laugh when I was told that our assessment was “correct in not recommending” her for the sales position at her company, but “the other assessment was a more accurate description” of her.
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Finding the Right Sales and Sales Management Candidates
- May 22, 2014
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Seven years ago, a company may have wanted sales managers who were task masters, holding salespeople accountable to top of the funnel metrics. While that could still be true today, a company should be looking for a sales manager who is an extremely effective sales coach, who spends 50% of the available time coaching and developing salespeople.
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Benchmarking Salespeople Sounds Great but Has Many Flaws
- April 21, 2014
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
You want to hire better salespeople, don’t you? And you’ve been told that if you use a sales assessment, you will be able to select better salespeople, right? And if you have a strong HR background, you may believe that benchmarking is a good first step. There are many uses for benchmarking in sales, and while the approach taken by most assessment companies helps them, it doesn’t really help you.
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Is This an Example of Succeeding or Failing at Inside Sales?
- April 18, 2014
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
It’s bad enough when companies move to the demo too quickly, but it doesn’t get any faster or more transactional than when they ask you if you’ve seen their demo with their very first question. But hey, give him a break. At least he asked a question instead of telling me he wanted me to see a demo…
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2 Biggest Mistakes Companies Make with Sales Candidates
- February 24, 2014
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
At this point in the process, the candidate is the appetizer, movie trailer, and test drive – all rolled into one. If they don’t complete the application and assessment, then why do sales managers and HR managers try so hard to get them to do it? Haven’t these candidates already shown you all you need to know about their follow-through, follow-up, attention to detail, ability to work a sales process, ability to take direction, and commitment to the result? These candidates might even be thinking, “Not if I have to work this hard…”
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Science and the Length of Your Sales Cycle
- October 9, 2013
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
A really important factor is exactly what salespeople actually believe – what they think – relative to the sales cycle. Read some of the beliefs that this sales force had around the sales cycle:
Those two factors alone are enough to double the length of a sales cycle! There are still 9 more factors that have an impact; however, just from what we’ve discussed and reviewed so far, it’s obvious that this company’s sales cycle is M-U-C-H longer than it needs to be.
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Validation of the Validation of the Sales Assessment
- October 4, 2013
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
One of the companies that insisted on validating our validation is moving forward with a license to hire 200 salespeople using our Sales Candidate Assessment. I’ll share the results of their own validation:
They conducted a 7-day pilot and hired 23 salespeople.
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Presidents & CEO’s: 4 Out of 5 Sales Managers Are Ineffective!
- October 2, 2013
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
A title like, “Presidents & CEO’s: 4 Out of 5 Sales Managers Are Ineffective”, will cause some Sales Directors, Sales VP’s and Sales Managers to click and read the article. That’s OK, but a spoiler warning: if you feel threatened by hearing the truth about yourself or your sales team, or would be uncomfortable sharing the truth about you or your team with the President or CEO, you should probably exit this article right now.
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Do You Need to Save All of those Sales Assessments and Evaluations?
- August 22, 2013
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
The best reason to save all of those sales candidate assessments which you ran last year can be answered with a few letters: EEOC. That’s right. It’s especially true if you don’t follow the sales hiring process to a “T”, or worse, if you don’t always follow the recommendations on the assessment. Let’s say that you loved one candidate so much that you hired him despite the recommendation not to do so.