sales assessments

  • Great Example of Why Sales Success Is Not Always Transferable

    • April 24, 2018
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    Would a NFL Quarterback make a good MLB pitcher?  Would a star MLB hitter be a great Pro Golfer?  Would an all-star NBA Center be an effective Lacrosse player?

    Right now, an event is occurring on the world stage that shows, in a very persuasive way, why success in sales isn’t always transferrable from one company, industry or role to another.

    For example, a startup storage technology company hired all the salespeople they could get from the most well-known and well-respected company in their space.  The leadership team expected that these experienced and credible salespeople would leverage the new company’s great new technology and cause sales to take off like a rocket for Storageville (made up name).  It didn’t happen.

    Another company hired a Sales VP from a well-known Fortune 1000 company and believed that his experience would make it easy for him to build a top-performing sales organization like the one he ran at Fortuneville (made up name).  It didn’t happen.

    These two examples aren’t exceptions to the rule.  They are the rule.  But the rule to what?  I’ll explain the context for the rule and explain the event that serves as such a great example.

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  • 5 Sales Hiring Mistakes and Fake Resume Claims

    • October 10, 2017
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    One of the regional sales managers asked, “What are the 5 Biggest Mistakes that Sales Managers Make When Recruiting Salespeople?”

    While that question is quite easy to answer, most companies, including their recruiters, HR professionals, sales leaders and executives are guilty of some or all of the following 5 mistakes:

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  • Why You Should Care That Sales Motivation Data Correlates Perfectly With Sales Effectiveness

    • September 13, 2017
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    I reviewed the data and in the table below you’ll see that extrinsic motivation is most prevalent in the top group of salespeople while altruistic motivation is most prevalent in the lowest group of salespeople.

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  • Can Preventing Hiring Bias Benefit the Sales Hiring Process?

    • August 21, 2017
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    You’re hiring and you need to identify the ideal salesperson for a particular sales role and you need someone to sell enterprise solutions to the C-Suite.  Aside from all of the other requirements, you’ll need to find someone who has done this before.

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  • The Benefits of Completely Bashing Your Competition

    • October 26, 2016
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    I’m referring to the circus known as the 2016 Presidential Election. It has moved from ugly to downright terrifying as we watch two presidential candidates slinging the most horrible attacks on each other.  And the worst part is that most of those attacks are well deserved.  But there is an important selling lesson we can take from all of this.  Does bashing your competition ever work?

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  • Those Who Follow Sales Best Practices Don’t Necessarily Become Top Performers

    • June 24, 2016
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    You’ll regularly find me writing about the science – the data – that differentiates top sales performers from the bottom.  But today, I’ll move into the world from which everyone else in this space operates – anecdotal evidence and opinions. 

    I will cite two sources for this article:

    The 130 sales consulting firms that partner with me at Objective Management Group (OMG) and provide our award-winning sales force evaluations and sales candidate assessments;
    The tens of thousands of salespeople, sales managers and sales leaders that I have personally trained.

    In both groups of people I have noticed a few things that are common to the tops and not so much the bottoms and I’m certain that if you paid attention, you would recognize some of the same patterns in your organization.

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  • Surprising New Data on Salespeople Busts the Myths about Relationship Selling and Social Selling

    • June 16, 2016
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    I had a theory about salespeople, but didn’t have the data to prove it out.  I believed that social selling was a godsend to those in sales who were not great at relationship building – that by utilizing applications like LinkedIn and Twitter, they could reach out to new people, but with the benefit of hiding behind the glass screen. Do you think I was right?  Or wrong?

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  • Has the Sales Profile of an A Player Changed Dramatically?

    • February 3, 2016
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    Recently, a number of readers asked me to review two articles which they thought were right up my alley.  Apparently they thirst for one of my specialties – poking holes in articles that are just plain wrong about hiring salespeople.  It’s not that I enjoy ripping articles apart, it’s just that I don’t have any tolerance for authors who either don’t know what they are talking about, don’t have any science backing them up, or use examples that can’t be replicated across industries, markets and geographies.  Shall we dig in?

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  • What’s Missing from the Report That Says Sales Training Doesn’t Make Reps Better?

    • January 6, 2016
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    I could not believe my eyes when I read this report.  It was during the break between Christmas and New Years, so perhaps I wasn’t as sharp as would be during a regular business day.  Maybe I missed something.  So I reread the report and the words amazed me even further.  The report claimed that salespeople don’t improve their skills as a result of sales training.  Really?  Let’s take a look.

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  • How to Get Prospects to Buy from You More Frequently!

    • December 1, 2015
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force
    How to Get Prospects to Buy from You More Frequently!

    It’s a simple concept, really, but 74% of all salespeople aren’t very good at getting most people to buy from them.  Even though the concept is simple, it seems really complicated to the group that can’t do it.  Of course, most salespeople wouldn’t agree that they can’t do it, even when their win rates are below 50%.  And in some tech businesses, salespeople seem to be happy with win rates under 20%.  It’s incredible that people can become so darn comfortable with mediocrity!  Solving the problem is easy when we have willing participants, so let’s discuss how to solve it once and for all.

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