sales assessments

  • What Would You Do? Sales Force Attempts to Maintain Status Quo

    • January 6, 2014
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    This is what can happen when salespeople have zero concept of selling; when knowledgeable, technical people are moved into selling roles without being trained to sell; when the sales manager is more interested in selling than managing; when the president doesn’t hold the sales manager accountable; and when there isn’t a sales culture.

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  • Top 10 Kurlan Sales Articles of 2013

    • December 19, 2013
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force
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  • Top 4 Reasons Salespeople Struggle to Reach Decision Makers

    • October 30, 2013
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    So here we are again, with half of the salespeople reporting that they aren’t reaching decision makers.  And why would a decision maker want to be reached if the salespeople are focused only on presentations?  And companies wonder why their sales cycles are so long, their closing percentages are so low and their margins are slip sliding away…

    Also noteworthy were these findings from the survey results:

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  • The Great Migration to Inside Sales – Will You Get it Right?

    • July 31, 2013
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    I agree that there is a significant trend toward moving salespeople to the inside.  But in general, every company needs to conduct a case justification and every situation should be determined on a case-by-case basis.  Making broad statements, that define the general scenarios where sales should be moved inside, simply won’t work for most companies because there will be more exceptions to the guidelines than those that fit.

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  • Why Can’t We Hire This Sales Candidate?

    • July 22, 2013
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    We interviewed him; she’s from our industry; we really like him; but your assessment says she is not recommended.  Why can’t we hire her?

    That’s probably the single, most frequently asked question that we hear.

    So, to answer the “Why can’t we?” question, there are two more questions:

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  • Top 3 Reasons Why Salespeople Fail at Consultative Selling?

    • July 8, 2013
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    One of the challenges with a consultative approach is that while it is easier to close the sale, it is far more difficult to implement than the traditional, transactional approach that today makes it so much harder to get the sale closed.  The question is why?

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  • Personality Tests, Sales Candidate Selection – How Tests Measure Up

    • June 17, 2013
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    As with costumes, you only need to take off the mask and you’ll see what’s underneath.  No exceptions.  No apologies.

    Personality tests aren’t predictive either.  Oh, they say that they are?  Then why is their validation of choice “construct validity” rather than “predictive validity”?

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  • Is the “Lack of Commitment to Sales Success” Finding Predictive?

    • May 7, 2013
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    So you have your sales force evaluated and in addition to learning why you are getting the results you are getting, and what you can do to significantly improve those results, you are surprised by some of the individual findings on some of your salespeople.  One of the findings that generates the most push-back is Lack of Commitment to sales success.

    We could hear any of the following comments as push-back to this finding:

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  • Latest Research on Personality Assessments for Sales Selection

    • April 15, 2013
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    Two articles caught my attention today.

    The first, 10 Traits of Successful Salespeople, was typical of the misinformation that often passes for must-read information:

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  • Why Salespeople Won’t Abandon the Early Demo and Presentation

    • March 4, 2013
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    If you want your sales force to strive for sales excellence, the bottom line is that your salespeople won’t drive this transition and neither will a sales manager.  You have to drive it.  You must commit to it and it must be a sustained commitment.  It’s not a do-it-yourself project, so you must also be prepared to do it correctly, get help from a results-oriented firm, and lead by example.

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