sales assessments
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Warning to Sales-Focused Companies Wanting to Stay Relevant
- May 30, 2012
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Mike Myatt wrote an article for Forbes‘ online site called, To Increase Revenue Stop Selling. This article has been very heavily viewed and commented. I don’t agree with most of Mike’s suggestions, but in his defense, he is not a sales expert, sales writer, sales manager, sales leader or salesperson. He simply doesn’t like being pitched or sold to and urges salespeople (he doesn’t want them to sell or be called that) to simply let him buy – when he wants, where he wants, how he wants, from whom he wants, and for prices he is comfortable paying. Sounds like retail, doesn’t it?
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Do Chain Reactions Like This Really Occur When Selling?
- May 8, 2012
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Mary always succeeded in finding new opportunities, but her weaknesses, especially her Need for Approval, Discomfort Talking About Money, and Tendency to Become Emotionally Involved, would usually interfere with her ability to gain traction and close the sale. During the past year, she has improved enough so that she is not only finding new business, but closing it too. But she isn’t out of the woods yet.
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Why Most Companies are Struggling to Grow Revenue
- April 25, 2012
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Dan Perry, writing at Sales Benchmark Index’s Sales Force Effectiveness Blog, wrote that “The single biggest problem with sales today is sales reps are mismatched to the buyer. They think like a sales rep and not like a buyer.”
Well, Dan, I don’t agree and I have the statistics to back me up.
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Are Women in Sales Less Trainable?
- April 3, 2012
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Before I get into trouble for the title of this blog, let me 1.) explain from where it comes and 2.) direct you to another of my articles where I wrote that women make better salespeople than men.
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Illuminate and Dust Off Your Sales Force
- March 14, 2012
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Have you ever noticed the same thing in your home, apartment or office? The air looks clear, but when the sun comes beaming through, it suddenly illuminates billions of tiny dust particles that you didn’t know existed.
Sometimes, you get an even rarer peak into that confused state when you are between awake and asleep. You know you just caught a glimpse of a conversation that even seconds later you can’t recall. But it was there.
It’s the illumination factor that I want to talk about.
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Paul McCartney, Brian Wilson and the Sales Assessment Industry
- March 12, 2012
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
There are some wonderful assessment companies that have been doing their thing – personality assessments and behavioral styles assessments – for decades. The companies do those two types of assessments quite well. They are accurate, informative and useful when used as originally intended – to understand people better. Over the past decade most of them have attempted sales assessments and the results are very similar to the Paul McCartney and Brian Wilson albums. They should stick to what they do best!
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Sales Team Morale is Overrated
- March 2, 2012
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Someone posted the question, “Are you already behind on your YTD sales goals?”.
One responses was another question, “What are some different ways you keep morale high when the team is behind on goals?”
I responded to this question with the following answer:
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What It Really Means When CRM Isn’t a Sales Force Priority
- February 15, 2012
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
It’s rare when a company isn’t using something for CRM, even if it’s an old version of ACT. In most companies, it’s not whether they are using CRM, it’s which CRM they have chosen to use and whether the CRM has actually been adopted. The CRM application of choice is completely useless to management unless the entire sales force is using it as intended.
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How Many Sales Candidate Assessments Does it Take?
- February 9, 2012
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Why wouldn’t you just wait until the end of the process to assess the candidates? Three reasons:
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Top 10 Sales Training Realities Versus What You Believed
- February 8, 2012
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Belief – Most believe that after a day of comprehensive training, salespeople will have the understanding, tools and experience to get on the phone, go out in the field, use what they learned and be effective.
Reality – After a day of training, salespeople still have the old, worn-out, ineffective approach down cold. It’s muscle memory. The new approach (even if they took notes and practiced it during training, even if the approach is highly effective, time-tested and proven) is as strange to them as the thought of eating monkey brains for dinner. They’re still using a modified version of their old approach rather than a modified version of the new approach. They are definitely not using the new approach as taught.