Sales Coaching

  • The Search for Perfection – How it Can Ruin Your Sales Efforts

    • September 15, 2010
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    You work hard, diligently and creatively to develop something and it comes out, well, almost perfect.

    But as I mentioned earlier, there is a dark side to perfection and I’ll share the gory details with you here. 

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  • Salespeople Become More Effective Part 2

    • September 10, 2010
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    Yesterday’s article discussed the possibility for salespeople to develop weaknesses AFTER being assessed and during the period of comprehensive sales training, coaching and development.  Today, we’ll discuss some of the areas where you should see fairly early improvement, as well as the areas where you need to see it but may not.

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  • The Whiners – Salespeople Who Get Your Attention

    • September 8, 2010
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    Prospects, Customers, Salespeople, Managers and Senior Executives are all guilty of whining.

    Great Leaders, great sales managers, and great salespeople do not.

    Let’s focus in on salespeople.  Why do they whine?  Why do they look for things to complain about?

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  • How to Achieve Consistency on the Sales Force

    • September 7, 2010
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    You probably know some salespeople who are consistent too, but unfortunately, most of them are consistently bad!

    Do you feel like fixing something on your sales force today?  Figure out what/who could be more consistent, determine what behaviors must change, identify something measurable, set better expectations, and drive the change home!

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  • Why Salespeople Fail to Make Needed Changes

    • September 3, 2010
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    I recently paid a visit to the men’s restroom (more comfortable in that one) where I saw Steve, our building maintenance man, on the floor repairing the sensor that automatically turns the water on and off. About 90 minutes later (right on schedule), I was back and shocked to see Steve still down there on the floor. I asked what was taking so long and he said, “Well it works just fine when it’s not connected to the faucet but when I reconnect it the darn thing stays broken!”

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  • Improve How Your Sales Force Sells by Phone

    • August 20, 2010
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    Getting salespeople to recognize how badly they sound and how ineffective they are when selling on the phone isn’t easy.  And just so you know who I’m talking about (and to save you from commenting about how these nuances are different) I’m including prospecting, cold-calling, telemarketing, telesales, inside sales, inbound marketing, outbound marketing and lead generation roles as “selling on the phone”.

    There are two methods that I prefer to use:

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  • Professional Sales and the All-Star Jazz Performance

    • August 16, 2010
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    Professional Selling is just like being in an All-Star Jazz Ensemble.  It’s being so good and so experienced, that one can perform perfectly, on demand, in any environment, despite tremendous pressure, regardless of product knowledge and expertise.

    How many of your salespeople have this capability?

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  • How to Close the Deal that Your Salespeople Can’t Close

    • August 10, 2010
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    Sometimes, when your salespeople are trying to close a sale, the deal stalls, gets put-off, or simply doesn’t close.  This is followed by, well, follow up, leading to more put-offs.  There are many reasons why this happens but for the purpose of this article, let’s simply assume that the prospect has every reason to buy and the salesperson did not do anything glaringly wrong along the way.  Simply a closable opportunity that hasn’t closed yet.  In situations like this, there are usually two things going on:

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  • Sales Coaching is Like Baseball – How do You Rate?

    • August 3, 2010
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    Where are you when it comes to the all important topic of Sales Coaching?

    I’m in the middle of training several sales management teams on the finer points of coaching.

    What’s always fascinating for me is the transition that these teams go through on their way from point A to point B.

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  • More Sales Coaching Leads to Accelerated Growth

    • July 14, 2010
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    Your salespeople have the opportunity to replay their last call – one that probably had a horrible ending – and learn from it…

    Your salespeople can experience a live version of reincarnation every day! 

    There are two keys that can’t be overlooked though:

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