Sales Coaching
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New Data – Are Experienced Sales Managers Better Sales Managers?
- June 25, 2018
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Last week I wrote a revealing article which showed that Sales Managers are even worse than I thought when it comes to coaching their salespeople. That article stimulated this great conversation on LinkedIn.
Following that article I dug further into the same 9,000 rows of data to look at the role that tenure and experience have on sales management effectiveness. Who do you think are more effective – newer or more experienced sales managers?
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The Latest Data Shows That Sales Managers Are Even Worse Than I Thought
- June 18, 2018
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Today we’re diving into sales management and specifically, the Sales Management Coaching Competency. What you read will surely disappoint and shock you and might even cause you to puke in disgust.
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10 Reasons Why Parents of Toddlers Make Better Sales Coaches Than Sales Managers
- May 24, 2018
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Toddlers watch Sesame Street, play with blocks, take baby steps, constantly ask ‘why’, eat food that has been cut into tiny bite size pieces, love to start with dessert, and love to have fun. Their parents make sure they are comfortable, help them overcome their fears, work to prevent resistance and emotional meltdowns, and teach them as they go about their business.
What does any of this have to do with sales and sales leadership? Read a bit more and I’ll explain.
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Glue – The Missing Element That Makes Every Sales Training Initiative Successful
- February 26, 2018
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
I find that even the most seasoned and resistant of salespeople get to this point: When they realize how much more there is to selling, how much more effective they can be, how much more business they could generate, how they don’t need to have the best price, and how much easier selling can be, they become eager learners. That brings us to the question to be answered in today’s article: If most salespeople become eager learners and embrace good sales training, why don’t all companies experience equally tremendous revenue growth from sales training?
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Measure Change in Sales Effectiveness without Numbers and Metrics
- February 2, 2018
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
We want to get better at selling and as sales leaders we want our salespeople to improve. We need them to improve. We hope that training and coaching and sales ennablement tools will get us there. We have also been told that there is more than one way to skin a cat but it might come as a surprise that there is more than one way to measure the progress being made by your salespeople.
There are traditional lagging indicators, like revenue generated, and there are traditional forward looking indicators, like new meetings, pipeline value and pipeline quantity compared to a prior period. Conversion ratios – calls to meetings, meetings to qualified opportunities, qualified opportunities to closable, and win rates, all compared with the same ratios from a prior period.
These metrics tell a story, individually and together, but forward looking indicators tell a more timely story, especially if you have a long sales cycle. However, as you’ll read below, measuring sales progress doesn’t stop with metrics because there is another powerful way to get instant feedback on a salesperson’s progress.
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Which is Worse – Crappy Salespeople or Crappy Sales Managers?
- December 6, 2017
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
In his book, The Art of the Start, Guy Kawasaki said, “Don’t Worry, Be Crappy.”
That advice suggested that companies just get their early versions of software and tech products out there and they could make them better later.
How are early versions of technology different from crappy salespeople and crappy sales managers? For one thing, salespeople and sales managers tend to stay crappy unless professional training, coaching and interventions occur. And unlike products, user feedback tends to be sketchy when it comes to salespeople because they refrain from giving it. But what would happen if they did?
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Grammar – Why Commas Provide Sales Success Where Periods Fail
- July 19, 2017
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
The problem is one of grammar. All of the articles you read, videos you watch and audios you listen to suggest that there is a key to sales success. Period. But if you change the period to a comma, you’ll quickly see that all of these things are crucial to success in sales.
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Crucial Selling Take Aways from the 2017 Home Run Derby Lead to Sales Greatness
- July 12, 2017
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Did you watch the Home Run Derby on Monday night? I’ve never seen anything like it. You could see thunder and lightening through the glass wall in left field as thunderstorms raged while all the home runs were being launched. Wow, what a show! Of course, my mind always looks for a correlation to selling and there are some good ones here.
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How to Simplify Coaching Salespeople
- May 19, 2017
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
When you take sales coaching, baseball, watching video and put it all together, what do you get?
You get the post-call debrief – the most powerful tool for great sales coaching.
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How to Eliminate the Need for Sales Motivation, Accountability and More!
- April 10, 2017
- Posted by: Kurlan & Associates, Inc.
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
What if I told you there was a way to completely eliminate the need to manage the pipeline, motivate, recruit and hold salespeople accountable? There is and I’m going to share it with you!