Sales Coaching

  • Top 5 Reasons Sales Prospects Ask for References

    • May 19, 2014
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    Everything is going along great, your prospect seems quite interested, they’ve agreed with your points, accepted your pushback, you got them qualified and you’re heading for the home stretch.

    It doesn’t matter if this has all occurred in the last 45 minutes, or if this took place over a series of meetings, calls and months.  

    They ask for references.

    The best example of doing a lousy job in this area is the salesperson who was referred in, yet still gets asked for references!

    How a salesperson handles the request for references is crucial and most salespeople screw it up royally.

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  • Rejection – Why it is the #1 Enemy in Modern Selling

    • April 3, 2014
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    For a change, rather than contributing to all the noise about inbound replacing outbound, inside replacing outside, insights replacing sales steps, buyers’ process replacing sales process, let’s talk about something that has a huge, relevant impact on selling, regardless of how the opportunity came to be.

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  • The Real Impact of Coaching Your Salespeople, Sales Managers

    • April 1, 2014
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    I’m in the middle of another page-turner, this one called The Man Who Killed Kennedy – The Case Against LBJ.  It’s difficult to put a positive spin on this amazing, insightful book, about one of the biggest assholes the USA has ever known, but I can take two unintentional sales-related lessons from the book:  

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  • Double Article Friday – How New Salespeople Struggle

    • February 21, 2014
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    If ever there was a good analogy for the new salesperson, this is it; and what a case it makes for nailing the onboarding process to make sure that nothing is left to chance.  In what kind of shape is your onboarding process for new salespeople?

    Here is an article that I wrote seven years ago about how to onboard new salespeople and it still holds true today.  Enjoy.

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  • The Monumental Effort Required to Grow Sales in 2014

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

    When you look ahead to sales for the next 12 months, are you using the same assumptions as always?  If you want to grow by 20%, do you use the same metrics for next year that you used for last year?  Will the plan that got you there last year continue to work next year?  Have you accounted for any of these changes?

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  • A Rare Paragraph or Two About Making Successful Sales Presentations

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

    When everyone presents, salespeople and companies are perceived as commodities and the sale is driven by price.  When salespeople take a customer-focused, consultative approach and actually become the value added, salespeople and companies are able to effectively differentiate, solve problems, and get paid accordingly.

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  • Top 10 Reasons Salespeople Can’t Move the Conversation from Price

    • July 11, 2013
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    There are other factors that could contribute to salespeople regularly finding themselves in a price-sensitive discussion:

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  • Baseball and Selling Revisited – A Powerful Analogy

    • June 12, 2013
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    A salesperson tells you about a great-looking opportunity that has been forecast to close this month.  “We’re definitely getting this and it’s an awesome opportunity for us.  We’re going to knock this one out of the park!”

    At the end of the month, the deal hasn’t closed and you question your salesperson about it.  You are told that the decision-maker has been away on vacation, but as soon as he returns, the deal is sure to get done.

    A month later, nothing has changed.  This time, the salesperson admits that he has had a little difficulty reaching the decision-maker, but he is sure that nothing has changed.  You are assured that everything is good.

    Six months later, when the deal still hasn’t closed, you force the salesperson to archive the opportunity with the salesperson still not understanding what went wrong.

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  • Salespeople Must Stop Snorkeling and Start Scuba Diving

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

    We talk a lot about the importance of using a consultative approach instead of a transactional approach to better differentiate and sell value instead of price.  When we explain consultative selling, we usually emphasize the importance of listening and questioning.  When we further explain effective listening and questioning, it becomes much more difficult to describe in a paragraph or in the absence of a demonstration or role-play.

    Until today.

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  • Impact of Sales Process Versus Sales Coaching

    • May 14, 2013
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    While most sales leaders admit that they must be more effective at coaching, many who said they have some kind of sales process in place didn’t come to the same conclusion.  So, why is it so obvious to sales leaders that they need to improve their coaching, but so elusive that they need to improve their sales process?  

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