sales core competencies

  • How Closing a Tough Sale is Nearly Identical to Hitting a Home Run

    • August 25, 2022
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    You’re watching a baseball game on television and the announcer says, “And here’s the pitch and there’s a long drive hit deep to left field and it’s deep, it’s up, it’s way back and GONE!!!!!  Home Run Dave Kurlan!”  OK, the announcer never said the Dave Kurlan part. Not even close. I was a singles hitter.  And I never played at a level that had announcers.  So there’s that.  For entertainment sake, watch this classic 2-minute clip of Robert Redford as Roy Hobbs hitting the magical home run at the end of the movie, The Natural, one of my all-time favorite baseball movies right up there with The Sandlot and Field of Dreams.

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  • Can My Car Uncover Sales Qualification Criteria Better Than Most Salespeople?

    • August 8, 2022
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    Wouldn’t it be great if salespeople had the equivalent of two camera intelligence to see what they don’t know they need to see?

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  • Not The Top 20 Attributes of Successful Salespeople

    • August 1, 2022
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    The article was 100% junk science and to use the word science would be a disservice to the word junk. Below, you’ll find five reasons why this article was so wrong, so bad, so misleading, so pitiful, and just plain stupid:

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  • The Many Different Selling Roles and How They Differ – Part 1

    • July 27, 2022
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    The same kind of thinking is required when thinking about the various roles of salespeople.  We can name them: Account Executive, Territory Manager, Business Development Rep, Sales Development Rep, Account Manager, Key Account Manager, National Account Manager, Channel Manager, Application Engineer, Sales Consultant, Inside Sales, Outside Sales, and more.

    To further complicate things, in some companies and industries, Sales Managers function as salespeople and Sales VPs function as Sales Managers.

    While the above roles have selling as a primary responsibility, there are as many differences to selling roles as there are differences to the class or style of cars.  Today, we’ll explore the difference between an Account Executive and a Business Development Rep.

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  • Hidden Sales Competition and Why it Could Happen to You

    • September 27, 2021
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    Have you ever had a sales opportunity that was completely under control, you were following your sales process, everything was looking great, and then, from out of nowhere and without warning, surprise competitors appeared?  

    Yes, the magic mushroom competitors! 

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  • Salespeople Will Close 50% More Business By Changing This One Thing They Do!

    • August 5, 2021
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    At Objective Management Group (OMG), one of the 21 Sales Core Competencies we measure and report on also tends to confuse salespeople, is the cause of frequent pushback, but has thirty-five years of cumulative science to support the finding and our conclusions.  Allow me to introduce you the competency called Supportive BuyCycleTM.

    BuyCycleTM represents how salespeople go about the process of making a major purchase and there is a 100% correlation between how they buy and the behavior they accept from their prospects.  For example:

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  • You’re Normal and Your Sucky Salespeople are Probably Normal Too!

    • September 3, 2019
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    Do salespeople report up to you?  Do you get frustrated with half to three quarters of them?  

    Is it a good day when a new opportunity is added to the pipeline?  Is it a better day when they close a new piece of business?  Do you wish you could double or triple the amount of activity, number of opportunities and deals that close?

    Are they generally good people and you feel like they don’t deserve to be terminated?  Do you like them too much to give them an ultimatum?  

    When you try to coach them, do you get frustrated because they say they understand but when they talk with a prospect or customer they don’t do what you coached them to do? 

    Do you think it’s you?

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  • Where Can You Find the Best Salespeople?

    • September 28, 2018
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    Maybe you drink the finest wines, stay at the most luxurious hotels, dine at the best restaurants, purchase the best brands and drive the fanciest cars. Or not.  Either way, you’ll at least want to know where you can find the best salespeople in the world, right?

    To accomplish this I looked at data from the most recent 435,000 sales evaluations and assessments from Objective Management Group (OMG) and broke it down into 6 regions of the world. See the image above.

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  • Data Shows 1st Year Sales Improvement of 51% in this Competency

    • September 18, 2018
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    I looked at the before and after scores for eight of the 21 Sales Core Competencies as well as the Reaches Decision Makers, Account Manager and Farmer competencies for a total of 11.  See the table below:

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  • Finally!  Science Reveals the Actual Impact of Sales Coaching

    • September 7, 2018
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    You must have heard the joke that 73.6% of statistics are made up!

    I have read and even reported that sales leaders who coach their salespeople see a boost in revenue of around 27%.  It sounds like a realistic number but I have not seen any science to back it up.  Until now.  Check this out!

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