Sales DNA
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The Requirements for Achieving Sales Excellence
- January 3, 2025
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
For most people, the New Year is a forward-looking time time for goal setting, planning, and resolutions. Nothing wrong with that. But as someone who likes breaking rules and pushing the envelope, I’m starting the New Year by looking back to January of 2024.
Last January, my first article included the introduction of my new Sales Grid. Check it out if you’re not familiar with it because it is a blueprint for quota-busting sales success. Then watch the short video that follows and read the article on how to achieve sales excellence.
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Hydrangeas Tell the Story of Underperforming Salespeople
- September 13, 2024
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
You don’t have to stand by, throw your hands in the air, become frustrated and use hope as your strategy. When did hope even become a strategy? You don’t need to terminate these underperforming salespeople and replace them with new salespeople who might not get it done. Take matters into your own hands, get the help you need to actually develop your salespeople.
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Three Recent Hurricanes Show the Path to More Effective Selling
- September 18, 2023
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
A great example of how much more successful salespeople are when they call on Decision Makers came from a salesperson who messaged me last week. Freddy was excited to talk about his recent success and I have changed his name and company names to protect his identity. Freddy wrote:
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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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When Salespeople Can’t Close Closable Business – The Bob Chronicles Part 7
- February 14, 2022
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
So what did Bob get himself into this time?
It’s a huge opportunity that Bob has been nurturing for years and several months ago his prospect, a top executive that has the influence and authority to make a decision, confided that he would like to find a way to do business and not only that, have this be part of his legacy.
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Data – Top Salespeople are 631% More Effective at This Than Weak Salespeople (The Bob Chronicles – Part 3)
- January 26, 2021
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Bob is up to his old tricks. If you don’t know who Bob is, you can learn about his sales misadventures in this article on not properly selling a trial, and this article about not selling value. Both articles are of the must-read variety.
So what did Bob do to piss me off this week?
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Dave Kurlan’s Predictions for Sales Organization in 2020
- December 16, 2019
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Before I can make any predictions for 2020, let’s start with these ten simple truths about selling for proper context.
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The Best Salespeople are 2733% More Likely to Have This Than the Worst Salespeople
- July 11, 2019
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
86% of all salespeople have beliefs that don’t support ideal sales outcomes. That’s important because beliefs influence behavior, and appropriate sales behavior drives results. Think about sales process, sales methodology, sales strategy and sales tactics. Salespeople who have the ability to execute those four elements of success are less dependent on their knowledge of selling than what they believe. While most salespeople have self-limiting beliefs, it should not surprise you that only 18% of the elite salespeople – the top 5% – have self-limiting beliefs. But it drops off rapidly from there. Below I have listed the percentage of salespeople with self-limiting Beliefs by performance levels.
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The 21-Day Solution for the Toughest Sales Weaknesses
- April 5, 2019
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
I wrote a popular article called, How the Rubber Band Sabotages Sales Performance. That article discussed six competencies specific to Sales DNA and the impact those six have on performance when they appear as weaknesses. At the end of last week’s article, I promised to introduce a solution to you within a week and true to my promise, the solution follows.
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How the Rubber Band Sabotages Sales Performance
- April 1, 2019
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
I have written many articles about Sales DNA, the combination of strengths that support sales process, sales strategy and sales tactics; or, when it appears as a weakness and sabotages ones ability to execute.
Unlike strategies and tactics, where you can learn and apply them, improving your Sales DNA requires much more effort and time.