sales effectiveness

  • Crappy Salespeople and Lack of Urgency Alignment  – The Bob Chronicles Part 4

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

    This is the fourth installment in the Bob Chronicles.  Bob is the weak salesperson who represents the bottom 50% of all salespeople. You can read previous installments about Bob below:

    The $225,000 Mistake That Most Salespeople Make

    Data – The Top Salespeople are 631% More Effective at This Than Weak Salespeople 

    Good Bob, Bad Bob, The Stockdale Paradox and Sales Success

    You’re probably wondering, what did Bob screw up this time?  He screwed up urgency.  You might be asking how a salesperson could possibly screw up urgency but Bob and the rest of the weak salespeople screw up just about everything else so why not urgency too?

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  • 31 Conditions That Predict Your Sales Opportunity is in Trouble

    • April 16, 2021
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    Last week, a crazy driver pulled out right in front of me and despite the fact that I anticipated his stupidity and would have been able to stop before smashing into this moron, my car wasn’t as certain as I was.  My Genesis took matters into its own hands and went into all out protection mode – making sure nothing happened to it or me.

    As advertised, it took over the braking and steering to protect itself, sounded all the alarms to alert me to its strategy and then did two things that really surprised me.  All at once, the seat enveloped me in a cocoon and the seat belt tightened around my shoulders so that there was no chance that I was leaving that seat.  Going through the windshield?  Not a chance unless the whole seat was coming with me!

    That was cool. 

    And it got me thinking.  Wouldn’t it be cool if salespeople had a sales version of an early warning system/driver assist like my car has?

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  • 2020’s Ten Must Read Sales and Sales Leadership Articles

    • November 30, 2020
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force
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  • The Correlation Between Milestones, Sales Process and Sales Success

    • October 26, 2020
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    Back in the early 90’s, in the very early days of OMG, only 9% of all salespeople had and/or followed a sales process.  While that has improved dramatically in the last 30 years, to 45%, it is still way too low.  Check out these findings.

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  • The Keys to Fourth Quarter Sales Success in 2020

    • October 20, 2020
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    You’re probably going to hate this article!  I’m going to show you that much of what is transpiring with the Pandemic could be having a greater impact than you realize relative to the future state of your business and you might not like what I have to say.  As always, if you can hang in through some of the preliminary analysis, I’ll make the pivot to sales and business.

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  • The Crucial Step Missing from Most Sales Training Programs

    • September 21, 2020
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    There is a lesson here for those of us in the sales development space.  When we train, coach and develop salespeople, we must demand that customer service get the training and coaching required so as to not sabotage the great work we do with sales organizations.

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  • Why it is so Difficult to Compare Sales Effectiveness from One Salesperson to Another

    • July 15, 2020
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    Today we’ll discuss how to measure sales effectiveness of different salespeople despite there being so many variables to confuse the matter.  You can scroll directly to that topic or, if you don’t mind, please read my 3 paragraphs of context.

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  • The Real Reason Why So Many Salespeople are So Bad at Selling

    • June 8, 2020
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    In today’s article, I will explain why this problem exists and how it relates to a bigger problem in sales.

    The people who don’t return calls are usually technical in nature.  The garage door openers, gate electronics, and glass people are all entrepreneurs running small businesses and their expertise is not sales or customer service, it’s their technical subject matter expertise. 

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  • What is the Sales Stack and Do You Need it?

    • October 2, 2019
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    You bought a really nice, new, laptop computer and you thought to yourself, “Now I’m all set!”  But are you?  You needed a case to carry it around, a thumb drive for quickly moving files from your laptop to another, and a printer and if you have a Mac notebook, a port that will serve as adapters to your various cables.  These are your accessories.

    You’ll also need cloud storage, a broadband connection, email, a browser and 20 or so software applications so your computer can help you do the things you purchased it to do.  This is your technology stack.

    But now there is a sales stack too.  What is the sales stack, and should you have one for your salespeople?

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  • How Big of a Role Does Age Play in Sales Effectiveness?

    • August 19, 2019
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    Young salespeople (0-2 years experience) tend to wing it, while older salespeople (20 or more years experience) tend to be more skilled and structured.  Want proof?  Let’s dig into the data.

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