sales force evaluation
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Warning to Sales-Focused Companies Wanting to Stay Relevant
- May 30, 2012
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Mike Myatt wrote an article for Forbes‘ online site called, To Increase Revenue Stop Selling. This article has been very heavily viewed and commented. I don’t agree with most of Mike’s suggestions, but in his defense, he is not a sales expert, sales writer, sales manager, sales leader or salesperson. He simply doesn’t like being pitched or sold to and urges salespeople (he doesn’t want them to sell or be called that) to simply let him buy – when he wants, where he wants, how he wants, from whom he wants, and for prices he is comfortable paying. Sounds like retail, doesn’t it?
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Do Chain Reactions Like This Really Occur When Selling?
- May 8, 2012
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Mary always succeeded in finding new opportunities, but her weaknesses, especially her Need for Approval, Discomfort Talking About Money, and Tendency to Become Emotionally Involved, would usually interfere with her ability to gain traction and close the sale. During the past year, she has improved enough so that she is not only finding new business, but closing it too. But she isn’t out of the woods yet.
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Does Your Sales Force Look Like This?
- April 12, 2012
- Posted by: Kurlan & Associates, Inc.
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
I shared just a few of the charts, graphs and tables, which we include in a sales force evaluation when we are answering common, but difficult, business questions such as:
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Are Women in Sales Less Trainable?
- April 3, 2012
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Before I get into trouble for the title of this blog, let me 1.) explain from where it comes and 2.) direct you to another of my articles where I wrote that women make better salespeople than men.
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Illuminate and Dust Off Your Sales Force
- March 14, 2012
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Have you ever noticed the same thing in your home, apartment or office? The air looks clear, but when the sun comes beaming through, it suddenly illuminates billions of tiny dust particles that you didn’t know existed.
Sometimes, you get an even rarer peak into that confused state when you are between awake and asleep. You know you just caught a glimpse of a conversation that even seconds later you can’t recall. But it was there.
It’s the illumination factor that I want to talk about.
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Sales Team Morale is Overrated
- March 2, 2012
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Someone posted the question, “Are you already behind on your YTD sales goals?”.
One responses was another question, “What are some different ways you keep morale high when the team is behind on goals?”
I responded to this question with the following answer:
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Top 7 Reasons Why Ineffective Salespeople Get By
- February 14, 2012
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
the typical salesperson receives, on average, 3 days of sales training in their entire career. I’ve interviewed thousands of salespeople (the good ones who have been recommended by the Assessment and performed well on a phone interview) and most of them have never had a single day of professional sales training. And practice? I can tell you that in the past 26 years, there has not been a single client whose salespeople had been practicing the art and science of selling before I required them to start practicing.
Why aren’t salespeople getting enough professional training before and during their employment?
Why aren’t they getting coached the way they should?
Why aren’t they practicing?
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Top 10 Sales Training Realities Versus What You Believed
- February 8, 2012
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Belief – Most believe that after a day of comprehensive training, salespeople will have the understanding, tools and experience to get on the phone, go out in the field, use what they learned and be effective.
Reality – After a day of training, salespeople still have the old, worn-out, ineffective approach down cold. It’s muscle memory. The new approach (even if they took notes and practiced it during training, even if the approach is highly effective, time-tested and proven) is as strange to them as the thought of eating monkey brains for dinner. They’re still using a modified version of their old approach rather than a modified version of the new approach. They are definitely not using the new approach as taught.
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Before Your Company Hires a Sales Leader…
- January 30, 2012
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
One area where we see this occur repeatedly is when companies are about to hire a Sales VP or Director AND they want to evaluate their sales force too. For some reason, many choose to delay the evaluation until after the VP is in place when in reality, the evaluation should be used to help them select the new sales VP.
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Every Sales Assessment Tells a Story – This is Fred’s Story
- December 19, 2011
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
When his boss couldn’t understand why Fred wasn’t performing, we performed a sales force evaluation and among the things we focused in on was Fred.
Fred’s Sales DNA was generally quite good but when it came to his selling skills, there were a few problems that explained everything.