Sales Force

  • Election Day – Like Decision Making Day for a Sales Opportunity?

    • November 2, 2010
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    Politicians get elected one vote at a time.  Salespeople win sales one prospect at a time. 

    read more

  • Top 10 Reasons Consultative Sellers Outsell Everyone Else

    • October 1, 2010
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    Have you ever worked with salespeople that were so bad you thought, “She couldn’t close a door!”?  And have you ever worked with salespeople that were so good that you thought, “She could sell white to rice!”?

    There’s a good chance that the difference has less to do with their closing skills and much more to do with their ability to build a late stage relationship in the earliest stage of the sales process – the first meeting.

    So what do they do?  Here are the top ten things they do:

    read more

  • How Obama, Dan Pink, The Heaths, Steinbrenner and Kurlan Might Prepare Your Sales Force for Change

    • September 24, 2010
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force
    read more

  • The Search for Perfection – How it Can Ruin Your Sales Efforts

    • September 15, 2010
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    You work hard, diligently and creatively to develop something and it comes out, well, almost perfect.

    But as I mentioned earlier, there is a dark side to perfection and I’ll share the gory details with you here. 

    read more

  • Salespeople Become More Effective Part 2

    • September 10, 2010
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    Yesterday’s article discussed the possibility for salespeople to develop weaknesses AFTER being assessed and during the period of comprehensive sales training, coaching and development.  Today, we’ll discuss some of the areas where you should see fairly early improvement, as well as the areas where you need to see it but may not.

    read more

  • Salespeople Become More Effective But Can They Become Worse?

    • September 9, 2010
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    Objective Management Group (OMG) provides Progress Evaluations to determine how much improvement has taken place during the period of time since an individual or a team was originally assessed.  In most cases, especially when effective training and coaching has taken place, significant to dramatic improvement occurs.  Occasionally though, a salesperson will appear to be worse – weaker – than the first time.  How could this be?

    I’ll explain some of the scenarios where this should not be alarming, as well as some where it should.

    read more

  • The Whiners – Salespeople Who Get Your Attention

    • September 8, 2010
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    Prospects, Customers, Salespeople, Managers and Senior Executives are all guilty of whining.

    Great Leaders, great sales managers, and great salespeople do not.

    Let’s focus in on salespeople.  Why do they whine?  Why do they look for things to complain about?

    read more

  • How to Close the Deal that Your Salespeople Can’t Close

    • August 10, 2010
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    Sometimes, when your salespeople are trying to close a sale, the deal stalls, gets put-off, or simply doesn’t close.  This is followed by, well, follow up, leading to more put-offs.  There are many reasons why this happens but for the purpose of this article, let’s simply assume that the prospect has every reason to buy and the salesperson did not do anything glaringly wrong along the way.  Simply a closable opportunity that hasn’t closed yet.  In situations like this, there are usually two things going on:

    read more

  • More Sales Coaching Leads to Accelerated Growth

    • July 14, 2010
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    Your salespeople have the opportunity to replay their last call – one that probably had a horrible ending – and learn from it…

    Your salespeople can experience a live version of reincarnation every day! 

    There are two keys that can’t be overlooked though:

    read more

  • This One Tip Helps Salespeople Close More Business

    • July 13, 2010
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    Everyone likes options, right?  Yes, people love options.  The only problem is that options prevent most people from being able to make decisions. 

    read more