sales leadership
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Is Your Sales Force More Like a Dunkin’, Starbucks or Panera Drive Thru?
- January 21, 2020
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
This all begs the question, is the sales force at your company more like the Dunkin’, Starbucks, or Panera drive-thru? Today’s article will explain how to answer that question.
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How Sales Coaching Utilizes a Quid Pro Quo
- October 24, 2019
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Quid pro quo is all the rage. The news networks are pointing to and from quid pro quo and arguing whether it was or wasn’t implied. Regardless of which side of the political spectrum you’re on, you’ve probably heard it plenty more than you need to.
Could there be a sales coaching lesson here?
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Popularity Polls are Just Like Sales Management Tracking Metrics!
- January 8, 2019
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Have you ever watched a news program where they presented poll results, like the number of people in favor of legalizing marijuana? The poll shows popular opinion, but not the facts, logic, or impact on arrests, the economy, traffic accidents, unemployment, addiction, death rates, etc. There is a huge difference between people’s often uninformed opinions, versus what the facts might suggest. That’s the problem with the statistics I’m going to share in this article. The stats show what sales managers are doing but those managers are largely uninformed. They don’t know what’s good for them, haven’t been asked or held accountable to doing it differently, and aren’t in any way shape or form following best practices. John Pattison, Objective Management Group’s COO, mined some data on salespeople who report to sales managers. I was appalled by what I saw. Check this out!
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Glue – The Missing Element That Makes Every Sales Training Initiative Successful
- February 26, 2018
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
I find that even the most seasoned and resistant of salespeople get to this point: When they realize how much more there is to selling, how much more effective they can be, how much more business they could generate, how they don’t need to have the best price, and how much easier selling can be, they become eager learners. That brings us to the question to be answered in today’s article: If most salespeople become eager learners and embrace good sales training, why don’t all companies experience equally tremendous revenue growth from sales training?
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B2B Salespeople Send 16,000+ Unqualified Proposals Each Day!
- November 30, 2017
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
If you have a role in sales or sales leadership then what could be better than knowing exactly how you and/or your salespeople REALLY compare with the other salespeople in your industry or in the world? Could anything be more fascinating than a visual or infographic depicting how effective your sales force is at various aspects of selling? And what if these visuals could demonstrate that B2B salespeople create and send more than 16,000 inappropriately timed proposals each day? Cool, huh? More on that data in a minute.
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How to Simplify Coaching Salespeople
- May 19, 2017
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
When you take sales coaching, baseball, watching video and put it all together, what do you get?
You get the post-call debrief – the most powerful tool for great sales coaching.
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Which Salespeople are Easier to Train – Millennials or Veteran Salespeople?
- April 19, 2017
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
We brought home a puppy and we had him completely housebroken in 4 days. He’s really smart and we’ve done this before, a combination that makes it nearly impossible to screw up. To see him go to the door and touch it with his little paw, whimper when he is in his crate, go outside and do his business, and run back to the door is great. But it got me wondering, why is training a puppy relatively fast and easy while it is so much harder and takes so much longer to train salespeople?
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Successful Movie Franchises and the 10 Keys to Impactful Sales Coaching
- April 3, 2017
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Today’s coaching session must be so good that the salesperson does not want it to end. Not only that, but the salesperson can’t wait to come back for more coaching. Now, be honest with yourself for a moment. Assuming that you regularly and consistently coach all of your salespeople, is your coaching so powerful that your salespeople can’t wait for another session with you?
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Veteran’s Great Quote Makes News and Has Terrific Lessons for the Sales Profession
- February 21, 2017
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
I might not have nailed his quote word for word, but I’m sure I captured the gist of it. Just think of the sales lessons that can be taken from this! The short video below is from the interview and below that I will share some lessons for the sales profession.
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Another Powerful Reason Why Salespeople Struggle to Become Great Sales Managers
- February 2, 2017
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
We talk a lot about the mistake so many companies make when they take their best salespeople and make them sales managers. While it’s not always a mistake, the most commonly discussed reasons include: