sales leadership
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Sales Podcasts and Video Interviews are Better Than Sales Articles
- January 27, 2017
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Over the years there have been a number of interviews that were well done, and worth listening to and/or watching. A good interview is so dependent on the interviewer, the questions they ask, and their ability to go off script and let the conversation flow.
It is finally time to devote a series to podcasts and interviews. Here are the top interviews with me from the past several years with the most recent at the bottom of the list:
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7 Reasons Why Salespeople Underperform and How Sales Leaders Can Coach Them Up
- January 25, 2017
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
These are smart, talented, experienced sales leaders, who work for companies with excellent reputations, great products and wonderful customers. So why does nearly every sales leader struggle with the problem of under performing salespeople? The biggest problem is that there isn’t one reason – there are many – and I’ll share them with you now.
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The 4 Top Sales Leadership Articles to Boost Sales Today
- August 5, 2016
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
There have been at least 2 lists published of the sales books you should read on the beach this summer so we are not going there! But summer is for sun and fun and some of the best things in life happen during the summer. As a result, we miss some of the best work-related things because we aren’t working as many hours, may be in catch-up mode and not have the time to get to everything we would get to during cooler months. With that in mind, some of the best articles you haven’t read were published this summer!
I’m going to share four of them right here, tell you why the article will help today, and you can decide whether or not to read it.
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A CEO’s Guide to the Differences in Sales Leadership Roles
- June 15, 2016
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
I was reviewing a sales leadership evaluation with my client, a CEO, who was a bit confused over how this was different from a sales management evaluation. He wondered, “Aren’t sales managers and sales leaders the same?”
He has a sales force that was typical of a mid-size business with a Sales VP (the sales leader), 2 sales managers, and about 15 salespeople between them. In my experience, there is a boatload of confusion over the differences between Sales Managers, Sales Directors, Sales VP’s, Regional Sales Managers, National Sales Managers, Senior Sales VP’s, Worldwide Sales VP’s, Sales Operations VP’s, Sales Enablement VP’s and Chief Revenue Officers.
Let’s attempt to explain some of the important differences between Sales Managers and the other Sales Leadership roles.
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How Coyotes are at the Heart of Sales Motivation
- April 21, 2016
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
My family lives west of Boston where it is not uncommon for us to see lots of squirrels, chipmunks, rabbits, deer, the family of foxes that live on our property, and on most nights, we hear coyotes. We usually hear them in the early morning hours, and always thought they were celebrating a kill. Recently, I did some research and learned that this is how coyotes greet each other when they are assembling before going out to hunt – before the kill! For those of you who don’t live in or alongside a forest, a group of wild coyotes usually looks and sounds just like in this 1-minute video that I found on YouTube. That got me thinking about the connection to sales motivation and more.
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Is it OK if You Lose Customers Because of the Evolution of Your Product?
- January 11, 2016
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
One of the inevitable facts of selling is that the Law of Sales is much like the Law of Gravity. “What goes up must come down” loosely translates to “Who you sell will eventually go away.” The only question is whether that will be days, weeks, months, years or decades from now.
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Latest Debate Had Some Great Sales Leadership Examples
- December 17, 2015
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
You didn’t need to watch too much of the debate or watch for too long before hearing some bizarre examples of what some of the GOP candidates would do if they were elected as the Chief Leader of the United States.
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Connecting the Dots on Sales Management
- May 28, 2015
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Do you remember the morning that you couldn’t find your keys, but they were right there on the counter? Or the time that you couldn’t find an article of clothing, but it was hanging right there in your closet the entire time you were looking for it? Or the time you couldn’t find your car in the airport parking garage? And yes, it was right where you parked it. Sometimes, things are right in front of you and you don’t notice them! And that brings us to this sales management topic.
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Verne Harnish’s Rant and 3 Sales Leadership Issues
- February 25, 2015
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
The one newsletter that I never fail to read each week, rain, 7 feet of snow, sub-zero temperatures, or shine, is Verne Harnish’s Weekly Insights (subscribe here). If you are not familiar with Verne (The Growth Guy), he wrote Mastering the Rockefeller Habits and his latest book, Scaling Up: How a Few Companies Make it and the Rest Don’t, is another must-read best seller.
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Keys to Improved Sales Performance – Part 4 of 4
- September 5, 2014
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
If you are like most folks, you were away for at least part of the summer, took as many long weekends as you could, and worked fewer hours on the days you actually did work. As part of getting the work done, you deleted as many emails as you could where a reply wasn’t required and visited fewer websites and blogs.