sales leadership
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Best Way to Sell and/or Manage a Sales Force?
- January 10, 2013
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
The biggest issue affecting salespeople, sales managers, sales leaders and even Presidents and CEO’s is this: For most of them, the way they know, the way they do it today, the way they have always done it, is the “best way”. They simply don’t know what they don’t know. Of course, some are worse than that. They know that they know it all.
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Top 5 Reasons Why Sales Cold Calls Are So Awful
- November 12, 2012
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Today I listened to voicemails from three salespeople who cold called me.
The good news is that three people actually made cold calls! The bad news is that not much has changed. Despite the tools, training, coaching, video, audio and reading that are available, all three calls were as bad as I’ve ever heard.
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When Sales Leaders Don’t Lead With Their Strengths
- November 5, 2012
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
I received a request for all of my articles to date which reference Objective Management Group’s Sales VP/Director Assessment. I conducted a quick search and found – what? None! Out of nearly 1,000 articles, I hadn’t referenced OMG’s Sales VP/Director Assessment even once! I’ll fix that right now.
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Disagreement Over Sales Leadership Best Practices?
- July 17, 2012
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
When sales leaders initiate the questions, how do they differentiate best practices from stupid practices?
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How the Right Sales Leader Can Turn Around Sales Performance
- June 12, 2012
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
What kind of people problems have you created?
How can you fix them? -
10 Best Sales Force Articles That You Probably Didn’t Read (Yet)
- June 4, 2012
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
I’ve written 930 articles for this Blog. Some, that I don’t think are particularly good, are the most popular, getting thousands of reads here, and thousands more on other sites that republish them. Others, which I think are very good and/or important, are hardly noticed, usually because of either the title, day of the week, or time of day.
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Why Do So Many Salespeople Fail to Make Quota?
- April 26, 2012
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
The statistics are staggering. In some sectors, fewer than 25% of all salespeople will make quota. Even best-in-class companies are lucky when fewer than 80% of their salespeople make quota. Are you OK with it when your own salespeople fail to make quota? There are a number of possible reasons for this widespread mediocrity and failure and, depending on the company, some or all of them may apply.
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Sales Leaders Got These Issues All Wrong
- April 16, 2012
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
I couldn’t help but notice that for most companies, including the best-in-class, their initiatives were not in alignment with the business pressures which they reported having. Here are their business pressures:
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A Different Look at Sales Compensation
- April 6, 2012
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
With a salaried position, salespeople are essentially on a fixed income – perhaps a more attractive fixed income than a retiree, but fixed none the less. And these days, with most people living at or above their means, fixed simply becomes another word for broke! The thought of coming up with $75,000 in discretionary funds is daunting unless a salesperson is the rare exception who has been squirreling away most of his income. This is the world of the salaried salesperson. Play it safe, but don’t expect any big commission checks.
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Sales Strategy and Tactics – Thoughts from the Super Bowl
- February 6, 2012
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
In my opinion, football is the sport based more on strategy while baseball is the sport based more on tactics.