sales management
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How Selling is Just Like Driving a Car
- June 5, 2012
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
If you can make the adjustments when you are driving, then you should be able to make similar adjustments when you are selling. Those adjustments, in no particular order, include being sure that:
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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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Contractual Obligation is a Missing Link of Sales Success
- May 31, 2012
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
However, there is one area of sports for which there is no sales analogy. Say it isn’t so!
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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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Sales Coaching Lessons from the Baseball Files
- May 24, 2012
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
This sequence of analysis and tweaking works in exactly the same way when coaching salespeople. You should be able to immediately identify what went wrong, when it went wrong, how it went wrong and demonstrate how to prevent and fix it. The last two steps must take place through role-play. Are you doing that effectively?
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Are Sales Leaders More Receptive to Training Than Salespeople?
- May 16, 2012
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
When a room full of sales leaders arrive for two days of intensive training, there are many things that can and do happen. Here are ten of them:
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The Other Rejection – How Salespeople Struggle to Cope
- May 9, 2012
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
I gave this some thought and identified the following 10 reactions to Passive Rejection:
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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 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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What Makes a Lead a Good Lead?
- February 22, 2012
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
A dozen leads came in today and among them were leads from DELL and Bose. Both are large companies and might even make great clients but are they good leads? That all depends on who you ask.
So I pretended to ask 6 salespeople that I’ve worked with over the past several years. I pretended to say, “I have leads from DELL and Bose – are you interested in either of them?” And here is how the imaginary conversation went from there: