sales management

  • The Importance of Pride, Self-Esteem and Confidence in Sales

    • January 29, 2010
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    Bob is a believer in performance based pay – for everyone – and sees the day coming where everyone is compensated on performance.

    His top tips for success:

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  • What Makes You Think You Have a Sales or Recruiting Process?

    • January 22, 2010
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    It’s true.  Executives brag about their processes.  “Oh, yes, we spent the last 15 years developing our process and it’s wonderful – wait until you see it!”  It never matters whether they’re talking about a recruiting process or a sales process, the common denominator is the pride they take in what they created.

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  • 18 Business Trends For Your Sales Force

    • January 21, 2010
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    Before they handled one caller’s sales force challenges (excellent stuff) , they commented on the state of business out there right now.

    They see:

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  • The Defining Moments in your Sales Cycle

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

    What are some of the more subtle, but important, key moments in your sales process that affect every sales outcome?

    If I were to review some recent conversations with clients and their salespeople, crucial accomplishments included:

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  • What is Maximum Effort on the Sales Force?

    • January 11, 2010
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    here is a third type of salesperson, one of the elite top 5%, who can consistently maintain maximum effort for much of the year.  But that salesperson isn’t the norm.  So the questions that come from this are these:

    Are the top 5%’ers A players or super human players?

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  • When, How and Why Salespeople Discount Products and Services

    • January 6, 2010
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    When I pick up the dogs, Heather gives me the bill.  When it’s $140, I pay, she gets the dogs for me, and we leave.  However, when the bill is $800, Heather gets really uncomfortable, and begins editing the invoice and always seems to get it under $650. Nice, right?  Only if you’re a customer.  If you’re Bob, the owner, who has no clue she is doing this, what must it be like for him?

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  • Missing Sales Research and a Call for Sales Superstars

    • December 16, 2009
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    I read this article on the Best-Kept Secrets of Sales Research.

    First, I wouldn’t call this sales research as much as market intelligence. 

    Second, I wouldn’t exactly call this stuff secretive.

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  • Lance Armstrong’s Metrics Applied to the Sales Force Equals Results

    • December 4, 2009
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    Recently, I completed Lance Armstrong’s 2001 book on how he became a champion cyclist, was diagnosed with Cancer, beat the cancer, and then returned to become the greatest cyclist in the world.  It was an inspiring, fast-reading book.  While this won’t come as a surprise to my cyclist friends, I was quite surprised to learn how metric-intensive competitive cycling is.

    While training for races, Lance uses a heavy and expensive power meter that measures output (wattage). For the big race, he uses a smaller and lighter top of the line cycling computer to track speed, heart rate, incline, cadence, altitude gain, and power output. He simply adjusts his cycling until the numbers are where they were when he was training at peak performance and he figures the rest will take care of itself. Wow.

    Sales is exactly the same.  You train hard and once the metrics have been established, you simply continue to meet those numbers and the rest will take care of itself.  Simple.

    There are only a few problems with this:

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  • Motivation – 3rd of the 10 Kurlan Sales Management Functions

    • November 13, 2009
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    There is nothing more powerful than finishing every conversation, meeting and interaction with some kind of call to action.

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  • 13 Most Important Tools for Coaching Salespeople

    • November 11, 2009
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    This is the 1st in the series of the Top 10 Kurlan Sales Management Functions.

    #1 – COACHING

    In its simplest form, sales coaching consists of the following two activities:

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