sales management
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Get Sales Compensation Right to Recruit Winning Salespeople
- August 13, 2013
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Sales candidates, especially good ones, are exponentially more difficult to attract than they were just two years ago. We regularly observe clients struggling when it comes to getting resumes from quality candidates. One of the reasons is compensation.
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Why Can’t We Hire This Sales Candidate?
- July 22, 2013
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
We interviewed him; she’s from our industry; we really like him; but your assessment says she is not recommended. Why can’t we hire her?
That’s probably the single, most frequently asked question that we hear.
So, to answer the “Why can’t we?” question, there are two more questions:
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How Much Sales Development Can Leadership Do In-House?
- July 17, 2013
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
From time to time, clients want to handle some of the services we provide in-house. “Why can’t we do the sales process ourselves?” They can, but a few questions come to mind. If they didn’t have an effective, efficient, optimized, formal, structured sales process for the last 20 years, where would this expertise suddenly come from to create this process tomorrow? What if they get it wrong?
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Baseball and Selling Revisited – A Powerful Analogy
- June 12, 2013
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
A salesperson tells you about a great-looking opportunity that has been forecast to close this month. “We’re definitely getting this and it’s an awesome opportunity for us. We’re going to knock this one out of the park!”
At the end of the month, the deal hasn’t closed and you question your salesperson about it. You are told that the decision-maker has been away on vacation, but as soon as he returns, the deal is sure to get done.
A month later, nothing has changed. This time, the salesperson admits that he has had a little difficulty reaching the decision-maker, but he is sure that nothing has changed. You are assured that everything is good.
Six months later, when the deal still hasn’t closed, you force the salesperson to archive the opportunity with the salesperson still not understanding what went wrong.
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Salespeople Must Stop Snorkeling and Start Scuba Diving
- May 15, 2013
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
We talk a lot about the importance of using a consultative approach instead of a transactional approach to better differentiate and sell value instead of price. When we explain consultative selling, we usually emphasize the importance of listening and questioning. When we further explain effective listening and questioning, it becomes much more difficult to describe in a paragraph or in the absence of a demonstration or role-play.
Until today.
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Is the “Lack of Commitment to Sales Success” Finding Predictive?
- May 7, 2013
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
So you have your sales force evaluated and in addition to learning why you are getting the results you are getting, and what you can do to significantly improve those results, you are surprised by some of the individual findings on some of your salespeople. One of the findings that generates the most push-back is Lack of Commitment to sales success.
We could hear any of the following comments as push-back to this finding:
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When Sales Coaching, Best Practices and Books are Ignored
- May 6, 2013
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Coaching is crucial to the success of any sales force; however, coaching without the context of an effective sales process, pipeline, metrics to drive revenue, motivation and accountability aren’t enough. So, our events integrate these additional elements to make for a well-rounded, comprehensive two days.
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Top 20 Reasons Why Sales Managers Suck at Coaching
- April 4, 2013
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
So why aren’t more sales managers effective at coaching salespeople? Here are my top 19 reasons and I left #20 open so that you could add your two-cents worth.
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This is How Sales Managers Should Coach Their Salespeople
- March 13, 2013
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
A salesperson told me he met with a customer that had taken their business to a competitor because of price. It sounded like they were getting what they were paying for:
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Best Example of Value-Added vs. Commodity Selling
- March 7, 2013
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
I wrote an article for the March 2013 issue of Top Sales World Magazine that debriefs an actual sales call. I’ve written more than 1,000 articles and I believe this one is the best yet! The article effectively details an actual value-added consultative sales call which, because of a single incorrect question, quickly became a transactional, commodity-based, price-driven call. The example is really striking because it so clearly shows that you can do everything correctly but asking even one question the wrong way can cause a salesperson to lose the opportunity to be a trusted advisor, and fall into the abyss of commodity sellers.