sales managers
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Can a New Sales Manager Be a Difference Maker?
- November 9, 2022
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
I speak with so many sales leaders who tell me about the four sales managers they went through in the last two years. I speak with CEOs who tell me about the three sales VPs they went through in the last eighteen months.
There is tremendous pressure to fill these roles because your team’s performance will suffer without someone at the helm. Or is that misinformation? How much worse could a team perform than how they perform under a sucky sales manager?
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New Data: Will Salespeople Hit Quota When Sales Managers Coach and Sell?
- November 7, 2022
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Instead of spending their time on coaching, sales managers are spending too much of their time on personal sales. Sales managers with fewer than 5 salespeople may be required to carry a quota but generally speaking, sales managers are expected to spend no more than 5% of their time selling. OMG’s data shows that the percentage of time that sales managers sell is closer to 13%.
Why do they sell instead of having more coaching conversations? There are several reasons:
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When Your Sales Opportunity Stalls, Do You Call Roadside Assistance?
- October 18, 2021
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
When salespeople get into trouble and an opportunity stalls out or goes off the rails, their sales managers are the sales version of roadside assistance. In the context of a sales opportunity, there are typically three possibilities:
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Sales Managers are Sometimes Like Cashiers
- October 1, 2014
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
At lunchtime one day, my curry-chicken salad tasted so bad that I returned it to the deli next door. The owner asked what was wrong and when I told him, he tasted it, said it was fine, and get this – he returned the uneaten portion of my salad into the bowl in the display case. Yuck! And I never went back. Until yesterday. I was desperate and didn’t have enough time to go anywhere else, but I knew enough to stay away from the specialty salads.
The crowds that used to line up were gone. The staff was about half the size. The menu, and specifically, the browning chicken salads in the display case were still there. The owner was operating the cash register, calling names when their meals were ready, and taking their payments. Instead of working on his business, fixing what was wrong, making much needed changes and urging customers back into his deli, he was handling the money – the one thing that any unskilled worker could do.
He reminded me of so many sales managers I have met during the past 30 years.
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More than Half of All Sales Managers Should Consider….
- May 19, 2009
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
After posting this article two weeks ago, showing the percentage of salespeople who are not trainable, who shouldn’t be in sales, and who are elite, it was inevitable that I would be asked to post similar statistics for sales managers.