sales methodology
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Homicide Detective Makes Best Case for Sales Process
- March 21, 2024
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
The author admits that until he conducted his “cold-case investigation” of the New Testament, he was an atheist who always followed the evidence to find the truth. Similarly, a lot of prospects are also non-believers – not necessarily in Jesus – in your product or service. As I read and learned about the author’s methods for uncovering truth, or proof, I felt that salespeople could learn a lot about proof of concept, presenting facts, backing up claims, return on investment, and offering credible testimonials. That’s not nearly the analogy I’m going to make.
Wallace shared a story in the Forward about the time he was shot by a criminal who was on parole, and was not allowed to have a firearm. Up until the moment of the shooting, Wallace believed that a bullet-proof vest would stop a bullet. In the moment of the shooting, he believed in the bullet proof vest. At that moment his belief changed from “belief that” to “belief in.” That was the analogy he wished to apply to the gospels. He wondered if he could find the evidence to replace faith (belief that the miracles occurred) with proof (belief in both Jesus and the miracles).
That also happens to be my analogy from the book. Most salespeople believe that a sales process can help them succeed while the very best salespeople believe in their sales process.
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25 Sales Experts on the Importance of Coaching Salespeople
- February 25, 2024
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Sales managers are still not coaching – at least not consistently or effectively. As a reminder, consistent daily coaching increases revenue by 28% and when it is paired with effective coaching, revenue increases by 43%. It’s simply incomprehensible that sales managers aren’t picking up the clue phone.
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Whipped Cream! The Easiest Way to Lower Sales Resistance
- February 13, 2024
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Most sales training fails to address the single most important condition of a sales cycle – resistance – thereby rendering the sales training semi-useless. When resistance appears, it does not matter if the sales process, methodology, tactics and strategies are good or even great, unless salespeople are equally great at lowering the resistance.
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My New Perspective on Sales Process and Methodology
- August 8, 2023
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
We were at the Zoo when we came upon the monkey in the picture. He was holding on to the chainlink fence with both hands and both feet – probably not very unusual for a monkey – but he was sitting on a basketball!
The monkey is following a traditional monkey methodology for hanging on, while being authentic, allowing his silly personality to come through, and getting people who were interacting with him to laugh.
We can even apply that approach to sales process and methodology!
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Use Music to Understand the 12 Criteria Prospects Use to Buy from Salespeople
- June 12, 2023
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Yesterday, while watching our son play in a summer collegiate baseball game, I missed a step and tumbled all the way down the bleachers. Isn’t that a great analogy for what happens when you miss, or skip a crucial step in the sales process? More than half of all salespeople are missing and skipping important milestones in the sales process each and every day and their egos get more bruised from failing to close those opportunities than my body got bruised from my not so thrilling adventure to the ground.
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Top Sales Videos and Rants From Dave Kurlan
- March 21, 2022
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
From time to time I record impromptu unscripted rants as well as some that are more well thought-out videos. From among the collection presented below, most are rants so the rants are much more popular. The most-watched (I have added to the list so there are more than 10 now!) videos are shown below in order of popularity and while I like all of them, I indicated my personal favorites with an asterisk. All but three of the videos are three-minutes or less, one is six-minutes, one is ten-minutes and one is eight-minutes. Topics include:
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How I Realized That Selling is Just a Bunch of Crap
- October 31, 2018
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Those are strong words and probably quite surprising coming out of my mouth but I’ll explain it all. Earlier this week I was leading another Sales Leadership Intensive and during a break it came to me.
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Remembering The Most Powerful Sales Lesson of My Life
- September 6, 2016
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Which one thing helps almost every salesperson succeed, even when they have other challenges?
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Can Free Sales Content Send You Down a Dangerous Path?
- May 2, 2016
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
I downloaded a Sales Process Cheat Sheet which promised a standardized playbook and a simple, easy-to-follow sales methodology to help managers coach their inside sales reps into following a proven, standardized process from discovery to close. Was there value? It was a joint promotion from Hubspot and InsideSales.com. – maybe you received the same offer in your inbox. Was it any good? Was it a process? Was it a playbook? Was it a methodology?
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Sales Slumps – What Causes Them and How to Fix Them
- September 28, 2015
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
During the course of a baseball season, both hitters and pitchers fall into slumps. In basketball, players slump with their outside shots and from the foul line. Football Quarterbacks go into passing slumps. Golf and Tennis pros have swing slumps. Tiger has been in a slump since Thanksgiving of 2009! (I’m sure there must be some kind of a slump that Soccer players can fall victim to, but I don’t know enough about soccer to weigh in.) With slumps being so common, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that salespeople get into slumps too. In this article, we’ll explore what causes salespeople to get into slumps, what their slumps look like, and how can they be fixed.