sales methodology

  • 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.

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  • How Can Consultative Selling Already be Dead?

    • April 30, 2015
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    In this article for Middle Market Executive,Tom Searcy insists that Consultative Selling is dead.  He says that consultative sellers end up with buyers who can only make small decisions, experts end up in purchasing and only industry authorities can reach executive decision-makers.  He also says that consultative sellers ask, “What is your pain?”, experts say, “Here is your pain.”, and authorities say, “Here is the pain your industry is having and how you can uniquely overcome it.”

    Is he right?

    Let’s discuss that right now before your clothes go out of style…

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  • Sales Success is Like Making Great Tasting Soup

    • November 3, 2014
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    Sales success is no more about any one competency than great-tasting soup is about one ingredient.  If you omit one ingredient, like salt, the soup will taste bland.  If you omit one competency, like Qualifying, your sales effectiveness will suffer.  While you can’t leave one ingredient out of the soup, it’s also not possible to make soup by focusing on and including only one ingredient.  Likewise, with sales, you can’t expect to succeed, dominate your market, and celebrate your results if you focus on and include only one of the competencies on my list.  

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  • Solitaire and Modern Sales Training – What Should it Cover and Include?

    • October 6, 2014
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    I’ve been playing one of those Solitaire games on my iPad and I can routinely score in the neighborhood of 2 minutes and 30 seconds, with my best time being just under 2 minutes.  I thought I was doing pretty well until I realized that my wife routinely scores between 1 minute and 1:20 seconds with her best scores (not score) being under 1 minute.  She has scored as low as 48 seconds.

    If not for my wife, I would have thought I was a real pro at Solitaire!

    This is exactly how many CEO’s, Presidents and Sales VP’s view their sales forces.  Without anything or anyone with whom to compare, they form their judgements on sales effectiveness in a vacuum.  I routinely hear things like, “We have a custom sales process.”, and “We’ve been working on consultative selling.”  Yet, after a sales force evaluation has been completed, those same companies are routinely found to have been lagging, not leading, in those areas.

    When it comes to providing sales training for your sales force, what exactly, should modern training include?

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  • What is the Best Sales Process for Increasing Sales?

    • July 14, 2014
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    Companies have terrific results when they implement Baseline Selling, and last week a well-known expert asked, “What is the big secret that makes Baseline Selling so powerful?”  He thought it would make for a great article discussion, so let’s attempt to answer that question by starting with a few questions of my own.

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  • What is the Best Sales Model for Your Sales Force?

    • January 28, 2014
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    On its own, the concept of a sales model can be confusing, especially when you mention it in the same breath as sales process and sales methodology.  However, when the word “successful” precedes sales model, it lends more clarity to its purpose.

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  • Why Doesn’t Sales Methodology Get More Attention?

    • January 14, 2014
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    This brings me to my original question, “Why doesn’t sales methodology get more attention from authors, writers and bloggers, and why does sales process get most of the coverage?” 

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  • Baseball’s Huge Impact on Sales Performance

    • January 22, 2013
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    Let’s use Algebra to get a better handle on sales methodology and where it fits in the grand scheme of things.  Consider the following formula:

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  • Another HBR Article on Sales Leaves Me with Mixed Feelings

    • July 20, 2012
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    I was asked to comment on an article called The End of Solution Selling, which appeared in Harvard Business Review.  The article was generally right on, but it also included several things that irritated me enough to question them and the article.

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  • You Can Help Salespeople Burdened with Sales Weaknesses

    • January 23, 2012
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    Sadly, most sales training and sales trainers are unable to help salespeople overcome these weaknesses because their focus is primarily the sales skills and methodology that they teach.  That puts tremendous pressure on sales managers who are simply not equipped to help salespeople overcome things like:

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