sales performance

  • Do the Best Sales Managers Have the Best Salespeople?

    • August 27, 2018
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    We all see the effects that strong leaders have when they surround themselves with either strong, mediocre or weak people.  What happens when strong leaders inherit a mixed team?  What happens when they hire a mixed team?  What happens when we ask the same questions about weak leaders?

    I dug into a subset of data from Objective Management Group’s (OMG) evaluations of the salespeople who report to more than 15,000 sales managers to determine whether the best sales managers actually have the best salespeople.  I was surprised and disappointed by what I found.  Check this out!

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  • Latest Data Shows Most Salespeople Would be Fired or Arrested if they Worked in Accounting

    • July 2, 2018
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    In this article, we will look to determine whether there is a correlation between sales percentile, sales pipeline and sales performance.  And as has been the case with the last ten articles like this, the data is sure to surprise.

    OMG includes a pipeline analysis as part of every Sales Force evaluation it conducts. We ask each salesperson 19 questions about four late-stage, proposal-ready/closable opportunities currently in their pipeline.  In the table below, the percentage of salespeople who actually had 4 late-stage opportunities on which they could report are sorted by Sales Percentile.

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  • Persistence Over Polish – What the Top 10% of All Salespeople Do Better

    • March 12, 2018
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    The best athletes in the world know exactly how they do the things they do that make them so great.  In addition to their God-given talent, they outworked everyone else to master the mechanics and nuances of their sport, the mindset required for greatness, and competed at a high level from a very young age.  When they falter they can easily make the adjustments necessary to get back on track.

    Interestingly, most top salespeople don’t know what it is that they do that makes them so successful! That’s surprise #1.  If you look through the data on the 2,.3 million salespeople that Objective Management Group (OMG) has assessed, you will see that the top 10% of all salespeople have better average scores than their colleagues in each of the 21 Sales Core Competencies.  Their average scores are listed below for 5 Sales Core Competencies in which they have the best scores.  They are:

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  • What We Can Learn from the Latest Data on Sales Motivation

    • July 25, 2017
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    Sales Motivation is just one of the 21 Sales Core Competencies that we measure, but as with all of the competencies, we go very deep.

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  • How Your Salespeople Measure Up in the 21 Most Crucial Sales Competencies for Modern Selling

    • April 4, 2017
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    This is really about sales professionals who place more faith in the traits that are consistent with their beliefs, fearing that their actual capabilities won’t match up with the science.  People want to see themselves in the most popular, positive way.  They don’t want to discover that they might be lacking in 10 of the 21 Sales Core Competencies or have gaps in all 21.

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  • Is Excuse Making Actually the Biggest Obstacle to Increasing Sales?

    • December 14, 2016
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    I’ve talked a lot about excuse making and the powerful difference between using your index finger, which points outward, versus your thumb, which points inward.  Today, Brandon Steiner wrote a great little article about taking responsibility.

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  • Top 10 Reasons Why Sales Don’t Grow

    • August 24, 2016
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    Despite knowing that things don’t fix themselves, thousands of executives believe that sales problems will resolve themselves, change, and improve.  Why?

    That’s the key question.  Because when you don’t know exactly what’s wrong, it’s much easier to remain in denial.

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  • Preppers – Who They are and What They Share with Elite Salespeople

    • March 28, 2016
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

     As you know, urgency leads to action and that brings us to our topic.  Who are Preppers and what do they share with Elite Salespeople?

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  • How March Madness Applies to Salespeople and Your Sales Force

    • March 18, 2016
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    You have a choice – be part of the elite 7%; be part of the strong 16% or be part of the crappy 77%.

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  • How Wrong are Company Methods to Rank and Compensate Salespeople?

    • February 23, 2016
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    When report cards and grades are available, measuring the academic success of your child or grandchild is a lot easier than it is to measure sales success.  School grades go up and we say, “Great effort!”  School grades go down and we say, “Oh-oh, something is seriously wrong here!”   Academic grades are a reflection of test scores, completed homework and class participation. Sales grades are another story altogether and that is where most companies make terrible, horrible, awful mistakes.  Do you think you know what those mistakes are?

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