sales pipeline

  • Does Being a Strong Qualifier Correlate to Having a Strong Pipeline?

    • August 7, 2018
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    My latest data mining project reveals that the answer to this question is a partial correlation.  

    Check out the two tables below and you’ll see just what I mean.

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  • Sales Pipeline Data Shows That Most Late Stage Opportunities Just Aren’t

    • July 11, 2018
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    If you happened to read the article about most salespeople being fired or arrested if they worked in accounting then this is the sequel – Arrested 2!

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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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  • Discovered – Data Reveals the Biggest Obstacle to Closing More Sales

    • April 30, 2018
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    Humans have been waiting for thousands of years to discover the secrets of life.  Why are we here?  Why do bad things happen?  What happens after we die?  Is Heaven real?  What is God’s plan for us?

    While many experts have attempted to answer all of these questions, most of us lack proof. There’s no data.  If we wake up tomorrow morning and suddenly there are not only answers to these questions, but science-based proof, that would be a game-changer for us.

    Likewise, every day most companies try to determine why their salespeople don’t close more business, why so many opportunities die on the vine, and what they need to do differently to change their results.  They try everything!  Most leaders think it’s an issue of closing skills.  It’s not.  Others think it’s about prospecting.  While that has an impact on the size and quality of the pipeline, it has little to do with results.  But I have discovered the cause, will show you the data, and discuss how to fix it.

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  • Can Sales Statistics be Bad and Good at the Same Time?

    • February 21, 2018
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    I received two pieces of bad news relative to statistics.  

    The first is about my award-winning Blog.  It seems that readers stay with an article for an average of only one-minute or so.  That means that most readers don’t finish the article, fail to get to my summary, and often don’t read long enough to get my point.  Basically, everything that comes after the fourth paragraph is not being read.  This could also be good news.  It could mean that I can actually write shorter articles and that would be great for me!

    The other piece of bad news relates to my award-winning sales training company, Kurlan & Associates.  I reviewed 5 years worth of statistics on opportunities that weren’t closed and it seems that prospects were 6 times more likely to do nothing than to do business with a competitor.  We don’t lose very often and I can count on two hands the number of opportunities I have personally lost in the past 5 years.  But it’s one thing to rarely lose, and another to learn that 6 times more often than not, a company failed to act.   But these statistics are very misleading. Let me explain why.

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  • What You Should Know When Your Cold Prospect Suddenly Returns From the Dead

    • January 15, 2018
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    Last week I wrote about the deep freeze, why prospects suddenly go cold, and how you can prevent that from happening. That article was instantly as popular as any I have ever written.  I also posted a 6-minute  cold-calling rant on LinkedIn that had more than five-thousand views after just a couple of days. The video, like the article, was about mindset, not scripting and tactics.  And last week I also posted an article about writing a good prospecting email.  It seems that there was a theme to the week and it resonated really well with the readers.

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  • Grammar – Why Commas Provide Sales Success Where Periods Fail

    • July 19, 2017
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    The problem is one of grammar.  All of the articles you read, videos you watch and audios you listen to suggest that there is a key to sales success. Period.  But if you change the period to a comma, you’ll quickly see that all of these things are crucial to success in sales.

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  • Predict the Weather but Control the Sales Forecast and Revenue

    • June 6, 2017
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    You may be familiar when the rant sounds like: “It’s almost the end of the quarter, we’re only at 65% of forecast, the pipeline is half empty, and nothing is closing. With the exception of 3 nice deals that came in during May, our salespeople have sucked.” 

    While the crappy weather and your crappy 2nd quarter revenue have crappy in common, there is one huge difference that can help you hit your sales forecast even when the weather forecast is for rain.

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  • Veteran’s Great Quote Makes News and Has Terrific Lessons for the Sales Profession

    • February 21, 2017
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    I might not have nailed his quote word for word, but I’m sure I captured the gist of it. Just think of the sales lessons that can be taken from this!  The short video below is from the interview and below that I will share some lessons for the sales profession.

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  • It’s Coming Sooner Than You Think – 5 Keys to Prepare Your Sales Force for the Recession

    • March 10, 2016
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    You remember the last recession – the great recession – right?  I remember that in November of 2008, the business stopped coming in as if someone had turned off the faucet.  Bam!  We lost a third of our revenue overnight – and we were prepared for it!  I predicted the last recession as early as September of 2006 with this article and in the summer of 2008 with this article.

    In my business, I can see two trends ahead of others and I began seeing both of those factors begin to kick in last month.  Do you know what  they are?

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