sales process

  • 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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  • Sales Playbook and CRM Problems – What the Data Tells Us

    • June 6, 2018
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    That leads me to the growing demand for Sales Playbooks.  Companies want them, get excited about them, believe they are important, pay tens of thousands of dollars for them, and invest many hours collaborating for a successful final document.  You won’t believe the wasteful things that happen next!

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  • New Data Shows How Relationships and the Need to be Liked Impact Sales Performance

    • June 4, 2018
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    In my most recent article, I shared data that showed a chain reaction would occur when salespeople have more than one major weakness in their Sales DNA and the second major weakness is their tendency to become emotional. As a trigger, the first major weakness causes the salesperson to become emotional, at which time their listening skills become compromised.

    That article can be found here and as of this writing nearly 6 dozen LinkedIn subscribers have contributed some very insightful comments here.  Their comments inspired me to dig even further and look into the correlation between relationship building that salespeople do and their need to be liked.  In this study, even I was surprised by what I found!

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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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  • Improper Use of BANT Will Cause You to Kill Opportunities

    • April 26, 2018
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    I received an email asking me to check out an article on the Salesforce.com blog that features an infographic they hoped I would promote.

    The article focuses on the middle of the funnel and the handoff between marketing and sales.  In doing so, they discuss MQL’s (Marketing Qualified Leads) and SQL’s (Sales Qualified Leads).  While I don’t have an issue with the infographic, I have huge issues with the content of the article and if you follow the advice in this article, you’ll have far fewer MQL’s that your salespeople can turn into SQL’s.

    Here’s why.

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  • Would You Like to be Selling Guns Right Now?

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

    What if you sell for a company whose products are not reliable, lack the latest and greatest features, aren’t a good fit, or don’t have competitive pricing?  That would suck, wouldn’t it?  What if you sell for one of America’s 20 Most Hated Companies?  That would suck too.  But those sales organizations are not disintegrating, their salespeople are not heading for the doors and their revenues are not in a nosedive.  Most of the outrage, hate, and reputation-killing is taking place in the media, not with their customers.

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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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  • Is the Sales Force Getting Dressed Up or are Real Changes Taking Place?

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

    Yesterday I received an email from Richardson Training, letting me know that they have completed their 2018 Selling Challenges Study.  The data in the report, which you can download here, hasn’t changed a great deal since 2017, but the report’s new look is awesome.  I reported on last year’s report in detail here, but my conclusion for 2018 is the exact same conclusion I came to in 2017.

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  • Predictions for 2018 – The Sales Triad Will Provide Record Sales Growth

    • January 29, 2018
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    With and additional competition, I can tell you this.  If you aren’t the low price leader, the best-known company, or the safest decision that a buyer can make, you will have to do some real SELLING to get that business.  And not just selling, but thoughtfully, effectively, efficiently, and articulately selling value.  What?  You already sell value?  Really?  I’ll bet you don’t. 

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  • 7 Reasons Why Prospects Go Cold and How to Avoid it

    • January 5, 2018
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    If you change your perspective about prospects going cold, you might discover that you caused them to go cold, rather than the myriad of other possibilities.  I’ll explain.

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