sales process
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4 Great Sales Lessons from a Notre Dame Commencement Ceremony
- May 17, 2016
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
We were fortunate to be in the audience for the 2016 Notre Dame Commencement where Vice President Joe Biden, former Speaker of the House, John Boehner, and former Joint Chiefs of Staff and retired 4-Star General, Martin Dempsey were among the speakers. While all were good, Biden had one great takeaway, and the General shared 3 tips and an action step. I believe that these are all share-worthy and apply to sales and sales leadership as well, and perhaps even better than they apply to those graduating from universities.
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The 3 Most Important Questions about Sales Process and My Answers
- May 9, 2016
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
With sales process finally getting the necessary attention, we should turn our attention to the three related issues that need to be addressed. Which sales process should you select, and into which CRM application should it be integrated and how can it be customized?
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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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Sure Fire Way to Know Which Sales Opportunities are the Best Sales Opportunities
- February 24, 2016
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
I just love it when cool gets cooler and I’m not talking about the winter weather in New England. About a month ago, I wrote this article on Targeting and shared a generic model for scoring opportunities. George Bronten and Henrik Oquist, CEO and COO of Membrain, took note and developed the concept as a new feature for their world-class CRM application, Membrain. You have to see how we integrated this new feature into the Baseline Selling version of Membrain. In the image below, you can see that we added a scoreboard milestone at two stages of the sales process.
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Must Read – This Email Proves How Poorly the Bottom 74% of Salespeople Perform
- February 17, 2016
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Ken is one of my longtime readers, a former client, and last week he sent this note expressing his frustrations as a buyer of services. I’ll add my comments and conclusions at the end of his note.
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Sales Performance – Stop Worrying About the Words You Say
- January 25, 2016
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
When coaching, most sales managers change the words their salespeople use. “That’s not how I would say it – try this instead!” While there are a couple of key moments in the sales process where the words do actually matter, for 98% of the sales process, it’s about listening and asking appropriate questions, following the process, achieving key milestones, following the company’s general strategy and using appropriate sales tactics. It’s almost never about the actual words. For example, last week I coached a salesperson who was using all of the words the other salespeople on the team were instructed to use – but with vastly different results. I think you’ll find the coaching interesting.
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What True Story Does Your Sales Pipeline Tell You about Your Business?
- November 5, 2015
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
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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.
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Driving, Asking Questions, Inside Sales, and Sales Process with a Twist
- September 8, 2015
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
“You’ve been driving a car since you were a teenager, but your cars have always had an automatic transmission and you’ve always driven on standard roads. Now we will ask you to drive a much larger car, drive it at faster speeds, on an obstacle course, with people in your way. Oh, and one more thing – for the first time, you’ll be driving a six-speed manual transmission. You might be afraid to take your foot off the clutch and put the car into first gear because, if you’re not careful, you might kill those people standing in front of your car!
“That’s how salespeople sometimes feel when they need to be liked and are expected to ask their prospects some really difficult questions. Salespeople think someone will be killed – and they worry that it might be them!”
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Increase Sales by 20% – Guide to Creating an Effective Sales Process
- September 3, 2015
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Earlier this week I received this inquiry form from our “Ask a Sales Expert” page:
Someone from my team always responds to these inquiries and it was my turn. I want to share the correspondence, but it’s even more important to read the accompanying explanation, interpretation, warning and lesson. If I can help you to understand this and get your sales process correct, the data suggests that there is a corresponding 20% increase to sales!