sales process
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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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Baseball, Sales Cycles, and the Quest for Shorter
- September 23, 2014
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
In selling, there are even more options for shortening the sales cycle. They 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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My Top 21 Keys to Help Your Sales Force Dominate Today
- July 8, 2014
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Do you have salespeople who are busy, but struggling to succeed? Do you have salespeople who are putting in long hours, but don’t generate enough business in relation to the time invested? Do you have salespeople who find enough opportunities, but struggle to get them closed? In my experience, there isn’t a correlation between busy and successful. Oh sure, successful salespeople may be busy and busy salespeople might be successful, but one being true does not necessarily mean that the other is true as well.
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This is the One Thing Missing from the New Way of Selling
- June 20, 2014
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Prospects aren’t ready to buy at this point in their process, they’re just getting finished with looking at their options! Salespeople don’t have qualified or closable opportunities at this point, but they’re acting as if they did, creating and sending unqualified proposals, making assumptions, and hoping for the best.
What’s Missing?
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Fine Tune Your Sales Force as You Optimize Your Computer
- June 18, 2014
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
I deleted about 10,000 sent items from Outlook, repaired the machine’s permissions, restarted the laptop, and it was performing to expectations again. I was excited about what I had accomplished in such a short time!
That process isn’t very different from what executives must do with an underperforming sales force.
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Could it Really be The Death of SPIN Selling?
- April 10, 2014
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
The author wrote that since most prospects today know what they want, they won’t rehash all of the needs and decisions that got them to this point, and as a result, a salesperson won’t be able to back them up to an earlier stage of the sales process to implement SPIN or any other questioning strategy.
Well, maybe.
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Sales 2.0 Conference; The Huge Sales Blitz and Sales Processes
- March 11, 2014
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
In my experience, there have always been two kinds of taxi drivers. The first asks how long I’m planning to stay and when they learn I’m flying back out the same day, they offer to pick me up for the return trip to the airport. This is the taxi-driver version of an account manager.
The second type ignores me, talks on his phone, gets me where I’m going and looks for his next fare. A hunter. Purely transactional. Just like a salesperson who knocks on doors.
But yesterday, I met a third type. He was a type 2, but with time management skills.
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Top 4 Questions, 2 Words of Advice about Sales CRM
- February 17, 2014
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
A company’s executive team can have a positive or negative influence on the performance of the sales team. Each member of your executive team can impact sales in some small, or not so small way. Today, I want to talk about Chief Technology Officers, VP’s and Directors of IT. At first glance, you might not think that IT has much of an impact on sales and you would be correct. However, they do have a significant role.
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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.