sales process

  • Are Sales and Sales Management Candidates Getting Worse?

    • September 10, 2013
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    There are more sales experts, self-professed and otherwise, than ever before.  There is more free content on sales and selling than anyone could have imagined.  There are probably twice as many books on the subject than just 10 years ago.  There are categories of sales tools and CRM applications where none existed a few years ago.  Companies are spending more money on sales force evaluations, sales training, consulting, sales leadership development, sales process, infrastructure and sales recruiting services than 5 years ago.  And selling has changed more in the past 5 years than ever before.

    With all that, shouldn’t the quality of sales, sales management and sales leadership candidates be on the rise?  Yes, it should.  

    But there’s a problem.  The quality has not risen.  It seems to have worsened!

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  • How Much Sales Development Can Leadership Do In-House?

    • July 17, 2013
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    From time to time, clients want to handle some of the services we provide in-house.  “Why can’t we do the sales process ourselves?”  They can, but a few questions come to mind.  If they didn’t have an effective, efficient, optimized, formal, structured sales process for the last 20 years, where would this expertise suddenly come from to create this process tomorrow?  What if they get it wrong?

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  • The Waffle Cone and the Mass Production of Salespeople

    • July 2, 2013
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    For me, today’s waffle cones are a constant disappointment because they always fail to meet my expectations.

    What does this have to do with selling?

    Think about salespeople as a version of the waffle cone.  In some companies, they are made fresh, and in other companies, especially bigger companies, they are mass-produced.

    There are many ways of looking at th

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  • Impact of Sales Process Versus Sales Coaching

    • May 14, 2013
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    While most sales leaders admit that they must be more effective at coaching, many who said they have some kind of sales process in place didn’t come to the same conclusion.  So, why is it so obvious to sales leaders that they need to improve their coaching, but so elusive that they need to improve their sales process?  

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  • Top 5 Reasons Why Salespeople Don’t Qualify Effectively

    • April 17, 2013
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    Last week, I posted this article in reference to an Inc. Magazine article that was way off base about Consultative Selling.  It led to a significant number of comments with one of them being this question:

    “Dave, in your opinion, with all the training that is available and has been delivered to sales people over the years, how come sales people still fail at executing an effective approach to qualifying a prospect. Forget what we want to call the approach. Just basic fundamentals like asking questions. This is known throughout the selling universe but sales people still suck at this. How come?”

    Great question.  Here are my top 6 reasons why:

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  • Fewer Sample Requests and Sales Proposals – What’s Wrong?

    • April 10, 2013
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    Now, instead of sample requests, they’re getting commitments to do business and when they are ready, the sample requests lead to sales.  My client agreed.

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  • Great Salespeople Can See the Pixels – The Rest Watch the Movie

    • March 6, 2013
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    We have been describing the Consultative Sales approach.  How do your salespeople fare in their ability to sell consultatively and, more importantly, which of them can be trained and coached to effectively execute this with consistency and results?

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  • Baseball’s Huge Impact on Sales Performance

    • January 22, 2013
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    Let’s use Algebra to get a better handle on sales methodology and where it fits in the grand scheme of things.  Consider the following formula:

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  • Sales Process – Top 10 Reasons Why Sales are Lost

    • January 14, 2013
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    When a salesperson fails to land a deal, sale or order which they expected, projected, forecasted and pre-banked, nine times out of ten, you can lay the blame on one of the following ten conditions:

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  • Top Kurlan Articles on Sales Process:

    • December 11, 2012
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    I present my Top Articles on Sales Process:

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