sales process

  • Sales Process – 5th of the 10 Kurlan Sales Competencies for Buildling a Sales Culture

    • October 18, 2009
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    This is the 5th in my series of The 10 Kurlan Sales Competencies That are Key to Building a Sales Culture.

    read more

  • Putting for Eagle – Going for the Unlikely Close

    • September 29, 2009
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    Last year around this time, I wrote this article about how easy it is to get away from the sales process and other things you must do to achieve consistent results.  In these difficult times, the one thing you can’t do is attempt to do it without systems and processes because they are about the only things you can rely on.

    read more

  • Top 6 Reasons Why Most Sales Training Doesn’t Work

    • June 25, 2009
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    If you invest in sales training, especially now, you also need it to work now, not in 12 months.  Why does it take so long for most sales training to make a difference and why does most sales training fail to make the difference you expect? There are a lot of possible reasons and I’ll attempt to explain them here.

    read more

  • Top 14 Requirements to Perform a Sales Force Makeover

    • April 16, 2009
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    For kicks, let’s take a look at this week’s Baseline Selling mail bag.

    One reader emailed that he just inherited a radio station in Honduras, has never sold before, and he and his salespeople aren’t able to book appointments.

    Another reader is the Sales Director for several well-known magazines and said that her top producing team is down 50% from last year.

    Yet another reader wrote and wanted to know how to chop her 2-3 year sales cycle down to 2-3 months.

    And one President fired all of his salespeople, is back on the road selling and wonders what he can do to thrive.

    What do all four of these scenarios have in common?

    read more

  • What Happens When You Develop Sales Competencies?

    • April 10, 2009
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    Earlier this week I wrote an article for my Baseline Selling Tips Newsletter. It was about What Sleep Apnea and Sales Improvement Have in Common. If you don’t get my Newsletter, you’ll need to read that article in order for the rest of this post to make sense.

    read more

  • Good News Not a Substitute for Sales Force Competencies

    • April 8, 2009
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    Do you want to hear something crazy?

    I’m a very prolific writer – not to say I’m a good writer, just that I post a lot. And of the dozens and dozens of posts from the last three months, would you like to guess what the LEAST read post was?

    It was the one where I wrote about signs that the economy was improving! And one of the MOST read posts was the one where I wrote about the media making the economy worse.

    read more

  • Top 6 Tests to Determine if Your Sales Process Supports Sales Competencies

    • April 6, 2009
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    Do your salespeople sound like these folks working the deli counter? Three of the four had some kind of process, but are the processes effective?

    read more

  • The CEO Who Needed to Hire Salespeople

    • February 25, 2009
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    Yesterday I spoke with a CEO who asked for some help recruiting salespeople.  It seems that the salespeople they had previously hired had failed.  As I learned more about their business, a few things became obvious to me:

    read more

  • What Really Creates Sales Excellence?

    • November 13, 2008
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    If you are like me, you’re receiving email invitations to attend webinars at the rate of 10 to 20 per day.  And you’re getting the exact same invitations every single day from the exact same companies.  And some of them promise the solution to all of your sales problems – sales excellence solutions.  Take a look at the invitations I received today alone!

    read more

  • Sales Competencies and Your Competition

    • November 6, 2008
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    Companies don’t invest enough time and energy being strategic and tactical about competition.  The approach shouldn’t be economic as much as it should be tactical.  Your approach should revolve around neutralizing your competition as opposed to being competitive with your competition.

    read more