sales process
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Opportunity Blindness – What’s in Your Sales Pipeline?
- February 28, 2024
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Some observations:
The data represents the forecast and funnel for 7 sales teams.
The gaps (A & G) are backwards and should say 72% (A) and 41% (G).
The quarterly forecast (C) is 58% short of the quarterly target (D).
The current closable opportunities (B) are 77% short of the forecast (C) and 90% short of the quarterly target (D).
Add columns G and H and together, all of those columns represent pathetic, old news.The question that should be asked is, “What can we do about this?”
We should be able to answer that question by looking at column F but that’s not possible. Can you see why?
Outside of telling us that there isn’t enough in the funnel, the data in column F doesn’t answer the question that must always be asked: Is the pipeline viable?
We know the assigned value of the pipeline but we don’t know the answers to these additional ten important factors:
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25 Sales Experts on the Importance of Coaching Salespeople
- February 25, 2024
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Sales managers are still not coaching – at least not consistently or effectively. As a reminder, consistent daily coaching increases revenue by 28% and when it is paired with effective coaching, revenue increases by 43%. It’s simply incomprehensible that sales managers aren’t picking up the clue phone.
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Don Kent and My 8 Reasons For Inaccurate Sales Forecasts
- February 15, 2024
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
1960’s Don Kent is like a 2020’s salesperson. Excited about an opportunity, but wrong. And they don’t have to be wrong, shouldn’t be wrong, and honestly, can’t be wrong. The 2020’s salesperson may not have computer models, but they do have technology and it’s not the technology getting the forecast wrong. It’s the salesperson. There are a number of reasons they get so excited and get it so wrong but here are eight good ones:
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Whipped Cream! The Easiest Way to Lower Sales Resistance
- February 13, 2024
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Most sales training fails to address the single most important condition of a sales cycle – resistance – thereby rendering the sales training semi-useless. When resistance appears, it does not matter if the sales process, methodology, tactics and strategies are good or even great, unless salespeople are equally great at lowering the resistance.
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Sales Process for the Anti-Sales Process Crowd
- January 31, 2024
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
You can look at sales process any way you want but if what you want are more consistent, predictable results, in a framework that supports sales coaching, then you want a customized, formal, milestone-centric, customer-focused sales process and scorecard!
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Wouldn’t Sales Call Play-by-Play Analyses be Fun?
- January 27, 2024
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Most sales managers protect their salespeople instead of pushing them to improve. Most companies set budgets that formulaically increase year-over-year budgets by just 3.5%. The sales recruiting process and selection criteria at most companies are horrible. Most sales training is product-focused instead of sales development. Most salespeople are not consistently or effectively coached. Most senior sales leaders are indifferent about doing anything about those things.
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Combining Goal Setting with Sales Competencies
- January 4, 2024
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Allow me to introduce the first draft of the first innovation of 2024 from Kurlan & Associates: The Sales Goals Grid, which incorporates most of the 21 Sales Core Competencies. It is a great visual for every salesperson, regardless of what they sell, who they sell for, who they sell to, or the length of their sales cycle. You can even adapt it to your own needs.
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The Best Sales and Sales Leadership Content of 2023
- December 11, 2023
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Welcome to my annual list of the best sales and sales leadership content of 2023. This year’s list has thirteen entries, including articles, videos, and LinkedIn posts. There are several categories including Most Read, Most Liked, Most Engagement, Best Quality and Personal Favorite. Ready?
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Movie Contrasts the Best and Worst Salespeople
- November 14, 2023
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
We watched GameStop: Rise of the Players and despite it being a documentary, found it to be quite entertaining. It was David versus Goliath. It was Amateur versus Professional. It was about an improbable outcome accomplished by people who were unlikely to succeed and even more unlikely to win the big payoff.
While I thought it had a lot in common with selling, the twelve central figures:
Were not professional investors although they did invest in GameStop.
Were not skilled traders although they did conduct some research.
Did not trade as a full-time job or hobby.
Were making decisions based on hunches, not history or science.
Found in each other kindred souls with a shared passion for GameStop.The five statements above suggest that skills, attributes, competencies and capabilities were NOT part of their success so what could this possibly have in common with selling?
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What Companies Don’t Know About Sales
- November 10, 2023
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
We heard that the “Sound of Freedom” was a good movie but waited until we could stream it at home. We loved the movie, but we were moved even more by the closing messages displayed on the screen. The statistics are astounding, where as a result of human trafficking, mostly at the southern border, more children are enslaved today than when slavery was legal! We didn’t know what we didn’t know.
“Companies don’t know what they don’t know about sales” is true in most companies and sales organizations.