sales process
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You Can’t Lose Customers or Salespeople – 2 Secrets to Their Retention
- July 6, 2022
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
There were lots of articles that had the top 5, 7, 10, 12, and 15 reasons why salespeople leave or quit their jobs. Most of those lists were simply subsets of other lists and the reasons included things like compensation, morale, workload, changing quotas, culture, toxic management, the job was misrepresented, too much pressure and lack of growth opportunity. While there were no surprises to these lists of reasons, I think there is a more pervasive reason that is not represented on the lists created by marketers and recruiters:
Sales Selection.
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Selling and the Need for Speed
- June 8, 2022
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Salespeople tend to be in a rush to close – before an opportunity is even closable.
Salespeople tend to be in a rush to present – before an opportunity is even qualified. Most salespeople are in such a hurry that they completely skip things like qualifying and discovery. And when salespeople do perform discovery they accept the very first indicator they hear and rush to explain how their product or service addresses that indicator.
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The Recession is Here – How to Take Advantage and Prepare Your Sales Team
- May 31, 2022
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
So what must you do to prepare your sales team and how can you leverage the effects of a recession?
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The Philosophy of a Pitching Coach Will Improve Your Sales Team
- April 4, 2022
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
I find ideas and material for this Blog everywhere, especially when I’m not looking for them. Yesterday I received a daily email from a Paul Reddick, a baseball coach who was drumming up some business for his baseball institute. It resonated – not for its baseball coaching – but as sales coaching. Here’s what it said:
If your coach is talking about any of the pitching flaws that you see listed above…
Run… Run Fast!
That Coach is working on “flaws” that will have no impact on your pitching. He is working on symptoms… not the illness! He is trying to fix things that are happening as a byproduct of incorrect movement early in your delivery. If you get the first second of your delivery right, almost all of these flaws get fixed instantly.
Do you know how this applies to sales?
I’ll explain exactly how it applies and I promise you will be surprised! Click here to read last year’s fun article comparing pitcher’s fielding practice (PFP) to role-playing in sales.
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Top Sales Videos and Rants From Dave Kurlan
- March 21, 2022
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
From time to time I record impromptu unscripted rants as well as some that are more well thought-out videos. From among the collection presented below, most are rants so the rants are much more popular. The most-watched (I have added to the list so there are more than 10 now!) videos are shown below in order of popularity and while I like all of them, I indicated my personal favorites with an asterisk. All but three of the videos are three-minutes or less, one is six-minutes, one is ten-minutes and one is eight-minutes. Topics include:
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10 Steps to Crushing Your Sales Forecasts
- February 18, 2022
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Times change but one constant is the requirement for monthly, quarterly and annual sales forecasts. It used to be difficult to come up with that number but with the technology we have today, a single click in our CRM applications should show us the accurate number. But there is always a lingering question that accompanies that click: Is that really the accurate number?
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10 Prospect Rules That Salespeople Must Learn to Break
- January 24, 2022
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Like I said, this is not a COVID article because if it was, I could write a book about the data, science, policies and hypocrisies. However, there is a sales equivalent to the stupid restaurant masking requirement and that is what we will discuss in today’s article.
Have you or your salespeople ever been told by a prospect that they can’t:
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Has Buying Changed and Has B2B Selling Adapted?
- January 5, 2022
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Today’s buyers are self-educated and salespeople mistake that knowledge for readiness. Salespeople tend to take the path of least resistance and the knowledge they mistake for readiness lulls them into the quote, proposal and order taking mode. As a result, they don’t follow their company’s sales process or worse, the company’s sales process has been modified to reflect buyers being ready. If the buyers were truly ready at this point they would actually buy but the additional options prolong instead of shorten the sales process.
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Top 10 Sales and Sales Leadership Articles of 2021
- December 7, 2021
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
There are several criteria for choosing the top articles of the year, including, but not limited to:
Views (Article)
Popularity (likes on LinkedIn and Twitter)
Engagement (comments to the article, via email, and on LinkedIn)
Personal (my favorites)
Value (insights for the community) -
Most Salespeople are Underdogs Like the Boston Red Sox
- October 13, 2021
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
If your company is not the brand leader, market leader, or price leader; if you have a complex sale, a story to tell, a new technology, a new brand, a new product, a much higher price or a much tougher sale, then you are an underdog too.