sales process

  • Can a New Sales Manager Be a Difference Maker?

    • November 9, 2022
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    I speak with so many sales leaders who tell me about the four sales managers they went through in the last two years.  I speak with CEOs who tell me about the three sales VPs they went through in the last eighteen months.

    There is tremendous pressure to fill these roles because your team’s performance will suffer without someone at the helm.  Or is that misinformation?  How much worse could a team perform than how they perform under a sucky sales manager?

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  • How Your Sales Team Can Double its Win Rate in a Recession

    • September 26, 2022
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    A client was having great success using OMG (Objective Management Group) to assess their sales candidates and they assumed the sales candidate assessment was the only thing OMG offered.  When they learned that our core offering is evaluating their existing sales team they became excited about what that would mean for addressing their two biggest selling challenges.  

    One of their issues was their 20% win rate was much lower than they thought it should be and they believed their salespeople needed some refresher training on closing.  They also had a large number of opportunities stalled in the pipeline and they believed that training on more effective techniques to conduct follow up calls would help.

    In this article, I thought it might help if I share a bit of what they learned about their sales team.

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  • How Many Authors Does it Take to Screw in a LightBulb Highlighting Selling Skills?

    • September 22, 2022
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    Dan Caramanico alerted me to this dubious September 19, hbr.com article that explains their 5 Skills Every Salesperson Needs to Succeed.  It took three consultants to screw in the lightbulb that illuminates their five stupid-as-shit skills so let’s take a look:

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  • Which is Worse – The Boston Red Sox or Your Sales Team?

    • August 23, 2022
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    The construction of the Red Sox roster is simply a Stupid as Shit Strategy or SaSS. Use of the word strategy means that it’s intentional and is a disservice to the word stupid!

    Sales team construction usually lacks formal strategy and that suggests something accidental is at play. We tend to see the “we already had these salespeople” and then “these are the new salespeople who were willing to work for us.” New is a relative term as the newest 30% of the team continues to churn when and if they find candidates.

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  • The Many Different Selling Roles and How They Differ – Part 1

    • July 27, 2022
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    The same kind of thinking is required when thinking about the various roles of salespeople.  We can name them: Account Executive, Territory Manager, Business Development Rep, Sales Development Rep, Account Manager, Key Account Manager, National Account Manager, Channel Manager, Application Engineer, Sales Consultant, Inside Sales, Outside Sales, and more.

    To further complicate things, in some companies and industries, Sales Managers function as salespeople and Sales VPs function as Sales Managers.

    While the above roles have selling as a primary responsibility, there are as many differences to selling roles as there are differences to the class or style of cars.  Today, we’ll explore the difference between an Account Executive and a Business Development Rep.

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  • Big Company Strategies That SMB Sales Teams Can Emulate

    • July 11, 2022
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    I know. The previous paragraph was about branding and marketing; not sales.  But there is a correlation to my theory that a slick, professionally designed logo, makes you look bigger and more successful. Give me a moment to explain how that applies to sales.

    If a professionally designed logo makes you look bigger, more successful, and provides credibility, wouldn’t the same theory apply to a professionally trained sales team?

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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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