sales training
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10 Best Sales Force Articles That You Probably Didn’t Read (Yet)
- June 4, 2012
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
I’ve written 930 articles for this Blog. Some, that I don’t think are particularly good, are the most popular, getting thousands of reads here, and thousands more on other sites that republish them. Others, which I think are very good and/or important, are hardly noticed, usually because of either the title, day of the week, or time of day.
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Contractual Obligation is a Missing Link of Sales Success
- May 31, 2012
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
However, there is one area of sports for which there is no sales analogy. Say it isn’t so!
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Top 5 Keys to Effective Sales Coaching and Results
- May 2, 2012
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
One confusing component of effective sales management is that great sales management skills don’t always translate into great sales results. This phenomenon is most obvious when a company hires a terrific, new sales manager, who possesses all the desired skills, and the manager fails to have an immediate impact. Worse, in many cases, is when the inherited salespeople rebel! This scenario also occurs when sales managers go to seminars, watch video clips, read books or blogs, and attempt to extract specific skills and tips but don’t have the luxury of hearing them demonstrated, in context, in a real situation. When Objective Management Group conducts a sales force evaluation, we often see that sales managers’ skills are much better than the resulting effectiveness of those skills. Why is that?
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Top 10 Reasons Salespeople Struggle to Get Decisions
- March 7, 2012
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
If you were to remove the easy “yes” and “no” decisions that your salespeople hear during the course of the year, 80% of the opportunities that have been stalled in your pipeline would still be there. Why is it so difficult for your salespeople to get decisions made on those opportunities?
The simple answer, the one you already know, is that those prospects aren’t ready to buy. Here are ten reasons why your salespeople have them in the pipeline:
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Top 7 Reasons Why Ineffective Salespeople Get By
- February 14, 2012
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
the typical salesperson receives, on average, 3 days of sales training in their entire career. I’ve interviewed thousands of salespeople (the good ones who have been recommended by the Assessment and performed well on a phone interview) and most of them have never had a single day of professional sales training. And practice? I can tell you that in the past 26 years, there has not been a single client whose salespeople had been practicing the art and science of selling before I required them to start practicing.
Why aren’t salespeople getting enough professional training before and during their employment?
Why aren’t they getting coached the way they should?
Why aren’t they practicing?
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Get Your Sales Force to Perform Magic and Make Sales Appear!
- January 5, 2012
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
We don’t talk about it much but sales has a lot of magic to it.
We disguise the magic and call it art, but when people are unable to describe how it actually works it must be magic. Want an example?
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Must Read – Accenture / CSO Insights Sales Optimization Study
- December 2, 2011
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
In their latest study (thanks to Charlie for sending it to me) – Accenture reported on the 2000 companies worldwide that CSO Insights surveyed. I identified some very interesting findings and if there was a big surprise it was that nothing surprised me! In fact, it supports everything I’ve written about here for the past 5 years. Consider the following:
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The Biggest Mistake That Salespeople Make at Year End
- November 30, 2011
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Your actions can not be dictated by the time of year. Your actions must be dictated by where you are in the sales process and the step or stage that must occur next.
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Sales Pipeline – Reality vs. What Your Salespeople Know and Think
- November 28, 2011
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
What your salespeople think or believe – not a data point.
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Top 7 Things That Consultative Sellers Do
- November 14, 2011
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
A small group of experts, especially those that lack this competency themselves, believe that using this competency for selling is manipulative and counters being customer-centric. They are as entitled to their opinion as I am to mine. But remember, you simply can’t argue with science, data and results.
So which competency am I referring to?