sales
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What is Causing Your Salespeople to Fail in this Economy?
- April 23, 2009
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Do you have a salesperson like Bob?
Bob was very anxious over what to write to a suspect that blew him off. The prospect canceled an appointment and was vague about whether or not he would reschedule. This stopped Bob in his tracks and he literally spent an entire day getting feedback on what his email should say. Not only is Bob wasting time, it is time that could be spent finding and identifying additional opportunities, moving existing opportunities along and connecting with customers or clients and collecting referrals. So what causes Bob to do this and could we have predicted this behavior?
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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?
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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.
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Media is to Fuel as the Recession is to Fire – How Does it Impact the Sales Force?
- March 11, 2009
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
The media – they didn’t cause the banking crisis but they have surely capitalized on it, dramatized it, chronically reported every devastating development and turned a serious but contained fire into a wildfire.
I don’t want to hear how many jobs have been lost. Who does that help?
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Seth Godin Reinforces the Proper Sales Process
- March 5, 2009
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Seth Godin posted this article last week. Read it it’s very short and a very good story.
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Sales and Customer Service are Just Like Steriod Use in Baseball
- February 11, 2009
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Sales is just like Steroid use in Baseball.
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Sales Assessments vs Personality Assessments Episode III – The PHD’s Strike Back
- February 3, 2009
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Are PHD’s more sensitive to criticism than the rest of us?
I heard from a few over the past week and they weren’t happy with what I wrote here and here. I rocked their world and they couldn’t cope.
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Change Ready Companies Experience Faster Success in Sales Development
- January 19, 2009
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
I was thinking about the difference between the clients that achieve rapid progress, with very measurable change, in the first six months of sales development versus those that show more typical progress where change has begun to take place but it might not be measurable yet.
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10 Steps for your Sales Force to Survive and Thrive in The Recession
- January 5, 2009
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Bernie is the President of a company that had experienced flat sales for the three strong economic years leading up to the recession. He had been looking for a VP of sales for two years but hadn’t found the right candidate or failed to pull the trigger.
He attended an event where he heard me speak and asked me to contact him. He asked for my advice and I recommended that if he was serious about finding the ideal VP, then he should:
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A Career in Sales is No Place for a….
- November 25, 2008
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
I must be losing my vision because regardless of the number of times I looked, I still didn’t see Sales on the list. So here we are and the profession is still so disrespected that they don’t even want to expose high school kids to the opportunity to earn more than most of the careers listed above.