selling
-
Sales and Sales Management – Ideas for Growth
- January 27, 2006
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Today I was asked about the difference between sales training and sales development. They are the same except for one ENORMOUS difference. Sales training takes place in the classroom and is often difficult to apply and put into practice. Sales Development takes place throughout the sales organization from the top executives down through the most junior of salespeople. While sales training is a component of sales development, some of the components that are even more important include:
-
Salespeople – Beyond Listening Skills
- January 24, 2006
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Help your salespeople learn to do this and they will double or even triple their sales.
-
Salespeople are Like Children
- December 13, 2005
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Your salespeople learn that they should ask questions to learn about the needs, issues, applications and problems that their prospects might have. And some of them actually ask one or two of those questions – like they get it – and then they start to present their product, service or company. Just like our son, they can think about the other person for only so long before they revert to thinking about what’s important to them or comfortable for them.
-
Two Salespeople That Aren’t Performing
- October 26, 2005
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
A company president had three salespeople who were performing well and two that weren’t. He felt that he didn’t have an adequate method for forecasting future revenue. His request? ‘Can you evaluate the two non-performers and buy a more effective pipeline tool?’ A facilitator would say ‘yes’ to that. Take the easy money. Don’t rock the boat. But does that serve the client?
-
When Their Best Isn’t Good Enough
- September 29, 2005
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
What good are great closing skills when you struggle to get your closers to find new opportunities? Refined skills are great but committed, consistent, goal orientated over-achievers are better.
-
Rejected
- June 8, 2005
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
One large company rejected our sales candidate assessment because…..it’s too accurate. That’s right. It’s accuracy would eliminate a significant percentage of candidates and, with their faulty thinking, prevent sales managers from meeting their quota for sales recruits.
-
Slump Busters
- June 7, 2005
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Lack of consistency causes salespeople to slump and consistency prevents slumps. It’s that simple. But what is the true nature of a slump?
-
The Crosswalk Law
- June 3, 2005
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
The sales version of the crosswalk law occurs when the growth strategy calls for recruiting new salespeople and management turns to headhunters. Instead of attracting, hiring and developing A-Players they decide to bring on salespeople with an existing book of business. Much like the crosswalk law, this works once in a while but more often it doesn’t.
-
When Big is Bad
- May 12, 2005
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
A recent discussion with a top executive from a Fortune 1000 company provided some great insight – for him – as to the difficulties that large companies face when attempting to optimize their sales organizations.