Understanding the Sales Force

  • New Penn State Coach – Just Like Dysfunctional Sales Management

    • January 6, 2012
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    Bill O’Brien. One coach – two full time jobs.  Both teams need his immediate, undivided attention and won’t get all that they need.  Given the dual roles, how do you feel about the Patriots’ chances of another Super Bowl?  Given this conflict of interest, how do you feel about Penn State’s ability to have a quality recruiting season?

    This happens quite frequently in my world – the sales force.

    In most small businesses, the President or owner is responsible for running the company and by default, manages the sales force too.  The problem?  Unskilled sales management is being provided on demand and that is always quite ineffective.

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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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  • Sales Courage and Resilience

    • January 3, 2012
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    Hope isn’t enough, but faith and courage are.  If salespeople can apply the 20 seconds of courage rule to every challenging or scary situation they encounter, and simply do what they are afraid of, good things will happen.  When things go wrong – and they surely will – if they can have the faith to hang in there for one more minute, one more hour or one more day, knowing that if they do everything in their power (with their fate in their control) rather than relying on hope, they will achieve the desired outcome.

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  • Only 11% of Salespeople Do This at the End of a Sales Call

    • December 20, 2011
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    This is the time of year for traditions. While most are family traditions, an analysis would reveal that the processes for buyers and sellers alike are filled with traditions: habits, learned behaviors, and standardized questions and comments. Today I am initiating a tradition on my Blog by republishing this holiday flavored article (from exactly one year ago today) that addresses those buying and selling traditions.

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  • Every Sales Assessment Tells a Story – This is Fred’s Story

    • December 19, 2011
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    When his boss couldn’t understand why Fred wasn’t performing, we performed a sales force evaluation and among the things we focused in on was Fred.

    Fred’s Sales DNA was generally quite good but when it came to his selling skills, there were a few problems that explained everything.

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  • How Many of Your Salespeople are Addicted to This?

    • December 14, 2011
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    Do your salespeople have a hopium addiction?

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  • Why OMG’s Sales Candidate Assessments Can’t Help These Companies

    • December 12, 2011
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    If companies hire the right salespeople to begin with, their churn problem disappears!

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  • Self Centered Salespeople and Customer Focused Selling

    • December 6, 2011
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    Most of the newer material on sales effectiveness is about being more customer focused. While this gets misinterpreted, the basics cannot be misunderstood. It’s about them (customer).

    Unfortunately, many of the B players – the group in the middle – will never become A players because for the B’s it’s all about “me”.

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  • How to Get Top Performance From Your Salespeople in December

    • December 5, 2011
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    Heading into the last week of the month, quarter or year, would you prefer to be ahead of goal or behind?  And what about your salespeople – would you prefer for them to be ahead of goal or behind?  

    Are you sure?  I didn’t ask how you wanted them to finish…

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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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