Understanding the Sales Force

  • Is $100,000 a Lot of Money? What Would Your Salespeople Say?

    • September 13, 2010
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    Your salespeople must be able to understand the value proposition of their offering from every possible angle in order to make it fit their prospects’ and customers’ different worlds.  Do they?

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  • Salespeople Become More Effective Part 2

    • September 10, 2010
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    Yesterday’s article discussed the possibility for salespeople to develop weaknesses AFTER being assessed and during the period of comprehensive sales training, coaching and development.  Today, we’ll discuss some of the areas where you should see fairly early improvement, as well as the areas where you need to see it but may not.

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  • Salespeople Become More Effective But Can They Become Worse?

    • September 9, 2010
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    Objective Management Group (OMG) provides Progress Evaluations to determine how much improvement has taken place during the period of time since an individual or a team was originally assessed.  In most cases, especially when effective training and coaching has taken place, significant to dramatic improvement occurs.  Occasionally though, a salesperson will appear to be worse – weaker – than the first time.  How could this be?

    I’ll explain some of the scenarios where this should not be alarming, as well as some where it should.

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  • The Whiners – Salespeople Who Get Your Attention

    • September 8, 2010
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    Prospects, Customers, Salespeople, Managers and Senior Executives are all guilty of whining.

    Great Leaders, great sales managers, and great salespeople do not.

    Let’s focus in on salespeople.  Why do they whine?  Why do they look for things to complain about?

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  • How to Achieve Consistency on the Sales Force

    • September 7, 2010
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    You probably know some salespeople who are consistent too, but unfortunately, most of them are consistently bad!

    Do you feel like fixing something on your sales force today?  Figure out what/who could be more consistent, determine what behaviors must change, identify something measurable, set better expectations, and drive the change home!

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  • Why Salespeople Fail to Make Needed Changes

    • September 3, 2010
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    I recently paid a visit to the men’s restroom (more comfortable in that one) where I saw Steve, our building maintenance man, on the floor repairing the sensor that automatically turns the water on and off. About 90 minutes later (right on schedule), I was back and shocked to see Steve still down there on the floor. I asked what was taking so long and he said, “Well it works just fine when it’s not connected to the faucet but when I reconnect it the darn thing stays broken!”

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  • 10 Attributes of the CEO Who Drives Sales and More

    • August 25, 2010
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    My second conversation was with an effective CEO who is completely unlike those that I described in the other article.  My good CEO has the following 10 qualities that have a positive impact on the sales force:

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  • Complete Sales Reference Manual – Now Available

    • August 24, 2010
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    This year I had the opportunity to contribute to a book that would be a compilation on sales.  While sales titles are released almost weekly these days, only a small number of them contain anything new, and most don’t raise the bar for the selling industry as a whole. This book is different.

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  • Top 10 CEO Reactions to My Comments About Their Sales Forces

    • August 23, 2010
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    Just like the salespeople who work for them, CEO’s come in all different sizes, shapes, styles and flavors. As you can imagine, those variances influence the outcomes of sales force evaluations, sales infrastructure, sales and sales management development and sales recruiting.  Here is a sampling of how some of the CEO’s react to what I tell them about their sales force:

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  • Improve How Your Sales Force Sells by Phone

    • August 20, 2010
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    Getting salespeople to recognize how badly they sound and how ineffective they are when selling on the phone isn’t easy.  And just so you know who I’m talking about (and to save you from commenting about how these nuances are different) I’m including prospecting, cold-calling, telemarketing, telesales, inside sales, inbound marketing, outbound marketing and lead generation roles as “selling on the phone”.

    There are two methods that I prefer to use:

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