Understanding the Sales Force
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Ultimatums for the Salesforce – Do They Work?
- November 19, 2008
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Suppose you deliver an ultimatum to a salesperson…
Suppose you deliver it to the entire sales force…
How would you expect them to react?
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Is Your Selling Model Effective? Know your Salesforce’s ABC’s
- November 17, 2008
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Every company, with or without a salesforce, has a selling model. I know of one company whose model is “we don’t believe in sales”. It works for them, but it won’t work for many others.
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What Really Creates Sales Excellence?
- November 13, 2008
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
If you are like me, you’re receiving email invitations to attend webinars at the rate of 10 to 20 per day. And you’re getting the exact same invitations every single day from the exact same companies. And some of them promise the solution to all of your sales problems – sales excellence solutions. Take a look at the invitations I received today alone!
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Stimulate the Economy – Get Your Salespeople Selling!
- November 12, 2008
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
I was interviewed on two different radio shows today. Jim Lobaito interviewed me about the impact that the economy is having on sales on his weekly business show and David Leopold interviewed me for his live Internet radio show, Let’s Talk Small Business.
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Are Your Salespeople Selling Price Like Sam’s Club or Value Like Nordstrom’s?
- November 12, 2008
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
So what does this say about the state of the economy and more specifically, about discounting and trying to win business based on price?
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Improve Sales Performance with More Effective Pipeline Management
- November 10, 2008
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Related to pipeline, I hate inappropriate blog commenting. That’s when people seek out a blog only to use it as an excuse to write about what they’re promoting on their site. It’s the other form of SPAM. The way it manifests itself on this blog is when someone targets one of my posts on closing or pipeline management and then adds their comment about how you can solve this problem by using lead analytics software or search engine optimization. I’m all for tools of this type and I love Hubspot’s lead analytics and SEO but let’s be real. SEO and on line analytics help to generate leads; they have as much to do with closing effectiveness as Michael Jordan has credentials for baseball’s Hall of Fame! Over achievers, using their sales competencies, create improved sales performance.
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Sales Competencies and Your Competition
- November 6, 2008
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Companies don’t invest enough time and energy being strategic and tactical about competition. The approach shouldn’t be economic as much as it should be tactical. Your approach should revolve around neutralizing your competition as opposed to being competitive with your competition.
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Sales Process – What Have You Gotten Away From?
- November 5, 2008
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
There are about 45 executives in the room, many of them clients of Kurlan Associates. At two of the tables are clients that have been with the firm for so long, twenty years or so, that they have become great friends and two of them have become business partners at Objective Management Group.
One of the first exercises that the group participated in was Cash Optimization Strategies, and the first part of that exercise was Ways to Improve Your Sales Cycle.
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Misleading Statistics and Hiring the Wrong Sales Candidates
- November 3, 2008
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
The November issue of Fortune Small Business has an article called Entrepreneurial Myth Busters. FSB has Ken Blanchard (consultant )and Scott Shane (academic) go head to head answering questions about small businesses and entrepreneurship. While Blanchard provides insightful answers based on his years of experience working in, consulting to and writing about business, Shane provides surprising answers based on data. I’m sure that if you read the article you’ll agree that Shane’s data lead to some very misleading conclusions. Academics who haven’t been “out there” can fall in love with their data!
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Your Salespeople Call on the Wrong People and Expect Them to Buy
- October 30, 2008
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
I speak quite often to groups comprised primarily of CEO’s and Presidents. Yesterday was a good example of that, with about 100 people in the audience. There were 35 No-Shows, most of whom did not have the title of President or CEO.