Understanding the Sales Force
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Has Buying Changed and Has B2B Selling Adapted?
- January 5, 2022
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Today’s buyers are self-educated and salespeople mistake that knowledge for readiness. Salespeople tend to take the path of least resistance and the knowledge they mistake for readiness lulls them into the quote, proposal and order taking mode. As a result, they don’t follow their company’s sales process or worse, the company’s sales process has been modified to reflect buyers being ready. If the buyers were truly ready at this point they would actually buy but the additional options prolong instead of shorten the sales process.
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My Most Popular Sales Article of the Last Ten Years
- December 13, 2021
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Suppose your salespeople hear one prospect say, “This has been a very interesting and productive conversation and we might have some interest in this.” And imagine another prospect at the same meeting says, “We’ll get back to you next month and let you know what kind of progress we’ve made.” And still a third might say, “In the meantime, please send us a proposal with references and a timeline.”
There are three important lessons that arise from this:
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Sales Selection Tools: Do You Get What You Pay For?
- December 9, 2021
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
If you have used Indeed to hire salespeople, they will offer to have your candidates take a free sales assessment. Doesn’t that sound great? It is great if the assessment is helpful but it happens to be a useless piece of crap. Why would anyone think, for even a moment, that there is any value in their lame, assessment-in-name-only test?
In this article we’ll explore how Indeed’s sales assessment compares to the gold standard in sales candidate assessments from Objective Management Group (OMG).
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Top 10 Sales and Sales Leadership Articles of 2021
- December 7, 2021
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
There are several criteria for choosing the top articles of the year, including, but not limited to:
Views (Article)
Popularity (likes on LinkedIn and Twitter)
Engagement (comments to the article, via email, and on LinkedIn)
Personal (my favorites)
Value (insights for the community) -
Can You Find The Perfect Sales Candidates for Your Sales Team?
- December 1, 2021
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
I am helping one company find a single needle-in-a-haystack sales leadership candidate and it has taken nearly six months. I am helping another company find 3 sales leaders and received 3,765 applications. What’s the difference?
For the answer to be meaningful, we have to look at the entire job market, not just sales candidates.
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Salesenomics – Many Sales Organizations Are Stuck in the 1980’s
- November 22, 2021
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
When was the last time you saw a black and white television or even a console color TV?
How about an electric typewriter?
Or a car that didn’t have anti-lock brakes?
You would have to return to the 1980’s to see those things and when it comes to their operations, some sales organizations are still in the 1980’s.
For example, check out these statistics from OMG’s evaluations of 30,000 sales teams and more than two million salespeople.
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2 Questions That Will End Every Request for a Better Price
- November 15, 2021
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
What’s the point? When prospects tell you that they’re going with the lowest price, it’s total crap. They might be saying that, but are they required to do that? If they have any bottled water in the kitchen, pay for any streaming, or software then it’s simply not true. Can you say bluffing?
I don’t blame companies for trying to buy for less, but it doesn’t mean you have to sell for less, or match or beat someone’s price. They’re just saying the words and waiting to see if you’ll bite. Just about a year ago at this time, I wrote another article about selling value where I used Dunkin Donuts coffee as an example.
So what should you do when a prospect asks for a lower price?
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Sales Forecasts Do Not Have to Be as Wrong as Fortune Cookies
- October 29, 2021
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
With all of these forecasts having the chance to be completely wrong, it makes me wonder about the way sales leaders and CEOs react to sales forecasts. After all, should we expect anything different when it comes to sales?
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When Your Sales Opportunity Stalls, Do You Call Roadside Assistance?
- October 18, 2021
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
When salespeople get into trouble and an opportunity stalls out or goes off the rails, their sales managers are the sales version of roadside assistance. In the context of a sales opportunity, there are typically three possibilities:
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Most Salespeople are Underdogs Like the Boston Red Sox
- October 13, 2021
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
If your company is not the brand leader, market leader, or price leader; if you have a complex sale, a story to tell, a new technology, a new brand, a new product, a much higher price or a much tougher sale, then you are an underdog too.