Understanding the Sales Force
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Buying a Laptop – Taking a Think it Over
- October 17, 2006
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
This behavior is simply one component of a hidden weakness that I call Non Supportive Buy Cycle. I first discovered this in the 1980’s and it is one of the most common and powerful hidden weaknesses. Even worse, there are dozens of other weaknesses that are hidden from view, causing your salespeople to fail.
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The Impact of Sales Training
- October 12, 2006
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
The impact of sales training can be very significant. However, unless training is done the right way, you may not see any impact at all.
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The Meaning of Not Trainable
- October 5, 2006
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
When OMG evaluates sales organizations, we usually identify a number of salespeople that aren’t trainable. This finding has nothing to do with intelligence nor does it reflect on their ability to learn. As a matter of fact, these people are as smart as anyone else and learn as well as anyone else. These individuals lack an incentive to change – there isn’t a good enough reason for them to do things any differently than they are doing things now.
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Selling in the Professional Service Firm
- October 2, 2006
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
I don’t enjoy taking the trash down to the bottom of the bottom of the driveway, yet I would very much prefer it to cleaning toilets.
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High Turnover on the Sales Force – What Does the Future Hold?
- September 30, 2006
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
There are a number of industries where high turnover on the sales force is the norm. Insurance, Real Estate, Telecommunications, Copiers, Direct Sales, etc. My editorial addresses these issues.
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Challenges of Using an Assessment for Sales Selection
- September 30, 2006
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
When a world-class process for consistently hiring good salespeople eliminates the need for recruiters, saves dozens of hours of management’s time, improves retention, upgrades the quality of the sales force, simplifies the selection process, increases the number of candidates in the pool and out and out blows away what the company did previously, it’s hard to understand why anyone would fight such a stroke of genius. But they do. Who typically fights this?
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Selling in the Upcoming Recession
- September 29, 2006
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Bill believes he has a great new opportunity, pursues it and gets shot down – three times – because the company placed a freeze on spending in the face of a (pending) recession. It is coming and sooner than you think. What Bill does next depends more on Bill than whether there’s another viable strategy.
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Sales Role Models
- September 24, 2006
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
When you hire new salespeople, who will their role models be? Should you point them to the veterans who are responsible for more revenue than anyone else? No, because they are not very good examples of what a new salesperson should do.
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The Death of the Sales Force Part 5 – Will Selling Live On?
- September 22, 2006
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
I promised to fill you in on the outcome of the business symposium where the “Death of the Sales Force” was discussed by a panel of business experts. The panel included a Banker, an owner of a 40 year-old Insurance Agency, a Partner in a successful regional IT Consulting Firm, a partner in an Accounting Firm, a Turnaround Expert/Financial Consultant, a Manager of VOIP from Verizon, me and the five person management team from the company that began this all.
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Assessments – When is Knowledge Helpful?
- September 18, 2006
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Some clients want to learn as much as they can regarding how the assessments work; what makes a candidate hirable, where the findings come from, how their profile impacts the hiring decision, what is the OMG criteria, etc. Some clients crave this information because of their need to know stuff. Others want it to figure out how they manipulate the test to get more hirable candidates. One group wants to know if they can deploy candidates that aren’t recommended in some other meaningful way.