Understanding the Sales Force

  • The Bob Chronicles Part 5 – Bob Can’t Win This Argument Over a Sales Core Competency

    • June 22, 2021
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    OMG has assessed more than 2 million salespeople and measures their sales capabilities in 21 Sales Core Competencies.  While some might not like their scores, most salespeople agree with our findings because they are extremely accurate.  However, there is one competency of the 21 that causes salespeople to dig in, disagree, and push back.  Today I will explain the competency and share yesterday’s conversation with Bob.  For new readers, and those who don’t remember, Bob tends to get himself into trouble and is representative of all weak salespeople.

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  • A Properly Constructed Sales Process Can Help You Experience the Euphoria of a Walk-Off Win

    • June 15, 2021
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    The walk-off win in baseball, the buzzer beater in basketball and the field goal with no time on the clock in football are all terrific metaphors for certain types of wins in sales.  Some deals are sure things from the get go and others stand no chance of going your way.  However, some huge opportunities are truly nail-biters and could go either way.  When those opportunities are finally decided and you win, they too are euphoric.

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  • Will Salespeople Travel or Continue to Work Remotely in 2022?

    • June 1, 2021
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    My first attempt to understand how 2022 might look was to survey Objective Management Group’s Partners (sales development experts that provide OMG’s assessments to their clients).  Among other topics, we asked them two questions about travel and in-person training and here is what they had to say:

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  • How Gas Grills, Gardening, Masks, and Baseball Mimic Your Sales Team

    • May 3, 2021
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    My project corresponds so well with how many executives approach their sales teams. 

    They do nothing for years, and then, after growing frustrated with complacency and inability to grow revenue, finally decide to make changes and rebuild their sales teams. 

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  • Crappy Salespeople and Lack of Urgency Alignment  – The Bob Chronicles Part 4

    • April 27, 2021
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    This is the fourth installment in the Bob Chronicles.  Bob is the weak salesperson who represents the bottom 50% of all salespeople. You can read previous installments about Bob below:

    The $225,000 Mistake That Most Salespeople Make

    Data – The Top Salespeople are 631% More Effective at This Than Weak Salespeople 

    Good Bob, Bad Bob, The Stockdale Paradox and Sales Success

    You’re probably wondering, what did Bob screw up this time?  He screwed up urgency.  You might be asking how a salesperson could possibly screw up urgency but Bob and the rest of the weak salespeople screw up just about everything else so why not urgency too?

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  • 31 Conditions That Predict Your Sales Opportunity is in Trouble

    • April 16, 2021
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    Last week, a crazy driver pulled out right in front of me and despite the fact that I anticipated his stupidity and would have been able to stop before smashing into this moron, my car wasn’t as certain as I was.  My Genesis took matters into its own hands and went into all out protection mode – making sure nothing happened to it or me.

    As advertised, it took over the braking and steering to protect itself, sounded all the alarms to alert me to its strategy and then did two things that really surprised me.  All at once, the seat enveloped me in a cocoon and the seat belt tightened around my shoulders so that there was no chance that I was leaving that seat.  Going through the windshield?  Not a chance unless the whole seat was coming with me!

    That was cool. 

    And it got me thinking.  Wouldn’t it be cool if salespeople had a sales version of an early warning system/driver assist like my car has?

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  • How to Become More Successful One Day at a Time

    • April 13, 2021
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    You can find inspiration anywhere.  Even in a book called, A Year of Playing Catch.  Tom Schaff was nice enough to send me a copy of this book and there was the inspiration, right there on page 128.  Why would someone from the world of sales care about a page out of a baseball book?  I’ll give you fourteen really good reasons.  You see, the book is much less about baseball and much more about the following fourteen integral competencies of sales success:

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  • MUST READ: Are Assessments as Evil as the Persona Movie Suggests?

    • April 7, 2021
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force
    personality

    That’s the problem with the documentary Persona – The Dark Truth Behind Personality Tests. The movie shines the spotlight on the well-known Myers-Briggs Personality Type Indicator and swings between those that love knowing, being and relating to one of the sixteen personality types; versus those who are trying to change laws to prevent assessments like this from being used as a pre-employment test.

    The film mocks those who embrace the Myers-Briggs while advocating for the elimination of pre-employment assessments.  The film focuses on people who believe they were harmed and branded as unemployable as a result of being rejected for work – supposedly because of their test results. Kyle Behm was one of those people and he committed suicide while the movie was being filmed.  The advocates against personality testing for employment issue the dire warning that everyone is or will be negatively impacted by personality assessments.

    The film takes five huge leaps of faith and expects viewers to leap along with them:

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  • Why I Believe We Should Blow up the Business Development Rep (BDR) Role in Sales

    • March 29, 2021
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    For decades it was normal practice for Copy Machine, Office Supply, Cell Phones, Life Insurance and Residential Real Estate companies to recruit and train (a little classroom) rookie salespeople and then have them spend years making Cold Calls.  Industries like those continue to suffer from the highest voluntary turnover rates you can imagine and the practice is not entirely different from what tech companies are doing with the BDR Role.  

    But why?  Whose brilliant idea was this?

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