Understanding the Sales Force

  • 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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  • Startups Almost Always Get The Sales Thing Wrong

    • March 19, 2021
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    Typically, founders of start ups put it all on the line – everything – their house, savings, loans from friends and family and perhaps bank loans, angel investments and more.  As brilliant as they are, in most cases, sales is not one of their strengths and it’s not until the business has a logo and a website when they realize that success won’t come until somebody sells something.  Oh-oh, now what?

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  • My Simple COVID Relief Plan Actually Provides Relief

    • March 2, 2021
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    In the US, the COVID relief bill has passed the House of Representatives and the Senate and we learned that only 9% of the $1.9 trillion in the plan goes to actual COVID relief.  The 9% includes $1,400 for individuals earning less than $50,000 and several hundred billion dollars for small business relief although it’s unclear how the small business money will directly help the specific small businesses that were hurt the most.  It seems clear that this is another bill that won’t do what is needed but will certainly lead to a tax increase. Joe Biden said this could increase GDP by $1 trillion.  Imagine that.  Spend $1.9 trillion for a $1 trillion return.  Where I come from that’s a pretty bad investment so in response to their bloated, stupid bill, I present my simple plan and explain how it will help everyone involved.

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  • How Pitchers Fielding Practice is Exactly the Same as Salespeople Role-Playing

    • February 26, 2021
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    My Twitter feed had the funniest 1-minute baseball video I have ever seen.  It was pitcher fielding practice (PFP) and the coach was miked up. It illustrated just how bad most professional major league pitchers are at fielding their position and how a coach can keep it light – even make it funny – when the pitchers are struggling so badly.

    When professional salespeople are asked to role-play the salesperson’s part of a sales conversation they sound eve

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  • How to Use Buckets to Improve Sales Performance and Coaching

    • February 19, 2021
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    Buckets are important, especially when you’re attempting to coach up a salesperson or even improve your own sales performance.  If you don’t have the OMG evaluation at your fingertips and can’t lookup the scores in 21 Sales Core Competencies, or see which attributes need to be improved, you’ll need to think in terms of buckets.

    When salespeople are struggling, there are five primary buckets to consider:

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  • How Overthinking the Turnover Problem Impacts Hiring Salespeople

    • February 12, 2021
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    This week I experienced a scenario with a large company whose executives thought they had it all figured out and were looking for solutions that were so poorly thought out that it was hard for me to keep a straight face.  Curious?

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