Understanding the Sales Force
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Why the Future of Selling Won’t Resemble the Past
- April 17, 2020
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
It’s April 17 and nearly every salesperson is selling from home. It’s just temporary, right?
Maybe. But what if it’s not? According to the President, Vice-President, Scientists and some Governors, the economy will begin reopening in stages, perhaps as soon as May 1. So it’s back to the office and your territories, right? Wrong. You’ll still be home. Welcome to the future of selling where I’ll share my top five reasons why.
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Companies Surprised by Unexpected Remote Selling Challenges
- April 9, 2020
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Forget Consultative Selling, Value Selling and Sales Process – the things I talk about most often. The inability to sell that way is nothing – and I mean nothing compared with what I’m going to explain today!
For most salespeople and companies, the last three weeks has been an absolute roller coaster. Most companies expect their sales teams to be not only active, but proactive; to replace face-to-face meetings with virtual meetings; and to continue pipeline building so that there is business to close when we return to work. But is that what’s happening? In today’s article, I’ll blend my usual mix of statistics with some personal observation from the clients I have been helping for the past three weeks. I also included three videos that I extracted from a sales training session earlier this week. You’ll be surprised!
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15 Lessons Learned from Converting a Multi-Day Conference to a Virtual Online Event
- April 6, 2020
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
What a month it’s been! Not only how the Covid-19 virus has changed our lives and sent us to work from home, but how we are conducting our businesses from home. Green screens, virtual backgrounds, video calls and meetings, team chats, video team huddles, a blur between days, working hours and relaxing hours, and more. In today’s article I’m going off topic so that I can share how we converted Objective Management Group’s (OMG) 4-day Boston International Sales Experts Conference for OMG Partners, to a 3-Day Virtual Event on short notice, as well as the lessons learned so that you might be able to accomplish the same things that we did.
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Why You Will Finally Pay the Price of Not Selling Value
- March 17, 2020
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
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3 Steps You Must Take Today to Save Your Company From This Economic Downturn
- March 12, 2020
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
You know the stories of the Three Stooges, The Three Little Pigs, The Three Bears, and baseball fans have just heard about The Three Batter Minimum (how stupid!). We’re not going to discuss any of those threes today but we will talk about the three things companies must do, right now, in this quickly disintegrating economy, to drive revenue.
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The New York Times’ Misleading Article on Assessments and Their Use Cases
- March 3, 2020
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
The New York Times, which is often accused of publishing fake news, published an interesting article comparing personality tests to astrology. The story included specific assessments like The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, The Hartman Personality Profile (Color Code), Plum, and DiSC. Myers-Briggs reports on sixteen dimensions of personality, the Hartman Profile has four dimensions of personality, Plum uses AI to predict cultural awareness, teamwork and communications, and DiSC has four dimensions of behavioral styles.
I had so many reactions to this article and I have attempted to collect and assemble them into a coherent article that I believe will be worth your while.
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How Companies Choose Sales Training Companies is Backwards
- February 11, 2020
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Do you partake of dessert prior to eating your appetizer? Do you eat your dinner in the morning and have breakfast at night? Would you prefer to have the builder complete the finish work on your new house prior to framing it and installing the roof? Would you back your car out of the garage before opening the garage door? (I’ve actually done that by accident – twice!)
It’s all quite silly. You wouldn’t think of doing those things in that order but that’s how most companies choose sales training companies. After 35 years in the sales training industry, I’m qualified to comment on this silly behavior, and explain why companies have it all backwards.
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New Data Reveals a Finding That Correlates to Sales Success
- January 29, 2020
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
We had a request for some data from one of our longtime partners. My knee-jerk reaction to her request was that it would be a big nothing burger. She asked for data that would show the difference between salespeople who are goal oriented and those who are not. I did not expect much of a difference except in the area of Motivation but I was wrong. Very wrong! Check out some of the profound differences this data mining uncovered!
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Is Your Sales Force More Like a Dunkin’, Starbucks or Panera Drive Thru?
- January 21, 2020
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
This all begs the question, is the sales force at your company more like the Dunkin’, Starbucks, or Panera drive-thru? Today’s article will explain how to answer that question.
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The Science Behind One Company’s Top Sales Performers and Why They’re So Much Better
- January 16, 2020
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
There are comparisons of apples to oranges, red or green, black or white, stop and go, and the most relevant and current of all, liberals to conservatives.
In today’s article, I’ll share a hot/cold comparison of my own, but this one is about sales candidates. Back on January 9, my article about why 3 good salespeople failed and 3 so-so candidates succeeded, used the results of a top/bottom analysis to identify the reasons why.
Those results were unusual because many of the differentiators came from outside the 21 Sales Core Competencies. What does it look like when the differentiators come from within the 21 Sales Core Competencies? Take a look at this top/bottom analysis and you’ll quickly see the difference!