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Understanding the Sales Force

  • Elite Salespeople are 200% Better in These 3 Sales Competencies

    • July 23, 2018
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    Professional athletes have one trait in common – they are all very athletic and their skills are among the top several hundred in the world in their particular sport. For example, in Major League Baseball, there are 30 teams with 25 players each, making those ball players the top 750 in the world. Dig a little deeper and in each sport there is an even smaller subset of players who are all-stars

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  • Latest Data – Strong Salespeople Score 375% Better Than Weak Salespeople

    • July 18, 2018
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    Some of you might have seen Bryce Harper’s incredible last-minute barrage of home runs in the 2018 All-Star game. It’s one of the highlights of summer!  Today I give you a barrage of my own with three killer videos and a powerful data-packed article.  

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  • Sales Pipeline Data Shows That Most Late Stage Opportunities Just Aren’t

    • July 11, 2018
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    If you happened to read the article about most salespeople being fired or arrested if they worked in accounting then this is the sequel – Arrested 2!

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  • Latest Data Shows Most Salespeople Would be Fired or Arrested if they Worked in Accounting

    • July 2, 2018
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    In this article, we will look to determine whether there is a correlation between sales percentile, sales pipeline and sales performance.  And as has been the case with the last ten articles like this, the data is sure to surprise.

    OMG includes a pipeline analysis as part of every Sales Force evaluation it conducts. We ask each salesperson 19 questions about four late-stage, proposal-ready/closable opportunities currently in their pipeline.  In the table below, the percentage of salespeople who actually had 4 late-stage opportunities on which they could report are sorted by Sales Percentile.

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  • New Data – Are Experienced Sales Managers Better Sales Managers?

    • June 25, 2018
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    Last week I wrote a revealing article which showed that Sales Managers are even worse than I thought when it comes to coaching their salespeople.  That article stimulated this great conversation on LinkedIn. 

    Following that article I dug further into the same 9,000 rows of data to look at the role that tenure and experience have on sales management effectiveness. Who do you think are more effective – newer or more experienced sales managers?

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  • The Latest Data Shows That Sales Managers Are Even Worse Than I Thought

    • June 18, 2018
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    Today we’re diving into sales management and specifically, the Sales Management Coaching Competency. What you read will surely disappoint and shock you and might even cause you to puke in disgust.

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  • Sales Playbook and CRM Problems – What the Data Tells Us

    • June 6, 2018
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    That leads me to the growing demand for Sales Playbooks.  Companies want them, get excited about them, believe they are important, pay tens of thousands of dollars for them, and invest many hours collaborating for a successful final document.  You won’t believe the wasteful things that happen next!

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  • New Data Shows How Relationships and the Need to be Liked Impact Sales Performance

    • June 4, 2018
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    In my most recent article, I shared data that showed a chain reaction would occur when salespeople have more than one major weakness in their Sales DNA and the second major weakness is their tendency to become emotional. As a trigger, the first major weakness causes the salesperson to become emotional, at which time their listening skills become compromised.

    That article can be found here and as of this writing nearly 6 dozen LinkedIn subscribers have contributed some very insightful comments here.  Their comments inspired me to dig even further and look into the correlation between relationship building that salespeople do and their need to be liked.  In this study, even I was surprised by what I found!

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  • New Data Shows Sales Weaknesses Cause Powerful Chain Reactions in Salespeople

    • May 30, 2018
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    I have written extensively about Sales DNA over the years and today we will view Sales DNA from the perspective of sitting inside of a chemistry lab.

    Sales DNA is the combination of strengths (or weaknesses) that support (or sabotage) the execution of sales process, sales strategy and sales tactics.  Objective Management Group (OMG) measures and includes the 6 most powerful of those strands of Sales DNA in its 21 Sales Core Competencies.  While I usually discuss the impact of these weaknesses, we have never conducted a lab experiment like this before! 

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  • 10 Reasons Why Parents of Toddlers Make Better Sales Coaches Than Sales Managers

    • May 24, 2018
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    Toddlers watch Sesame Street, play with blocks, take baby steps, constantly ask ‘why’, eat food that has been cut into tiny bite size pieces, love to start with dessert, and love to have fun.  Their parents make sure they are comfortable, help them overcome their fears, work to prevent resistance and emotional meltdowns, and teach them as they go about their business.

    What does any of this have to do with sales and sales leadership?  Read a bit more and I’ll explain.

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