Understanding the Sales Force
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Grammar – Why Commas Provide Sales Success Where Periods Fail
- July 19, 2017
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
The problem is one of grammar. All of the articles you read, videos you watch and audios you listen to suggest that there is a key to sales success. Period. But if you change the period to a comma, you’ll quickly see that all of these things are crucial to success in sales.
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Crucial Selling Take Aways from the 2017 Home Run Derby Lead to Sales Greatness
- July 12, 2017
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Did you watch the Home Run Derby on Monday night? I’ve never seen anything like it. You could see thunder and lightening through the glass wall in left field as thunderstorms raged while all the home runs were being launched. Wow, what a show! Of course, my mind always looks for a correlation to selling and there are some good ones here.
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30 Interesting Non-Selling Subjects to Make You Better at Selling
- July 5, 2017
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
I was sitting next to a guy who knows that our son is one of the best ball players in his age group in New England. He is from the former Soviet Union and when he told me that he tought his son to play catch I was confused. I said, “You didn’t play baseball growing up – how were you able to teach him?”
He said, “When I was in school, we may not have played baseball, but we did have to practice throwing grenades and it’s exactly the same motion!”
Who knew?
And he didn’t know at the time that practicing grenades would prepare him for something completely different years later.
The same goes for sales. There are so many subjects, all unrelated to selling, that can make salespeople more effective.
I’ve written about many of these subjects before. Don’t click on all of them though. Find 3 that interest you and read only those. Then leave a comment below on how that could help you.
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Sales Effectiveness – How to Win Every RFP That You Respond To
- June 19, 2017
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
I am amazed by the sheer number of salespeople who believe they must respond to an RFP, RFQ or RFI. The resources, including people, time and money, required to respond to the specs from just one of these requests is daunting. Some companies have so many requests coming in that they spend all of their time responding to them. This is crazy! Do you respond to every email you receive? Every call you get? After all, it’s a request, not a demand. So why the frenzy over responding and replying so quickly? You won’t believe some of the reasons!
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Sales Science and Data Win the Day
- June 15, 2017
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
There were some really great articles from the first half of the year. I’ll share the top 3 by views, the top 3 by shares and the top 3 by engagement but you’ll instantly notice that whether it’s views, shares or engagement, sales science and data – stuff you can sink your teeth into – win the day.
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Perhaps Hope is a Selling Strategy After All!
- June 9, 2017
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
You’ve heard that hope is not a strategy – and it isn’t a strategy if you’re sitting there saying to yourself, “I hope I win this deal…”
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Predict the Weather but Control the Sales Forecast and Revenue
- June 6, 2017
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
You may be familiar when the rant sounds like: “It’s almost the end of the quarter, we’re only at 65% of forecast, the pipeline is half empty, and nothing is closing. With the exception of 3 nice deals that came in during May, our salespeople have sucked.”
While the crappy weather and your crappy 2nd quarter revenue have crappy in common, there is one huge difference that can help you hit your sales forecast even when the weather forecast is for rain.
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Phone Prospecting – the Key to Scheduling Meetings
- May 23, 2017
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Today, a salesperson left a voicemail message and he didn’t sound bad; but his strategy and script were awful. Listen to the message below and try to identify what was wrong. Then watch the video below to hear me talk getting your prospects to pay attention and engage with you on the phone.
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How to Simplify Coaching Salespeople
- May 19, 2017
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
When you take sales coaching, baseball, watching video and put it all together, what do you get?
You get the post-call debrief – the most powerful tool for great sales coaching.
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7 Powerful Exercises to Up Your Sales to the Next Level
- May 8, 2017
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Today, I received yet another request asking if I would recommend how to use the exercises in the Baseline Field Guide with the book, Baseline Selling. In an effort to help everyone, and not just those who choose to write me, my recommendations on some powerful ways to correlate the two appear below.