Understanding the Sales Force

  • Companies Rush to Get This One Thing in Place for their Sales Teams Before January

    • December 1, 2016
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    Over the past few months, the majority of the calls and emails coming in have been to get help building predictive scorecards.  Yesterday alone I spoke with the CEO’s from 3 companies about building and slotting scorecards into their existing sales processes.

    Why the sudden rage over scorecards?  

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  • Applicant Tracking and Sales Candidate Assessments Fit Like Ducks Take to Water

    • November 21, 2016
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    Back to the Applicant Tracking analysis.  My first takeaway is that it validated what I knew only anecdotally –
    that just about every mid-market and large company are using cloud-based applicant tracking systems and smaller companies are quickly moving in that direction too.  It makes sense. If companies are using cloud-based job sites to source candidates, then it only makes sense that they would be integrating applicant tracking as well.

    My second takeaway is that with all of these companies sourcing from the cloud and tracking from the cloud, why aren’t more of them using the best sales candidate assessment in the cloud?  I have 4 possible answers to that question:

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  • Why Do You Think That Harvard Business Review Does This When it Comes to Sales?

    • November 18, 2016
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    The most recent example of Harvard Business Review and sales stupidity came earlier this month when they ran an article on social selling being the solution to prevent salespeople from becoming obsolete.  I wrote this article on LinkedIn bring it to light and differentiate fact from fiction.

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  • Top 3 Reasons Why Sales Training Doesn’t Change Your Salespeople

    • November 17, 2016
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    I get asked this question a lot: “We’ve tried sales training before and it didn’t really change anything. Why didn’t it work?”

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  • Have the Promises of Inbound Sales Come to Fruition?

    • November 14, 2016
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    Last week, I spoke at Inbound, where 19,000 people attended this sold-out event in Boston.  Ironically, I spoke to a crowd that wanted to learn how to be more effective at engaging prospects by phone and converting those conversations to meetings.  Why is it ironic?  Well, the promise of the Inbound movement is that cold calling is dead. Salespeople will reap the benefits of inbound leads from prospects who had already expressed interest.  Has that happened?

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  • How to Change a Crappy Sales Compensation Plan to a Better One

    • November 3, 2016
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    First, this is simply an example – one example – and not the only way to create a sales compensation plan.  However, this example will illustrate the most important component to be changed.

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  • Most Salespeople Are Wrong about the Concept of Being Willing to Walk

    • October 31, 2016
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    At some point in most training programs we talk about being willing to walk away.  In addition to being part of a Kurlan led sales training program, the willingness to walk away is a major focus of any training program on negotiation as well.  But most people in sales don’t really understand the concept of being willing to walk, how it plays out, and what to do when you get there.  I would love to share my thoughts on this below.

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  • Salesperson’s Terrible Reaction Part 2

    • October 31, 2016
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    I posted a very short article where I discussed one salesperson’s reaction to a great sales role play.  I received a number of emails telling me how helpful the video, story and lessons were.  

    The article highlighted Self-Limiting beliefs or negative self talk. Today we will take it a step further and discuss the other things that could have been at play – hidden weaknesses – and the interference they cause salespeople while selling to their prospects.  Like chains, salespeople are only as strong as their weakest link…

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  • The Benefits of Completely Bashing Your Competition

    • October 26, 2016
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    I’m referring to the circus known as the 2016 Presidential Election. It has moved from ugly to downright terrifying as we watch two presidential candidates slinging the most horrible attacks on each other.  And the worst part is that most of those attacks are well deserved.  But there is an important selling lesson we can take from all of this.  Does bashing your competition ever work?

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  • The #1 Key to Making Sales Forecasts Accurate Again

    • October 24, 2016
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    What is they key to accurate sales forecasts?  Sure, it’s all of the things I’ve written about before, like sales process, uncovering compelling reasons to buy, selling value, thoroughly qualifying, etc.  But haven’t you witnessed more than enough opportunities where all of that was completed at an acceptable level and the business still failed to close?  Don’t too many of those well qualified opportunities become delayed closes or losses?  So what is it?  What is the one thing that will accurately predict whether or not an opportunity is strong enough to pursue with everything you’ve got?

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