Understanding the Sales Force

  • Help is Here for Salespeople Who Find Themselves as the Underdogs

    • April 28, 2016
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force
    Help is Here for Salespeople Who Find Themselves as the Underdogs

    You or your salespeople are on a call.  Is it an uphill battle?  Do you feel like you need some luck to win the business? Are you up against an incumbent – and your prospect is happy with them?  Are there too many competitors – and you are having trouble getting noticed?  Does the prospect claim to only care about price – and you aren’t the lowest?  Do they just want a proposal or a quote – and you feel like you need to provide it to them?  Do you have trouble winning most of the time?  Do you almost always face resistance of some kind? Is it difficult to simply get a meeting?I wrote an article for the SellingPower blog where we discuss the challenges of being an underdog. Read it to now to learn how you can outsell the big companies.

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  • Effective Selling is Less about the Words and More About How You Say Them

    • April 25, 2016
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    Whether you are trying to convince a prospect, customer or salesperson, make sure you emphasize the how over the what and your message has a much better chance of being accepted in the spirit you intended.

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  • How Coyotes are at the Heart of Sales Motivation

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

    My family lives west of Boston where it is not uncommon for us to see lots of squirrels, chipmunks, rabbits, deer, the family of foxes that live on our property, and on most nights, we hear coyotes.  We usually hear them in the early morning hours, and always thought they were celebrating a kill.  Recently, I did some research and learned that this is how coyotes greet each other when they are assembling before going out to hunt – before the kill!   For those of you who don’t live in or alongside a forest, a group of wild coyotes usually looks and sounds just like in this 1-minute video that I found on YouTube. That got me thinking about the connection to sales motivation and more.

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  • Bigger Sales Pipelines – The Dangerous Truth

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

    Last week I was invited to download the 2016 InsideSales.com Business Growth Index Report.  I read through it today and while I wasn’t terribly surprised by anything, there were a few findings that are quite interesting, showing that some companies aren’t making very good decisions, and these decisions could be representative of your company too.

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  • What Percentage of Sales Managers Have the Necessary Coaching Skills?

    • April 13, 2016
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    Recently, I was asked to share some statistics about sales management coaching – the percentage of sales coaching skills that most Sales Managers have and the amount of time they spend.  So let’s stop talking about the article and start sharing the statistics!

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  • What Should You Do When You or Your Company is Disliked in Sales?

    • April 11, 2016
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    I know. Everyone loves you. You are just so likable that it’s inconceivable that you could be disliked. As usual, I see things a bit differently and I’ll prove that there is someone that not only dislikes you, but might even hate you. For example, my company, Objective Management Group (OMG), is universally hated by an entire vertical! I’ll share that with you, but first I must ask you a question.

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  • Quadruple Dittos Motivate Your Sales Team to Achieve

    • April 6, 2016
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    If you follow sports – even a little – then you know about special sports achievements. The Hat Trick is pretty special in Hockey, The Cycle and the No-Hitter in Baseball represent near-perfect games, the Ace or the Hole-in-One is an ultimate score in Golf, and the Triple-Double represents the ultimate achievement in a Basketball game. Yes, I know I left out Soccer – again – but I just don’t know enough.

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  • Why Uncovering Pain Doesn’t Close the Sale with a CEO and the 3 Conditions You Do Need

    • April 4, 2016
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    I want to share 5 out of more than 100 important insights that they took away which apply equally to you too.

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  • The 5 Questions That Get Prospects to Buy so You Don’t Have to Sell

    • March 30, 2016
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    It’s a catch-22 that I find myself in all of the time.  In this business, I can’t ever be better at training, coaching, evaluating, consulting, and general sales expertise than I am when actually selling.  If I am less expert at selling, I will lack credibility.  I become one of those people who, if they can’t do it, they teach it.  On the other hand, I can’t be better at selling than at providing expertise because it is often very threatening to potential clients. They fear being sold something – especially consulting services – from someone who could possibly fail to meet expectations, and my business would fail if I caused that to happen.  So what is a sales expert to do? Let’s answer that question, discuss how it applies to you, and share some questions that will help you sell more of what you have!

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  • Preppers – Who They are and What They Share with Elite Salespeople

    • March 28, 2016
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

     As you know, urgency leads to action and that brings us to our topic.  Who are Preppers and what do they share with Elite Salespeople?

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