Understanding the Sales Force

  • 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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  • How March Madness Applies to Salespeople and Your Sales Force

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

    You have a choice – be part of the elite 7%; be part of the strong 16% or be part of the crappy 77%.

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  • Top 5 Conditions For B2B Prospects to Buy Your Services

    • March 15, 2016
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    So first a little baseball and then the sales analogy.  A fastball hit me square in the knee today.

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  • It’s Coming Sooner Than You Think – 5 Keys to Prepare Your Sales Force for the Recession

    • March 10, 2016
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    You remember the last recession – the great recession – right?  I remember that in November of 2008, the business stopped coming in as if someone had turned off the faucet.  Bam!  We lost a third of our revenue overnight – and we were prepared for it!  I predicted the last recession as early as September of 2006 with this article and in the summer of 2008 with this article.

    In my business, I can see two trends ahead of others and I began seeing both of those factors begin to kick in last month.  Do you know what  they are?

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  • This Simple Strategy Will Sell Your ROI and Value Proposition Every Time

    • March 7, 2016
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    Most salespeople can calculate ROI and explain it to their prospects, but many of them find it equally difficult to articulate that same ROI after they have been presented with a price objection.  They become defensive, review features and benefits, and make the situation worse for themselves instead of better.  We are going to review the case history of a salesperson who had an $85,000 solution that would increase company revenue from $10 million to $20 million.  Despite promising a $10 million gain, he was unable to overcome what he heard from his prospect:  “That’s too much money!”  In this article, we will discuss how it’s done.

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  • Breaking News – More Salespeople Suck Than Ever Before (and Why)

    • February 29, 2016
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    Salespeople always seem to get a bad rap and obviously that’s bad for business. But it’s always been that way and nobody has made a very big deal about it, so what has changed?

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  • Sure Fire Way to Know Which Sales Opportunities are the Best Sales Opportunities

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

    I just love it when cool gets cooler and I’m not talking about the winter weather in New England.  About a month ago, I wrote this article on Targeting and shared a generic model for scoring opportunities.  George Bronten and Henrik Oquist, CEO and COO of Membrain, took note and developed the concept as a new feature for their world-class CRM application, Membrain.  You have to see how we integrated this new feature into the Baseline Selling version of Membrain.  In the image below, you can see that we added a scoreboard milestone at two stages of the sales process.

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  • How Wrong are Company Methods to Rank and Compensate Salespeople?

    • February 23, 2016
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    When report cards and grades are available, measuring the academic success of your child or grandchild is a lot easier than it is to measure sales success.  School grades go up and we say, “Great effort!”  School grades go down and we say, “Oh-oh, something is seriously wrong here!”   Academic grades are a reflection of test scores, completed homework and class participation. Sales grades are another story altogether and that is where most companies make terrible, horrible, awful mistakes.  Do you think you know what those mistakes are?

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  • Must Read – This Email Proves How Poorly the Bottom 74% of Salespeople Perform

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

    Ken is one of my longtime readers, a former client, and last week he sent this note expressing his frustrations as a buyer of services.  I’ll add my comments and conclusions at the end of his note.

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