Understanding the Sales Force

  • Is This an Example of Succeeding or Failing at Inside Sales?

    • April 18, 2014
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    It’s bad enough when companies move to the demo too quickly, but it doesn’t get any faster or more transactional than when they ask you if you’ve seen their demo with their very first question.  But hey, give him a break.  At least he asked a question instead of telling me he wanted me to see a demo…

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  • Is There a Lack of Clarity on the Current State of Selling?

    • April 14, 2014
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    Without question, the internet, inbound marketing, and social selling have replaced traditional sales – IN CERTAIN AREAS.  But they are relatively small areas and most B2B sellers will NEVER, EVER find themselves in that situation.

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  • Could it Really be The Death of SPIN Selling?

    • April 10, 2014
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    The author wrote that since most prospects today know what they want, they won’t rehash all of the needs and decisions that got them to this point, and as a result, a salesperson won’t be able to back them up to an earlier stage of the sales process to implement SPIN or any other questioning strategy.

    Well, maybe.

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  • Are Inside Sales and Consultative Selling Mutually Exclusive?

    • April 7, 2014
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    In this discussion, we’ll focus on group #2, traditional inside sales, where salespeople field incoming calls from existing loyal customers, existing disloyal customers, and potential customers.

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  • Rejection – Why it is the #1 Enemy in Modern Selling

    • April 3, 2014
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    For a change, rather than contributing to all the noise about inbound replacing outbound, inside replacing outside, insights replacing sales steps, buyers’ process replacing sales process, let’s talk about something that has a huge, relevant impact on selling, regardless of how the opportunity came to be.

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  • The Real Impact of Coaching Your Salespeople, Sales Managers

    • April 1, 2014
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    I’m in the middle of another page-turner, this one called The Man Who Killed Kennedy – The Case Against LBJ.  It’s difficult to put a positive spin on this amazing, insightful book, about one of the biggest assholes the USA has ever known, but I can take two unintentional sales-related lessons from the book:  

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  • The Biggest Mistake Executives Make about their Sales Force

    • March 18, 2014
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    When sales are fine, there is no better time, because there is no pressure or urgency, to evaluate the sales force because it is at that very time that executives don’t know what they don’t know.

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  • Consultative Selling, Commitment and Training – Like Oil & Water

    • March 14, 2014
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    We recently evaluated a sales force where the salespeople had, on average, only 18% of the attributes of a consultative seller.

    “How could that be?”, asked the Director of Sales.  “Achieve Global has come in 3 times in 3 years to teach consultative selling!”

    That could be the punchline, but it’s not.

    So, why didn’t the training on consultative selling stick?  There are reasons aplenty!

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  • Sales 2.0 Conference; The Huge Sales Blitz and Sales Processes

    • March 11, 2014
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    In my experience, there have always been two kinds of taxi drivers. The first asks how long I’m planning to stay and when they learn I’m flying back out the same day, they offer to pick me up for the return trip to the airport.  This is the taxi-driver version of an account manager.

    The second type ignores me, talks on his phone, gets me where I’m going and looks for his next fare.  A hunter.  Purely transactional.  Just like a salesperson who knocks on doors.

    But yesterday, I met a third type.  He was a type 2, but with time management skills.  

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  • Top 5 Reasons You Don’t Get More Strong Sales Candidates

    • March 10, 2014
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    Clients frequently ask about the percentage of candidates recommended by Objective Management Group’s (OMG) Sales Candidate Assessment and why it is so low.  When clients are feeling the urgency to hire salespeople and too many candidates are not getting recommended, their knee-jerk reaction is to change the customized criteria on the role configuration so that more candidates can be recommended.  In this case, “more” would mean more like the ones they already have instead of more like the stronger ones they said they wanted to hire…

    There are many possible reasons why a large percentage of candidates are not being recommended.  Here are some to consider:

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