Understanding the Sales Force

  • Top 4 Reasons Salespeople Struggle to Reach Decision Makers

    • October 30, 2013
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    So here we are again, with half of the salespeople reporting that they aren’t reaching decision makers.  And why would a decision maker want to be reached if the salespeople are focused only on presentations?  And companies wonder why their sales cycles are so long, their closing percentages are so low and their margins are slip sliding away…

    Also noteworthy were these findings from the survey results:

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  • Sales Lessons from Baseball’s 2013 World Series

    • October 29, 2013
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    Instead of bad or wrong calls and decisions, I believe that it’s critical to frame decisions that don’t go our way as tough decisions rather than bad or wrong decisions.  “Bad” is a judgment and leads to debate, while “tough” forces us to move on to lessons learned and action steps.  It is far more productive.

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  • Experiment – Which Sales Approach is Really More Effective?

    • October 28, 2013
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    During the past 90 days, I have been secretly selling multiple ways.  On one third of our opportunities, I have been selling the way we teach – using a formal, structured sales process with a consultative approach.  On another third of our opportunities (inbound leads),  I have experimented with a more transactional approach, although even that has a consultative element because I can’t help but ask some good questions.  It simply means that I show and tell much earlier than normal.  With the remaining third of our leads, I have experimented with allowing the buyer to dictate the process.   My buyer-dictated approach included a little push-back because I can’t allow a potential client to take the wrong approach to a solution.  

    Want to know what happened?  Look at the table below:

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  • Selling – We’re Going Back to AIDA And You Should Be Scared

    • October 25, 2013
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    While the tools have changed, information is available in the blink of a click, and leads are in huge supply, people, at their core, have not changed the way they buy.

    Sure, they may be meeting with or speaking with salespeople later in their buying process.  Sure, they may take longer to make decisions.  Sure, they may be more diligent about spending their money.  But the one thing that has not changed is that they still have some motivation – some compelling reason – to spend their money and spend it with you instead of someone else.

    The rush to embrace inbound marketing comes with a false sense of security and a poorly grounded belief that the sale is somehow easier, faster and more demo-centric today.  

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  • The Challenge of the Challenger Sales Model – The Facts

    • October 21, 2013
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    If we are discussing a transactional sale, then he is completely correct.  Let the customer just buy what they want to buy and don’t complicate it.  But most of us in the sales consulting space don’t consult to companies with a transactional sale – that’s marketing’s job to get more people to buy!

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  • Now That You Have a Sales Process, Never Mind

    • October 16, 2013
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    Here’s the premise:  Companies that have been rigorously enforcing sales process should stop doing so because it is resulting in longer sales cycles, decreased conversion rates, unreliable forecasts and depressed margins.  So they say.  Here are some of the many problems with their premise:

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  • The Blind Side for Sales

    • October 16, 2013
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    You may remember the book and later the movie, The Blind Side. The football term refers to the offensive tackle that protects the quarterback’s blind (non-throwing) side from defensive linemen who are rushing in hopes of sacking the quarterback.

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  • The Monumental Effort Required to Grow Sales in 2014

    • October 15, 2013
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    When you look ahead to sales for the next 12 months, are you using the same assumptions as always?  If you want to grow by 20%, do you use the same metrics for next year that you used for last year?  Will the plan that got you there last year continue to work next year?  Have you accounted for any of these changes?

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  • Science and the Length of Your Sales Cycle

    • October 9, 2013
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    A really important factor is exactly what salespeople actually believe – what they think – relative to the sales cycle.  Read some of the beliefs that this sales force had around the sales cycle:

    Those two factors alone are enough to double the length of a sales cycle!  There are still 9 more factors that have an impact; however, just from what we’ve discussed and reviewed so far, it’s obvious that this company’s sales cycle is M-U-C-H longer than it needs to be.

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  • Why CEOs/Presidents Tolerate Ineffective Sales Management

    • October 7, 2013
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    Lack of overall sales performance is an easily recognized problem.  A savvy President or CEO may correctly identify the symptoms: inaccurate forecasts, a lack of new opportunities, new salespeople failing to ramp-up quickly enough, delayed closings, and complacency. However, they usually fail to understand that these issues are not sales issues, but sales management issues.

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