Understanding the Sales Force

  • 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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  • Validation of the Validation of the Sales Assessment

    • October 4, 2013
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    One of the companies that insisted on validating our validation is moving forward with a license to hire 200 salespeople using our Sales Candidate Assessment.  I’ll share the results of their own validation:

    They conducted a 7-day pilot and hired 23 salespeople.  

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  • Presidents & CEO’s: 4 Out of 5 Sales Managers Are Ineffective!

    • October 2, 2013
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    A title like, “Presidents & CEO’s: 4 Out of 5 Sales Managers Are Ineffective”, will cause some Sales Directors, Sales VP’s and Sales Managers to click and read the article.  That’s OK, but a spoiler warning:  if you feel threatened by hearing the truth about yourself or your sales team, or would be uncomfortable sharing the truth about you or your team with the President or CEO, you should probably exit this article right now.

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  • The Real Problem with the Sales Profession and Sales Leadership

    • October 1, 2013
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    In the context of best practices, the sales management role is now 50% coaching.  The problem is that according to data from Objective Management Group, 82% of sales managers make very ineffective coaches.  Just yesterday alone we had conversations with sales managers who:

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  • The Connection Between Gas Prices and Sales Lead Follow Up

    • September 26, 2013
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    Why do salespeople still do the things they used to do, even though those things don’t work anymore.  For example, why do salespeople still sell transactionally when presenting/demoing, quoting/proposing and closing yields a 10-20% conversion ratio?  Even if they were in hiding, everyone must have heard by now that a typical B2B sale requires a customer-centric consultative approach. 

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  • Has the Death of Selling Finally Arrived?

    • September 23, 2013
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    eople in inbound marketing would have you believe that if you create the right content, get people to raise their hands, complete a form, and request something, then inbound marketers, formerly known as inside salespeople, can take it from there.  If you are selling something in great demand (iPhone 5), really inexpensive (monthly subscription of $20 or less), significantly lower-priced than your competition (by 20% or more), or that people must have (wireless service), then you can easily replace salespeople with marketers.

    However, there are 15 scenarios where you do need salespeople if you are selling something that:

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