Understanding the Sales Force

  • The #1 Top Key to Keeping Salespeople Motivated Revealed Here

    • May 7, 2012
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    Over the years, you have worked with many salespeople and oftentimes their success, or lack thereof, didn’t correlate as much to their skills as it did to their Desire or Motivation for sales success.  Desire is how badly one wants to succeed, and Motivation is what drives them to success.  I’ve written many articles about Sales Motivation, but let’s take a slightly different path today.

    What is actually behind sales motivation?

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  • Top 5 Keys to Effective Sales Coaching and Results

    • May 2, 2012
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    One confusing component of effective sales management is that great sales management skills don’t always translate into great sales results.  This phenomenon is most obvious when a company hires a terrific, new sales manager, who possesses all the desired skills, and the manager fails to have an immediate impact.  Worse, in many cases, is when the inherited salespeople rebel!  This scenario also occurs when sales managers go to seminars, watch video clips, read books or blogs, and attempt to extract specific skills and tips but don’t have the luxury of hearing them demonstrated, in context, in a real situation.  When Objective Management Group conducts a sales force evaluation, we often see that sales managers’ skills are much better than the resulting effectiveness of those skills.  Why is that?

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  • Why Do So Many Salespeople Fail to Make Quota?

    • April 26, 2012
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    The statistics are staggering.  In some sectors, fewer than 25% of all salespeople will make quota. Even best-in-class companies are lucky when fewer than 80% of their salespeople make quota.  Are you OK with it when your own salespeople fail to make quota?  There are a number of possible reasons for this widespread mediocrity and failure and, depending on the company, some or all of them may apply.

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  • Why Most Companies are Struggling to Grow Revenue

    • April 25, 2012
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    Dan Perry, writing at Sales Benchmark Index’s Sales Force Effectiveness Blog, wrote that “The single biggest problem with sales today is sales reps are mismatched to the buyer.  They think like a sales rep and not like a buyer.”  

    Well, Dan, I don’t agree and I have the statistics to back me up.  

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  • John Robinson’s Secret to Overcoming All Sales Obstacles

    • April 24, 2012
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    But when it comes to sales success, I took away an even deeper message.

    He said, “Every obstacle is an opportunity.”  

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  • Challenges Don’t Always Require a Complete Sales Force Makeover

    • April 19, 2012
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    Many of the Sales Force Evaluations provided by Objective Management Group (OMG) reveal that the company’s problems run so deep that they will require a complete sales force makeover.  However, it doesn’t always have to be that way.  Sometimes, a single word, question or statement will change how every prospect responds.

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  • Sales Leaders Got These Issues All Wrong

    • April 16, 2012
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    I couldn’t help but notice that for most companies, including the best-in-class, their initiatives were not in alignment with the business pressures which they reported having.  Here are their business pressures:

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  • Does Your Sales Force Look Like This?

    • April 12, 2012
    • Posted by: Kurlan & Associates, Inc.
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    I shared just a few of the charts, graphs and tables, which we include in a sales force evaluation when we are answering common, but difficult, business questions such as:

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  • A Different Look at Sales Compensation

    • April 6, 2012
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    With a salaried position, salespeople are essentially on a fixed income – perhaps a more attractive fixed income than a retiree, but fixed none the less.  And these days, with most people living at or above their means, fixed simply becomes another word for broke!  The thought of coming up with $75,000 in discretionary funds is daunting unless a salesperson is the rare exception who has been squirreling away most of his income.  This is the world of the salaried salesperson.  Play it safe, but don’t expect any big commission checks.

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  • Another Sales Assessment Takes on OMG – What Does it Reveal?

    • April 4, 2012
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    I received an email asking if I could explain why OMG’s assessment said “Not Recommended” and the SalesAP said “Highly Recommended”.  In general terms, SalesAP, like all personality assessments, makes assumptions about its sales findings. 

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