Dave Kurlan is a top-rated speaker, best-selling author, sales thought leader and highly regarded sales development expert.
On the eve of Superbowl XLVI Weekend, an article in the February 3, 2012 issue of the Boston Globe discussed Patriots Coach Bill Belichick's place in football history. In the story, written by Michael Whitmer, Belichick says, "You do your job, take care of your business, and hopefully good things will happen.’’
Whitmer says it’s the same approach he takes with his teams and players, no matter what they’ve accomplished." Tom Brady, the Patriot's equally brilliant quarterback, is quoted as saying, “He treats minicamp like it’s the week of the Super Bowl. The pressure is always on. We joke, because every day he comes into the meeting and he goes, ‘Alright guys, this is a big day,’ and we always joke that he should walk in one day and say, ‘Guys, this day’s not super important. Whatever we mess up today, don’t worry, we can get to tomorrow.’ That’s how he approaches it, every day is meaningful, and I think as a player you come in and you really respect that, and you try to do your very best to accomplish the goals that he sets out every day. When we won those 16 games in a row in 2007, people would have thought we were 0-16 by the way that we were coached. He doesn’t care what you did last year, he doesn’t care if you made the Pro Bowl, as long as you can help us win this week.’’
Sales Managers could learn a thing or two from Belichick! Like:
- Consistency
- Past Performance is not a free pass for lack of performance today
- You can always perform better
- Accomplish the goals
- Every day is meaningful
- The pressure is always on
Go Patriots!
(photo credit John Biever on SportsIllustrated.CNN.com) 
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Dave Kurlan is a top-rated speaker, best-selling author, sales thought leader and highly regarded sales development expert.
In just the first minute of your interview with a sales candidate you should know whether you don't want that candidate working for you. Think about it. If you decide in minute one that this candidate is NOT for you, there are options. You can end the interview and find yourself an hour that you didn't expect to have. You can complete the interview for practice or you can do it to see if the candidate succeeds at winning you over during the remainder of the interview. If you can be won over after you have written a candidate off, that is exactly what you want in a salesperson.
What should you look for in the first minute that would suggest you don't want this candidate?
It depends on what you want in a candidate. Most clients provide me with wish lists. in addition to a candidate's sales ability, clients want the candidates to possess certain traits that appeal to the clients. Most of those traits are unnecessary. Many of those traits only serve to make the clients happy. Most of those traits don't help the salespeople sell more effectively. So they aren't necessarily the things you should look for in the first minute.
I have problems with candidates who exhibit any of the following 10 behaviors:
- aren't prepared to begin the conversation
- don't attempt to overcome my resistance
- can't look my in the eye
- don't answer my questions with direct answers
- dress like shit
- fidget
- get so nervous they break out in a rash
- make excuses for their track record or jumping around from job to job
- talk too loud
- can't handle being challenged
I'm very impressed with candidates who are capable of these 10 things:
- push back and challenge me without starting an argument
- ask intelligent questions that aren't about benefits
- talk concisely versus ramble
- explain rather than claim
- express rather than state
- be memorable instead of forgetable
- demonstrate their ability to succeed
- distract me from my interview strategy
- connect with me
- [please provide us with the one thing you look for in an interview]
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Dave Kurlan is a top-rated speaker, best-selling author, sales thought leader and highly regarded sales development expert.
Everyone has a plan.
Some plans are better than others because they contain all or most of the necessary steps and sequence them in an appropriate order. Most plans have gaps where steps should be and the sequence doesn't lend itself to success.
One area where we see this occur repeatedly is when companies are about to hire a Sales VP or Director AND they want to evaluate their sales force too. For some reason, many choose to delay the evaluation until after the VP is in place when in reality, the evaluation should be used to help them select the new sales VP.
Sales VP's aren't like stretchy clothing where one size fits all. You must be able to choose a VP based on the needs of the organization. Some of those needs are well known but others, not so much. Take the quality of the sales managers that would report up to the VP, as well as the salespeople who report to those managers. Do the sales managers need to be developed? If so, what kind of help will they need? Do any or all of the sales managers need to be replaced? If so, what kind of experiences and skill sets are required? What about the salespeople? What caliber are they, where are the skill gaps, how many need to be replaced, what are their capabilities and what types of weaknesses are holding the organization back? Knowing the answers to these questions in advance help companies specify and select a Sales VP that has the experiences and skill sets to deal with all that is known.
The company has two choices:
- Hire a Sales VP without regard for what the VP will inherit and whether or not the VP has the skill sets and experiences to take on what the unknown. Let the new VP take 12-18 months to observe and understand the issues and create a plan of action. Or
- Evaluate the Sales Force, and inside of 30 days, discover all of the unknown issues that need to be addressed, the people that need to be replaced, the development that needs to take place, the gaps in skills, systems and processes, and use that to specify exactly what a new Sales VP must be equipped to deal with upon arrival.
With option 1, the company wastes 1-2 years and might still have made a mistake hiring the new Sales VP.
With option 2, the company uses the information from a sales force evaluation to make an intelligent hiring decision and provides the new Sales VP with the equivalent of 18 months worth of observation - only much deeper and wider than he could ever learn on his own - on his very first day.
All of this logic applies to a smaller company that needs to hire a Sales Manager.
Which makes more sense to you?
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Dave Kurlan is a top-rated speaker, best-selling author, sales thought leader and highly regarded sales development expert.
If you have been reading this Blog for a while, then you may remember my requests during the last half of 2011 to complete a survey for my Trust Project. My goal was to understand to what degree people did not like and/or trust salespeople and integrate that information into our future work. I thought it could signify the importance of additional findings in Objective Management Group's Sales Candidate Assessments, and it could influence how we train salespeople in the future.
The research has been completed, a white paper has been penned, and I have a sneak preview for you below after which you can download the entire white paper if you want to dig in to the findings and determine whether they affect your business.
Did you know that salespeople distrust other salespeople nearly as much as non salespeople do?
Did you know that women and salespeople were 25% more likely to be victims of a sales scam than men and non salespeople?
Every woman that completed the survey has been the victim of a sales scam!
Did you know that men and women, as well as salespeople and non salespeople, don't agree on who are the second and third least trusted of all salespeople?
Young, male, insurance salespeople have almost no chance of getting women to trust them.
Automobile salespeople are the least trusted salespeople of all. They are not trusted by anywhere from 80 to nearly 100% of the population.
There are three industries from which salespeople are generally trusted quite well. Read the White Paper to learn what they sell.
The big surprise in the study is WHY people don't trust salespeople. It's not at all what you think it is and if you take a guess I'm sure you'll be wrong. After you read the white paper, please return to this article and answer these questions:
What does this mean for your company? For your industry? For your salespeople? For the salespeople that you will hire in the future? What will change about how you train them?
Click here to download my newest White Paper, The Trust Project: In Salespeople We Don't Trust; Where, When and Why Salespeople Aren't Trusted.
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Dave Kurlan is a top-rated speaker, best-selling author, sales thought leader and highly regarded sales development expert.
Cold calling. It sounds so...20th Century.
Some industries still break-in their salespeople by putting them on the phone and having them dial - more than one hundred times a day - and attempt to schedule appointments. You still receive calls like this from new, and sometimes not so new salespeople selling insurance, investments, copiers, office supplies, commercial real estate and long distance phone services.
Today, more salespeople are using the Social Network to find opportunities. Whether it's incoming leads from Blogs, researching and requesting introductions on LinkedIn, or simply finding the target audience from a Google search, salespeople are using these tools to connect more and more often.
Of course, one thing that will never change is word of mouth. Referrals and introductions from happy customers and clients will always be the finest method for generating new business.
Given all of the options, which salespeople are smartest? Is it those that are cold calling, those who are getting introductions or those that are using the Social Network? The answer depends on how you decide to measure what being smart means.
If smart is measured by the easiest method, with less work, and no human contact, then those using the social network are as smart as they come.
If smart is measured by following the path that most often leads to success, then those who ask their customers for introductions and get them are even smarter.
If smart means making sure that no matter what else happens during the course of the month, the salesperson adds the required number of new opportunities to their pipeline, then those who are cold calling are the smartest salespeople on the planet.
Cold calling isn't enjoyable (for those salespeople who are truthful about it). Cold calling isn't effective except for the most brilliant of callers. Cold calling isn't efficient anymore. One thing that cold calling will always be is controllable and manageable.
You can't control the number of inbound leads your salespeople will get. Of course, if you are generating more leads than necessary to keep the pipeline full of quality opportunities my argument doesn't work. But most companies aren't accomplishing that - yet.
You can't control the number of introductions you will receive from your clients and customers.
You can't control the number of introductions your social network will make on your behalf, even if you are asking for them.
You can control the number of cold calls your salespeople make. Even if the numbers are as ugly as this:
Attempts - 100
Connects - 10
Meeting Scheduled - 1
At least you can control that.
I don't think cold calling should still be the default approach for new business development. However, if a salesperson needs to add 20 new opportunities to their pipeline each month, and the other methods deliver only 7, then cold calling becomes a necessary method to secure the remaining 13 opportunities required.
Cold calling is slowly but surely declining in use but some salespeople have discarded it before its time.
Reevaluate what your salespeople are doing, how they are doing it, and make sure that the emphasis is on the result, not the method.
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