3 Sales Approaches of Elite Salespeople

Posted by Dave Kurlan on Thu, Apr 08, 2010 @ 09:31 AM

Dave Kurlan is a top-rated speaker, best-selling author, sales thought leader and highly regarded sales development expert.

On yesterday's episode of Meet the Sales Experts, my three guests, sales development experts Chris Mott, Frank Belzer and Rick Roberge, discussed the topics behind their upcoming presentations at the MIT Sloan School of Business Sales Club Conference on May 7.

When addressing a listener's question about skeptical prospects, it was interesting to listen, not only to their answers, but to HOW they answered.

Frank was strategic.

Rick was tactical.

Chris asked questions to further clarify.

Great salespeople must be able to easily use all three approaches on their sales calls.  Salespeople that struggle tend to have just one approach and it won't work all the time.  A salesperson who defaults to tactics may lack the ability to strategically set the context for those tactics.  A salesperson who defaults to strategy may not be able to dive down deep and wide enough to ask concrete questions and provide specific examples.  And a salesperson who doesn't first ask a bunch of quality questions to identify the real issue will waste their time talking about the wrong solutions.

How effective are your salespeople with these three approaches?

Click here to listen to yesterday's show.

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Sales Tactics - 10th of the Top 10 Kurlan Sales Management Functions

Posted by Dave Kurlan on Thu, Dec 03, 2009 @ 08:18 AM

Dave Kurlan is a top-rated speaker, best-selling author, sales thought leader and highly regarded sales development expert.

This is the 10th in my series of the Top 10 Kurlan Sales Management Functions.

#10 - TACTICS

Sales managers tend to be very challenged in the area of tactics.  There are two varieties of sales managers:

1. Those who were great salespeople - they have the ability to recognize scenarios where they have been there and done that, but their success in those scenarios often had more to do with them than their tactics.  There is a huge difference between saying, "This is what I would do", as opposed to saying, "Here are the (time-tested, transferable) tactics to use in this situation.  Let's role play."
   
2. Those who were not great salespeople - They have difficulty:

• recognizing the scenarios where tactics will make a difference;
  
• identifying the right tactics to use;
• role-playing to effectively demonstrate their use;
• teaching as they go;
• identifying lessons;
• creating plans of action.

Tactics are the primary knowledge and experience components of sales coaching and without a wealth of simple, effective, current and transferable sales tactics, a sales manager's ability to coach is neutralized.  Although this sales manager can mentor and strategize, those roles are more appropriate for a VP of Sales. 

So how does a Sales Manager who is challenged on Tactics develop these important skills?

One option is to enroll in some comprehensive sales and sales management training where the emphasis will be on sales tactics and sales coaching.

My guest on yesterday's edition of Meet the Sales Experts was Steve Taback. Steve has another option. He is the publisher of the Email TACTICS Program, a tool that reinforces effective sales and people skills for successful sales and sales management.

A third option is to hire a sales coach, like Steve, who is well-versed in both sales tactics and sales management coaching.

Steve has 4 suggestions for becoming more effective:

1. Develop an ownership mentality as it relates to taking the time to build a business
   
2. Be a student of what you're doing - in this case, be a student of tactics
3. Resiliency - fail and bounce back without quitting
4. Take Responsibility - for both the good and the bad outcomes

Listen to this episode.  Contact Steve.

(c) Copyright 2009 Dave Kurlan

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Why Most Sales Training Doesn't Work

Posted by Dave Kurlan on Wed, Jun 24, 2009 @ 08:22 PM

Dave Kurlan is a top-rated speaker, best-selling author, sales thought leader and highly regarded sales development expert.

If you invest in sales training, especially now, you also need it to work now, not in 12 months.  Why does it take so long for most sales training to make a difference and why does most sales training fail to make the difference you expect? There are a lot of possible reasons and I'll attempt to explain them here.

• Sales trainers want to sell sales training so they skip or gloss over the more important issues like

• a sales force evaluation to determine the real issues and answer questions about possibilities;
• helping you create the appropriate sales infrastructure including a customized sales process; a visual, criteria-based, staged pipeline; and proper metrics to drive revenue;
• development of a proper sales culture;
• development of the sales management team so that they become masters at coaching, accountability, motivation and development;
• alignment;
• compensation;
• documentation;
• recruiting and selection process and tools. 
  

This is why it's so important to work with a sales development expert - someone who takes an integrated, thoughtful approach to the sales force.

• Sales training is too difficult to understand and apply and trainers make it even more difficult with their complicated processes, non-intuitive tactics and tricks. Instead, they should make it as simple as possible by making it memorable, intuitive, and easy to apply. 
  
• They tend to demonstrate their strategies and tactics through role play, which is fine, but their role plays demonstrate more tactics than what they have already taught.  They should never include more in the role play than their audience has learned from them.  Here is an example.  You take a seven year old to the movies.  If it's an age appropriate movie, rated G or PG, all of the previews are age appropriate and the seven year-old gets it - all of it.  However, if you take the seven year-old to a PG-13 movie, then the previews are a bit overwhelming. The seven year-old can tell you whether it seems exciting, funny or scary, but the seven year-old doesn't understand the theme, content or mature dialog. They haven't been exposed to that stuff yet.  Same thing with your salespeople.  If the trainer has already exposed them to the basics, and includes only the basics in role play, the salespeople get it.  It's age appropriate.  But if the trainer includes material that the salespeople haven't been exposed to, they can only tell you whether they like it or it seems scary.  The role play is a bit overwhelming because they haven't been exposed to that stuff yet.
• Some of the sales trainers just aren't that good. They fail to relate, engage, understand, entertain and change the salespeople they are training.
• Much of the content isn't that good.  Some of it is just plain outdated while much of the other content around isn't complete, only focusing on certain parts of the sales cycle.
• Some of them only know strategies and tactics but they don't understand the laws of cause and effect.  They can't get to the real reasons why salespeople fail to execute the strategies and tactics.

There are at least as many more reasons but this article is already longer than it should be.  We'll just call it part 1 and I'll circle back with part 2 at a later date.

(c) Copyright 2009 Dave Kurlan

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Rules of Sales Engagement for the Recession

Posted by Dave Kurlan on Tue, Jun 16, 2009 @ 12:44 PM

Dave Kurlan is a top-rated speaker, best-selling author, sales thought leader and highly regarded sales development expert.

On the June 16 episode of Meet the Sales Experts, I answered listener questions - live.  There were some fantastic questions and I provided some fair answers.

Listen to the show to learn how you can shorten your sales cycle by taking advantage of the window of opportunity...

Listen to hear about sales coaching - how often, what kind, with whom, and how...

Listen to discover the single biggest mistake salespeople make...

Listen to some opportunity specific advice.

We also discussed the economy - of course - and right now, there are some new rules of engagement.  You simply have to work three times harder, three times smarter, find three times more opportunities and be three times more effective just to sell what you used to sell.  That's it?  No.  In order to be three times more effective you must refine your strategies and expand upon your tactics.  You must be more creative, quicker on your feet, more resourceful and more persuasive.  You must ask better questions and more of them.  You must be more powerful than ever before.  Do that and you will survive.  Do that consistently and you will thrive when the economy turns around and money loosens up.  In the mean time, no short cuts!

(c) 2009 Dave Kurlan

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Former IBM Pro Lashes Out Over Sales Assessment

Posted by Mike Thornton on Tue, Feb 17, 2009 @ 05:05 AM

Dave Kurlan is a top-rated speaker, best-selling author, sales thought leader and highly regarded sales development expert.

A CEO of a fairly large-sized but under-performing OEM asked us to evaluate his sales force.  One of the three regional managers, who assessed as poorly as any regional manager could, called to complain about his results.  In addition to calling me a toad, Bob said that in the eighties he used to sell and manage at IBM and he led the top performing team.  He finished by letting me know that we didn't know what we were talking about and, by the way, he would be picking me up at the airport for the kick-off of their national training initiative.

It was a quiet ride (his choice) to the site of the training, where, for the first three hours, Bob stood in the back of the room, stoic, arms folded, attempting to intimidate me through his thick, black glasses. (I don't think it's possible to accomplish the intimidation thing with me but he did try really hard!)

At the lunch break Bob approached me and said, "You know, I've learned more about sales and sales management in the last three hours than I ever learned at IBM.  I've reconsidered what I said to you on the phone.  Your assessment was right on.  I don't have the skills or the strengths you've been talking about.  At IBM, we were the market leader, people wanted to buy from us and all I had to do was leverage our position in the marketplace.  I apologize for giving you a hard time.  But you're still a toad."

Even today, brand leaders, price leaders, and technology leaders all have a false sense of sales and sales management competency.  Are they truly succeeding because of their sales and sales management effectiveness?  The true tests always come when these successful sales executives leave to take a position at a company that is under performing.  Can they repeat the magic?  Can they extend their track record?  Can they add another success to their resume? 

Most find out, and rather quickly, that it ain't so easy to join an underdog and succeed without a deep set of sales competencies, disciplines, strategies and tactics.  Sadly, the executives that hire them find out too, that when they hire a sales or sales management star from a well-known company, their expectations will often fail to be met.

(c) Copyright 2009 Dave Kurlan

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