sales performance
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How Your Salespeople Measure Up in the 21 Most Crucial Sales Competencies for Modern Selling
- April 4, 2017
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
This is really about sales professionals who place more faith in the traits that are consistent with their beliefs, fearing that their actual capabilities won’t match up with the science. People want to see themselves in the most popular, positive way. They don’t want to discover that they might be lacking in 10 of the 21 Sales Core Competencies or have gaps in all 21.
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Is Excuse Making Actually the Biggest Obstacle to Increasing Sales?
- December 14, 2016
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
I’ve talked a lot about excuse making and the powerful difference between using your index finger, which points outward, versus your thumb, which points inward. Today, Brandon Steiner wrote a great little article about taking responsibility.
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Top 10 Reasons Why Sales Don’t Grow
- August 24, 2016
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Despite knowing that things don’t fix themselves, thousands of executives believe that sales problems will resolve themselves, change, and improve. Why?
That’s the key question. Because when you don’t know exactly what’s wrong, it’s much easier to remain in denial.
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Preppers – Who They are and What They Share with Elite Salespeople
- March 28, 2016
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
As you know, urgency leads to action and that brings us to our topic. Who are Preppers and what do they share with Elite Salespeople?
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How March Madness Applies to Salespeople and Your Sales Force
- March 18, 2016
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
You have a choice – be part of the elite 7%; be part of the strong 16% or be part of the crappy 77%.
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How Wrong are Company Methods to Rank and Compensate Salespeople?
- February 23, 2016
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
When report cards and grades are available, measuring the academic success of your child or grandchild is a lot easier than it is to measure sales success. School grades go up and we say, “Great effort!” School grades go down and we say, “Oh-oh, something is seriously wrong here!” Academic grades are a reflection of test scores, completed homework and class participation. Sales grades are another story altogether and that is where most companies make terrible, horrible, awful mistakes. Do you think you know what those mistakes are?
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Must Read – This Email Proves How Poorly the Bottom 74% of Salespeople Perform
- February 17, 2016
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Ken is one of my longtime readers, a former client, and last week he sent this note expressing his frustrations as a buyer of services. I’ll add my comments and conclusions at the end of his note.
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Sales Performance – Stop Worrying About the Words You Say
- January 25, 2016
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
When coaching, most sales managers change the words their salespeople use. “That’s not how I would say it – try this instead!” While there are a couple of key moments in the sales process where the words do actually matter, for 98% of the sales process, it’s about listening and asking appropriate questions, following the process, achieving key milestones, following the company’s general strategy and using appropriate sales tactics. It’s almost never about the actual words. For example, last week I coached a salesperson who was using all of the words the other salespeople on the team were instructed to use – but with vastly different results. I think you’ll find the coaching interesting.
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How Better Accountability Causes Sales Performance to Increase
- January 4, 2016
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Sure, having goals is important, but having them in writing, with an achieve by date and a plan is exponentially more likely to have an actionable outcome than only having goals. And if you really want results, accountability is to goals as the accelerator is to the automobile. They both cause immediate action. Here’s what I mean.
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Bugged by the Difference Between Great and Lousy Salespeople
- July 21, 2015
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Yesterday, I noticed a large, furry, dead bug on the hood of my car. It seemed to be attached to the outer lip of the hood – like the edge of a cliff – right where the hood drops down to the grill. I got out of the car to remove the chunk of dead fur and I was shocked to see how wrong I was. It was dead all right, and it was furry. I’m not a tall person, so I wasn’t sitting high enough in the car to notice the distance between the bug and the lip of the hood, but my estimate was off by more than 2 feet! What I thought I saw was completely different from reality.