sales hiring
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Why it is so Difficult to Compare Sales Effectiveness from One Salesperson to Another
- July 15, 2020
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Today we’ll discuss how to measure sales effectiveness of different salespeople despite there being so many variables to confuse the matter. You can scroll directly to that topic or, if you don’t mind, please read my 3 paragraphs of context.
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How Companies Choose Sales Training Companies is Backwards
- February 11, 2020
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Do you partake of dessert prior to eating your appetizer? Do you eat your dinner in the morning and have breakfast at night? Would you prefer to have the builder complete the finish work on your new house prior to framing it and installing the roof? Would you back your car out of the garage before opening the garage door? (I’ve actually done that by accident – twice!)
It’s all quite silly. You wouldn’t think of doing those things in that order but that’s how most companies choose sales training companies. After 35 years in the sales training industry, I’m qualified to comment on this silly behavior, and explain why companies have it all backwards.
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How to Raise the Incomes of Minimum Wage Workers Without Wealth Distribution or Socialism
- June 5, 2019
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Minimum wage employees are forced into those low paying jobs and the wealthiest Americans are to blame. Why can’t low hourly wage workers seek and earn better paying jobs? Is it lack of skills? Lack of motivation? Lack of commitment? Lack of education? Lack of opportunity? Lack of training?
Why not sales? Selling is a profession that employs 16 million in the US alone and for most sales jobs, especially with today’s lack of candidates, there is a laundry list of qualifications that are NOT required:
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Golden Nuggets from the CSO Insights 2018 Sales Talent Study
- October 25, 2018
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
I had a chance to review the CSO Insights 2018 Sales Talent Study and extracted some fascinating data. I thought it might be interesting to take their data, overlay some of Objective Management Group’s (OMG) data, and see what we can take away from that.
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Are Millennials Who Enter Sales Better or Worse Than the Rest of the Sales Population?
- August 31, 2016
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Millennials are more independent, more spoiled, have a shorter attention span, tend to be more into their technology than into people, don’t like working traditional hours, and don’t enjoy working in traditional ways. That said, would you expect them to be better or worse suited for selling than the generations who came before them?
I took to the data to see what story it might tell. I found data on more than 43,000 millennials in sales and here is what I learned. This information should be very helpful for hiring new salespeople and developing them as well.
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Five Great Lessons That Apply to Every Company That Hires Salespeople
- November 2, 2015
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
I turned sixty years old today and everyone is asking me how it feels to be sixty. To be honest, it feels exactly the same as it felt to be fifty-nine – which is essentially the same as it felt to be 40. Nothing has changed. And speaking of nothing changing, nothing has changed over at BigBrains where two updates have come my way. The first came from someone who knows the real identity of BigBrains and suggested that I refer to them as ShitForBrains instead. She must have met them!
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Part 4 – The Real Story Behind the Sales Selection Fiasco
- October 21, 2015
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
This week we discovered a statistical difference between those salespeople who currently work for a company whose sales force was evaluated, and those sales candidates who were applying for sales positions.
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Did You Know That There is a Season for Hiring Salespeople?
- September 17, 2015
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Did you know that when it comes to hiring salespeople, there are also seasonal trends we know to be true ?
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Why My Golfing May be Just Like Your Sales Recruiting
- October 14, 2014
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
On the rare occasion that I have the opportunity to golf, it doesn’t matter what I choose for clubs, balls, gloves, tees or clothing. At this point in my life and very short golfing career, just being out with a friend is good enough for me and if we count his strokes, and my lost balls, our final scores might even be competitive!
That’s how some companies recruit salespeople. It doesn’t matter who they are, where they come from, if they have selling skills, and whether or not they have any experience. These companies treat sales recruiting like the instructions on their shampoo bottle – they rinse and repeat.
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Keys to Improved Sales Performance – Part 2 of 4
- September 3, 2014
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
If you are like most folks, you were away for at least part of the summer, took as many long weekends as you could, and worked fewer hours on the days you actually did work. As part of getting the work done, you deleted as many emails as you could where a reply wasn’t required and visited fewer websites and blogs.