sales test
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Do You Need to Save All of those Sales Assessments and Evaluations?
- August 22, 2013
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
The best reason to save all of those sales candidate assessments which you ran last year can be answered with a few letters: EEOC. That’s right. It’s especially true if you don’t follow the sales hiring process to a “T”, or worse, if you don’t always follow the recommendations on the assessment. Let’s say that you loved one candidate so much that you hired him despite the recommendation not to do so.
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Is the “Lack of Commitment to Sales Success” Finding Predictive?
- May 7, 2013
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
So you have your sales force evaluated and in addition to learning why you are getting the results you are getting, and what you can do to significantly improve those results, you are surprised by some of the individual findings on some of your salespeople. One of the findings that generates the most push-back is Lack of Commitment to sales success.
We could hear any of the following comments as push-back to this finding:
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Inc Magazine Misses on the 13 Traits of an Outstanding Salesperson
- March 14, 2013
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
I just read the 13 Traits of An Outstanding Salesperson, an article that appeared on Inc.com.
As usual, I had several thoughts about this so, in no particular order…
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All-Time Top Kurlan Sales Article
- December 20, 2012
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Whether you’re using a personality assessment, behavioral styles assessment, psychological assessment, or psychometric (describes all of the above) assessment, it’s the marketing that’s sales-specific, not the findings. Use them at your own risk.
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8 Question Sales Quiz – Malpractice?
- February 19, 2010
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
One of the many sales newsletters I get each day had a ridiculous sales test. It asked “Is a Sales Career Right for You?” and had an 8 question test.
First, there aren’t 8 questions in the world where the answers would allow us to make that determination. Even if we tried, we couldn’t identify even 15 of our 100+ questions that would allow us to answer that question accurately! But I was curious and clicked on through. 8 Questions and if you get 3 strikes or wrong answers, you’re out and shouldn’t be in sales. This free test shouldn’t even be available for entertainment purposes!
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Top 6 Reasons Why Most Sales Training Doesn’t Work
- June 25, 2009
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
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.
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Sales Assessment Says He’s Weak but He Made President’s Club
- June 12, 2009
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Yesterday a well meaning Sales Manager, in defense of his salesperson, asked me how a salesperson who made “Club” could possibly assess so poorly. It’s a great question with a dozen or more possible explanations. Here are some:
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Sales Cycles and Time – Is it Running Out?
- June 1, 2009
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
We are always focused on sales cycles. Are they optimized? Are they taking too long? Can they be improved? How many calls should they take? Are we doing things that make the sales cycle take longer than necessary? For example, the sales cycle can be shortened in direct proportion to how high your salespeople call in the company.
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Hire the Best Salespeople on the Planet
- May 28, 2009
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Several months ago Objective Management Group began to identify hirable candidates that are ideal – they will ramp-up more quickly than a normal hirable candidate. A normal candidate should ramp up according to this formula I devised many years ago:
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More than Half of All Sales Managers Should Consider….
- May 19, 2009
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
After posting this article two weeks ago, showing the percentage of salespeople who are not trainable, who shouldn’t be in sales, and who are elite, it was inevitable that I would be asked to post similar statistics for sales managers.
