I love my Macbook Pro. It’s four years old which means I’ve had it for three years longer than any Windows laptop I ever owned. That said, it was beginning to underperform, slow down, and choke. Yesterday, at around 4 AM, I decided to regroup and deal with those issues. First, I evaluated the problem,… Read More
Getting Emotional at Dunkin Donuts, and Over Social Selling
As I approached the window of my local Dunkin’ Donuts, the woman said, “How are you today?” I paid her and then replied, “I’m fine, and you?” My response had an extreme delay. Then she asked if I needed a tray, to which I replied, “No….Sorry, yes.” I was faster this time – with a… Read More
How Important is it for Your Salespeople to Practice?
When I was much younger, I was a pretty good trumpet player, playing professionally for nearly 10 years. I took weekly lessons from the age of 9, played in multiple bands and orchestras, and when I wasn’t taking lessons or performing, I practiced. And I felt I should have practiced more; a lot more. I… Read More
How to Apply the Coaching Outcomes from Sports to Sales
There are five major team sports including my favorite, baseball, as well as football, soccer, hockey, and basketball. Whether led by a head coach or manager, there are coaching consistencies across all five sports. Coaches observe and coach players on areas of improvement during every practice, before and after practice, and during games. This coaching… Read More
How to Assure Sales Success Instead of Causing Sales Failure
Does this sound familiar? You have a good opportunity, you expected it to close by the end of the year, it didn’t, you offered a discount, it still didn’t, you still think it will, but you can’t get them to pull the trigger. This scenario happens more frequently than you can imagine. There are several… Read More
How to Master and Simplify Selling – All at the Same Time
I was talking with a client who spent quite some time explaining how he always follows the sales process, carefully prepares the questions he wants to ask, makes sure he remembers to thoroughly qualify, prepares and plans his presentations and considers all the possible objections he may encounter along the way. That is much more than… Read More
How to Sell to 18 Categories of Prospects
I’m a baseball guy and like to use baseball analogies. For instance, in baseball, pitchers throw as many as 9 pitches including a 2-seam fastball, 4-seam fastball, cut fastball, sinker, slider, 12-6 curve, traditional curve, knuckleball and change-up. In order to have success against any pitcher who may throw 3 or more of these pitches,… Read More
How Would These Sports Celebrities Perform in Sales?
I wrote a very serious post earlier this week where I had the nerve to bring God into the conversation. I thought it was appropriate because the biggest and most important take-away from that article was about being inspired and inspiring others. If you didn’t get a chance to read it, I think The Biggest Secrets… Read More
If a Salesperson Wants to Improve, Where Should We Start?
We evaluated a salesperson who, from among his scores in all 21 Sales Core Competencies, had very strong Desire for Sales Success and Sales Motivation. That’s the good news. The bad news is that he scored only: 10% on Sales Commitment (the minimum required score is 60) 33% on Responsibility (he makes lots of excuses)… Read More
If Salespeople Were Doctors They Wouldn’t Know Their Biology
I have been writing most of my recent articles about the latest findings from Objective Management Group (OMG) and the copious amounts of data it has amassed from evaluating and assessing nearly 1.8 million salespeople, sales managers and sales leaders. I go on LinkedIn and share links to the articles and in the case of… Read More
If You’ve Done Everything Right, Why Would You Do This?
An enormous part of training salespeople these days is helping them to differentiate themselves from everyone else. This is accomplished by effectively applying a consultative sales process: Executed correctly, the salesperson has a conversation with a decision maker that is unlike any conversation the competition has had. It uncovers the compelling reasons for spending money,… Read More
Illuminate and Dust Off Your Sales Force
Have you ever noticed that the inside of your car can appear perfectly clean and then, if the sun hits the dashboard just right, all of the glass and plastic windows, radio, navigation, dials and displays are filthy dirty with dust? Have you ever noticed the same thing in your home, apartment or office? The air looks clear, but when… Read More
Increase in Social Selling Yields No Improvement in KPI’s
Yeah, just in case you didn’t get that, I’ll lay it out for you. In a recent mining of Objective Management Group’s data from June of 2013, there was a huge increase in the number of salespeople using social sites like LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Spoke, Plaxo and Reachable for selling. The graph looked like this:… Read More
Is That All There is to it?
When I began selling in the 1970’s sales was all about prospecting, building relationships, presenting and closing. Four things. Consultative selling was in its infancy. Solution Selling hadn’t come along yet. Networking was done face to face. CRM didn’t exist. The internet wasn’t an idea yet, so there was no email or fax and personal… Read More
Is There Is a Place For Personality In Sales?
I regularly write about sales from the unique perspective of someone with 280 data points on 1,750,000 salespeople for a total of 490 million data points to play with. I mine that data to find correlation, causation and new insights as to how salespeople sell, why they do it, and the outcomes that occur as… Read More
Is This an Example of Succeeding or Failing at Inside Sales?
Yesterday I was in the office, preparing for the formal introduction of Objective Management Group’s (OMG) award-winning, new and improved, fourth generation, Sales Candidate Assessment (view the 25-minute Webinar here) when the phone rang and I answered. Not only was it a cold call, but it was one I could write about – the best… Read More
Key to Significantly Improve Sales Training Results
Before we discuss how to improve sales training, a quick promo for the latest and greatest taking place over at the ever improving Top Sales World. The June issue of Top Sales Magazine has been published and you can download it here. Among all of the important articles this month is mine on The Top 5… Read More
Leading a Sales Force is Even More Like Baseball
I miss baseball already. Although I can’t watch it right now, I still think about it. I look forward to next season when, together with my wife, we’ll watch our son strike out other kids, hit lots of home runs, and improve his baseball skills while playing close to 100 games! I don’t look forward to the… Read More
Most Salespeople are Wrong about the Concept of Being Willing to Walk
At some point in most training programs we talk about being willing to walk away. In addition to being part of a Kurlan led sales training program, the willingness to walk away is a major focus of any training program on negotiation as well. But most people in sales don’t understand the concept of being willing to walk,… Read More
My Top 21 Keys to Help Your Sales Force Dominate Today
I’ve seen this happen in youth baseball so many times. Let’s say it’s a ground ball and the third baseman boots it for an error. Of course, the next ball is hit right at the third baseman again and this time he fields it cleanly, but makes an error on the throw. And just as… Read More
Prospecting by Phone
Are you tired of reading about sales process, inbound marketing, the move to inside sales, and the failure of most salespeople to meet quota? Me too. And I’m tired of writing about it. Instead, let’s discuss a topic that gets very little attention these days. Prospecting by Phone. Do salespeople still do that? Many more… Read More
Sales Efficiency – Has Google Provided Us With the Golden Egg?
It’s 6 AM and we need to plan our day. Oh boy. There are 87 emails that came in since 6PM yesterday, 2 internal meetings, 3 external meetings, 5 phone meetings and 14 items on the to-do list that must be completed today, including proposals, follow ups, job offers and CRM updates. Whew! Does that… Read More
Sales Force Development – Is it Training?
What is Sales Force Development all about? Sales training? Coaching? Sales Force Automation? Sales Selection? Sales Assessments? Compensation? Incentives? Performance? Sales Management Effectiveness? Mapping the Sales Process? Documentation? Having a Play Book? More? While it’s all of those things and more, its primary focus is the company’s strategies for growing sales, whether they are the right… Read More
Sales is Like Baseball and Baseball Can Save Capitalism and Liberty
Unless you’ve been living in a cave, not paying attention to the news, or watching stations that are glorifying what is taking place in major US cities, we are in trouble – again. Cities continue to be overrun by rioters and looters, police have not been able to stop the epidemic of assaults, robberies and… Read More