Between 1985 and 2010, my continued research, assessments, studies and analyses of more than 500,000 salespeople and sales managers, has yielded consistent, predictive recommendations about the performance of salespeople. My White Paper, The Science of Salesperson Selection, discusses the research and methods employed over the past two decades to consistently improve and perfect the assessments… Read More
The Top 10 Reasons Why Salespeople Fail to Close Sales
Today I coached a salesperson who thought he had call reluctance although I didn’t really agree. He was finding a way to push through, making calls – although not as many as he should. He needs to be liked but since he also needs his boss to like him he makes the calls in order… Read More
The Top 5 Reasons Salespeople Fail to Meet Quota and the Common Link
By now it’s no secret that more and more salespeople are failing to meet quota each year. If we look at the last several years, it’s safe to say that the number has been in the neighborhood of 50%, with win rates around 45% and turnover at 34%. It’s no wonder that 34% of reps… Read More
The Trust Project
People talk about the salespeople they don’t like and especially those that they just don’t trust. To combat that problem, companies seek out employees who are trustworthy and, in most cases, succeed in finding them. But the comments, anecdotes and accusations continue.
There is Zero Value in Value Pricing
Someone from Hong Kong reached out to discuss the OMG Partnership opportunity with me. Quite early in our discussion he objected to our reasonable licensing fees, refusing to pay any fees to a US company. This is when the conversation began to resemble a sales call. He did what a lot of buyers do to salespeople… Read More
This Email Proves How Poorly the Bottom 74% of Salespeople Perform
I’ve written more than 1,400 articles for Understanding the Sales Force and every one of them has been my observation of salespeople, sales managers and sales teams. The observations come from sales force evaluations, sales candidate assessments, sales recruiting projects, sales training and coaching initiatives, and sales leadership training. After 10 years and 1,400 articles and to avoid… Read More
Top 10 Indicators That You Have a Trustworthy Sales Prospect
(This article originally appeared on Dave Kurlan’s blog) When we discuss trust, it’s usually from the perspective of how to build trust, how to be more trustworthy and what to do when a prospect doesn’t trust you. These issues led to my White Paper on Trust, a study that had some very surprising and revealing… Read More
Top 10 Keys to an Effective Sales Hiring Process
There are many keys to making the the sales hiring process work effectively yet most companies fail to get these keys right. Some of them are obvious, while some are more subtle. And most of all, the integrity, or in this case, the outcome of the process is only as strong as the weakest link…. Read More
Top 10 Lies Your Salespeople Hear and What to Do About it
(This article originally appeared on Dave Kurlan’s blog) We’ve all been on planes when they tell us to put our electronic devices into airplane mode so that your laptops, iPads, iPods, Kindles and phones – don’t send a radio signal looking for a connection. They tell us that these signals can interfere with the plane’s instrumentation…. Read More
Top 10 Problems with Veteran Salespeople
This past summer, the Boston Red Sox celebrated their 100th Anniversary. Every living player and manager who wore the uniform was invited and many came to participate. Those veterans included National Baseball Hall of Fame members Carlton Fisk, Jim Rice and Carl Yastrzemski. The veterans are loved and cherished by the fan base. Their appearances provided opportunities to… Read More
Top 10 Questions for Salespeople to Ask and Stay Away From
The theme of my recent posts has centered around links sent by readers, asking me to weigh in with a counterpoint to the conclusions drawn in the articles. Today, I address yet another Harvard Business Review Blog article (how many misguided HBR Blog articles are there?), this one about the Single Worst Question a salesperson… Read More
Top 10 Reasons Consultative Sellers Outsell Everyone Else
(This article originally appeared on Dave Kurlan’s blog) Yesterday I wrote about the Importance of the Relationship to the Sales Outcome. I was asked to talk more about how the elite (top 6%) salespeople develop that kind (late-stage in the early stage) of relationship. Have you ever worked with salespeople that were so bad you… Read More
Top 10 Reasons For Inaccurate Forecasts
(This article originally appeared on Dave Kurlan’s blog) The Sales Pipeline Nazi When I wrote this article, the Northeast corner of the US was being walloped by yet another snowstorm, which in this case, was very accurately forecasted. At the same time, the first email I saw today had a link to a very funny… Read More
Top 10 Reasons Salespeople Struggle to Get Decisions
(This article originally appeared on Dave Kurlan’s blog) If you were to remove the easy “yes” and “no” decisions that your salespeople hear during the course of the year, 80% of the opportunities that have been stalled in your pipeline would still be there. Why is it so difficult for your salespeople to get decisions… Read More
Top 10 Reasons Why Inbound Cannot Replace Sales
Well, it’s really happened now. I was following a discussion in the Hubspot VAR Group on LinkedIn, where the question posed to the group was whether or not the first sales hire should be a sales or a marketing person. [Disclosure: Hubspot is a client of both Kurlan and OMG; This blog is hosted on Hubspot’s terrific blogging and lead-gen platform… Read More
Top 10 Reasons Why Salespeople Let Price Drive the Sale
Selling value. What comes so easily to the top 6% and some of the top 26% is so very difficult for others. Most salespeople have little capability to effectively build value. Talking about what your company does better or differently or telling a prospect what your value proposition is does not build value. Instead, value… Read More
Top 10 Rules for Successfully Building a Sales Culture
More and more firms that aren’t traditionally sales-driven are finding it necessary to finally build more of a sales culture. They know they need to do a better job at selling in order to deal with increasing competition, fewer call-ins, commoditization of their products and services, aging rainmakers looking at retirement, etc. Management seems to… Read More
Top 10 Sales Leadership Tips From 2013
On the heels of the Top 5 Sales Leadership Articles of 2013 comes the Top 10 Sales Leadership Tips of 2013. Each of these tips are article excerpts I wrote during the first 6 months of 2013: It’s not that cold calls don’t work; it’s that salespeople truly suck at making cold calls! Read Article. It… Read More
Top 10 Sales Management Functions
These are my Top 10 Sales Management Competencies. The list, in no particular order is probably different, in many ways, as much for what’s not on it as for what is: COACHING ACCOUNTABILITY MOTIVATION RECRUITING DEVELOPMENT LEADERSHIP RELATIONSHIPS TACTICS STRATEGY SYSTEMS AND PROCESSES The following competencies, which are NOT sales management competencies, do not appear… Read More
Top 10 Sales Recruiting Lessons to Hire Great Salespeople
One of the first emails I came across this morning was a LinkedIn update telling me that 16% of my network had started new jobs. 16%. That’s one of every 6.25 people I am connected to. That brings us to this question. Who’s in a LinkedIn network? I’m very selective about who I connect to… Read More
Top 10 Tips for Hiring Salespeople for Your Sales Force
Today, we will discuss hiring for the sales force but not so much the “how” of it as much as the importance of doing it for the right reasons, at the right time and in the right manner. We have more clients in the middle of a sales recruiting initiative than at any time in… Read More
Top 10 Ways Salespeople are Selling in the Dark
Did you happen to see the movie Gravity? Early in the movie, the two astronauts, played by Sandra Bullock and George Clooney, lose communications with Houston. From that point on, they don’t stop talking to Houston, they don’t stop reporting in and they don’t change protocol. What they do change, is they add a phrase… Read More
Top 10 Ways to Increase Sales
(This article originally appeared on Dave Kurlan’s blog) I’ll bet that every CEO, President, Director, VP of Sales and Sales Manager asks the “how can we increase sales?” question on a regular basis. Do you? There are as many answers to this question as there are politicians running for US President in 2012. They include… Read More
Top 11 Reasons Why Salespeople Fail to Close Sales
Today I coached a salesperson who thought he had call reluctance – but I didn’t agree. He was pushing through, making calls – although not as many as he should. He has some need for approval – but since he needs approval from his boss he needs to make the calls in order to get… Read More