Dave Kurlan
15 Things Salespeople Must Do to Make up for a Lackluster 2nd Quarter
Last week we moved our son into his dorm to begin his freshman year of college. The college President's opening remarks were virtual, so we joined the Zoom stream from our hotel room and listened in. He had some really useful things to share with...
Why it is so Difficult to Compare Sales Effectiveness from One Salesperson to Another
TToday 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. In ...
How to Achieve Sales Mastery – A Collection of Loosely Connected Paths
During our first of its kind Independence Day weekend, I thought about a lot of things that loosely tied into sales effectiveness and while they could all be articles in their own right, I decided to write one article tying them all together. I've been...
The Real Reason Why So Many Salespeople are So Bad at Selling
Would you like to start a business? Can't figure out what business to start? I have three ideas for you: In the past four weeks, I have tried and tried and tried to get a glass company to replace the tabletop for a large outdoor…
One Thing Your Company Must Do Right Now to Increase Sales
Most in the cherry-picking news media are continuing to pound us with bad stuff: record unemployment, 80,000 dead, lockdowns into August, 30 trillion in debt, economy will be slow to recover, you'll be jailed if you open your business too soon, schools...
10 Critical Best Practices for Your Sales Force in This Crisis
We are in week 6 of lockdown, week 8 of voluntary work-from-home, while adapting, guiding and directing companies who still need to sell their products and services to generate revenue. At this point sales is about so much more than generating re...
Companies Surprised by Unexpected Remote Selling Challenges
Forget Consultative Selling, Value Selling and Sales Process - the things I talk about most often. The inability to sell that way is nothing - and I mean nothing compared with what I'm going to explain today! For most salespeople and companies, t...
15 Lessons Learned from Converting a Multi-Day Conference to a Virtual Online Event
What a month it's been! Not only how the Covid-19 virus has changed our lives and sent us to work from home, but how we are conducting our businesses from home. Green screens, virtual backgrounds, video calls and meetings, team chats, video...
3 Steps You Must Take Today to Save Your Company From This Economic Downturn
You know the stories of the Three Stooges, The Three Little Pigs, The Three Bears, and baseball fans have just heard about The Three Batter Minimum (how stupid!). We're not going to discuss any of those threes today but we will talk about the thr...
New Data Reveals a Finding That Correlates to Sales Success
We had a request for some data from one of our longtime partners. My knee-jerk reaction to her request was that it would be a big nothing burger. She asked for data that would show the difference between salespeople who are goal oriented an...
Is Your Sales Force More Like a Dunkin’, Starbucks or Panera Drive Thru?
On a frigid New England morning, I pulled into a Dunkin' drive thru and noticed that there were only ten cars ahead of me and that meant that it shouldn't take more than five minutes to get through the fast-moving line. Contrast that to the…
The Science Behind One Company’s Top Sales Performers and Why They’re So Much Better
There are comparisons of apples to oranges, red or green, black or white, stop and go, and the most relevant and current of all, liberals to conservatives. In today's article, I'll share a hot/cold comparison of my own, but this one is about sales cand...
An Inside Look at Why 3 Good Salespeople Failed and 3 So-So Salespeople Succeeded
You hired a great salesperson that didn't work out. You hired a so-so salesperson that did work out. You hired another great one that kicked ass, and another one that was so-so. That's the story of hiring salespeople. It's mostl...
Salespeople in Small Companies are 43% Better at This and Other Salesenomics Insights
You seek out the best products, best stores, best websites and best experiences. Doesn't it make sense to wonder about where you can find the best salespeople? I asked Objective Management Group's (OMG) COO, John Pattison, to dig into some of our...
Dave Kurlan’s Predictions for Sales Organization in 2020
Before I can make any predictions for 2020, let's start with these ten simple truths about selling for proper context. ONE: Selling is not as difficult or as simple as many would have you understand. TWO: While there are certain...
The Most Successful Negotiation is The Negotiation That Isn’t Needed
The last few years it seems that each time it snows, even a little, they cancel school. Are school officials convinced that parents and bus drivers will put kids' safety in jeopardy because snow is falling? They weren't worried about such t...
Only 11% of All Salespeople Do This at the End of a Sales Call
This will be the 18th consecutive year that we attend the Boston Ballet's performance of the Nutcracker, and while it is the same performance every single year, it is a wonderful family tradition and we wouldn't miss it for the world. Traditions are im...
Are You Using This New Technology to Generate New Opportunities?
Do you have Rainbow flatware? Biomagnetic ear stickers? A diamond-shaped ice cube tray? Baby feather wings? Yah, these things exist here. You don't? Me neither. Have you signed up to use a company that uses AI to generate leads...
A Tale of 3 Squirrels and Their Human Counterparts in Sales
It was rainy and cool so the leaves are dropping from the trees, the peak color has passed and it's time to focus on something else. Speaking of focus, this morning I was watching 3 squirrels each doing their thing. Squirrel #1, who I named…
What is the Sales Stack and Do You Need it?
You bought a really nice, new, laptop computer and you thought to yourself, "Now I'm all set!" But are you? You needed a case to carry it around, a thumb drive for quickly moving files from your laptop to another, and a printer and if…