Understanding the Sales Force

MARCH 20, 2024

I could go on and make the exact same case for some of the other twenty-one Sales Core Competencies like: Hunting – belief that hunting will help build the pipeline versus belief in hunting to build the pipeline Belief that versus belief in holds true for Reaching Decision Makers, Relationship Building, Consultive Sales Approach, Selling Value, (..)

Sales Process 334

Sales Process Sales Methodology Decision Maker Pipeline 334

Understanding the Sales Force

JULY 13, 2015

Over the weekend I was thinking about sales pipelines and inaccurate forecasts, how companies are always experiencing issues at the top of the funnel, and it inspired the following poetry. It won't win an award for imagination, creativity, rhyming or flow. I'll stick to my day job for this I surely know.

Pipeline 120

Pipeline Top of Funnel Forecasting eBook 120

Understanding the Sales Force

FEBRUARY 28, 2014

Understanding the Sales Force by Dave Kurlan For double article Friday, in addition to my Sales Pipeline Nazi article, I have the following bonuses for you: For those of you who wanted to attend the Webinar on the Sales Candidate Analyzer, here is a link to the recording. The Sales Pipeline Nazi. You can download your copy here. *.

Forecasting 188

Forecasting Pipeline Sales Forecasts Webinar Metrics 188

Understanding the Sales Force

JANUARY 26, 2015

Even though we perform a pipeline analysis and restage the pipeline with every individual sales evaluation and comprehensive sales force evaluation we conduct, we typically discuss this exclusively at the executive level. Dave Kurlan sales force evaluation sales pipeline sales assessments objective management group sales forecast'

Sales Forecasts 120

Sales Forecasts Forecasting Pipeline Analysis 120

Understanding the Sales Force

JUNE 21, 2012

Understanding the Sales Force by Dave Kurlan The obvious answer is to make sure they fill the pipeline when it begins to empty or is getting close to being empty, right? If the pipeline is nearly empty today, your salespeople are feeling scared, stressed, discouraged and demotivated. Will they do it? c) Copyright 2012 Dave Kurlan

Pipeline 222

Pipeline Motivation Positioning Opportunity 222

Understanding the Sales Force

MARCH 1, 2016

And, as you can see below, I've been writing about the pipeline in various ways for years: Yesterday, while speaking in DC, I asked my usual questions, but the response to one of the questions left me scratching my head. It wasn't a new question; as a matter of fact, I've been asking it for years.

Pipeline 120

Pipeline Sales Sales Forecasts Forecasting 120

Understanding the Sales Force

JUNE 25, 2012

Understanding the Sales Force by Dave Kurlan Last week I wrote this article about the best time to ask salespeople to fill their pipelines. One reader asked how to get salespeople to fill their pipelines. So how do you get them to fill their pipeline? You make it a condition of continued employment.

Pipeline 184

Pipeline Motivation Coaching Account 184

Understanding the Sales Force

AUGUST 8, 2019

I can grow a pretty decent five o'clock shadow - above my upper lip and only after about a week. Unlike the bearded lady at the circus, when it comes to facial hair, there's really not much there!

Pipeline 170

Pipeline Sales Meeting Prospecting 170

Understanding the Sales Force

AUGUST 7, 2018

My latest data mining project reveals that the answer to this question is a partial correlation. Check out the two tables below and you'll see just what I mean.

Pipeline 195

Pipeline Data Sales 195

Understanding the Sales Force

NOVEMBER 5, 2015

We use Membrain for our CRM/Opportunity/Pipeline Management system because it's the one we recommend most often to our clients and if we're going to recommend a CRM application, shouldn't it be the one we use, embrace and love?

Pipeline 120

Pipeline CRM Groups Objections 120

Understanding the Sales Force

JULY 10, 2013

That''s one of the primary reasons that so many companies are complaining that there aren''t enough new business opportunities in the pipeline. The lesson here is that these new sources of potential business are simply that - sources of potential business - that you can''t control.

Opportunity 221

Opportunity Pipeline Hiring Real Estate 221

Understanding the Sales Force

APRIL 18, 2016

I usually get notified when new sales studies are published and I'm asked to link to those reports from my Blog. Last week I was invited to download the 2016 InsideSales.com Business Growth Index Report.

Pipeline 120

Pipeline Report Study Sales 120

Understanding the Sales Force

JULY 11, 2018

If you happened to read the article about most salespeople being fired or arrested if they worked in accounting then this is the sequel - Arrested 2!

Opportunity 160

Opportunity Pipeline Data Account 160

Understanding the Sales Force

JANUARY 31, 2024

Consider the degree to which the sales organization depends on sales process and you’ll come up with at minimum the following ten subjects: Integration with CRM Pipeline Staging Useful Pipeline Reviews Effective Sales Coaching Opportunity Status Appropriate Next Steps Identification of Sales Bottlenecks Training Requirements Accurate Forecasting (..)

Sales Process 182

Sales Process Decision Maker Sports Construction 182

Understanding the Sales Force

FEBRUARY 28, 2024

What’s in your pipeline? This week, my team had two reactions to a client’s pipeline report. ” When there are multiple reactions, the final impression is only as strong as the worst reaction so the data in this pipeline report gets a strong No. Are the opportunities made of gold bullions or lumps of coal?

Pipeline 170

Pipeline Opportunity Decision Maker Top of Funnel 170

Understanding the Sales Force

AUGUST 21, 2023

For help with more accurate forecasts and pipeline management, read articles about forecasts and pipeline. For the consumers of Objective Management Group’s comprehensive data from the evaluations of nearly 2.4 For help with hiring better salespeople read articles about sales recruiting.

Hiring 156

Hiring Decision Maker Forecasting Face-to-face 156

Understanding the Sales Force

AUGUST 21, 2023

For help with more accurate forecasts and pipeline management, read articles about forecasts and pipeline. For the consumers of Objective Management Group’s comprehensive data from the evaluations of nearly 2.4 For help with hiring better salespeople read articles about sales recruiting.

Hiring 156

Hiring Decision Maker Forecasting Face-to-face 156

Understanding the Sales Force

FEBRUARY 25, 2024

Let’s do the math. Isn’t that a sad statement of the times? The other possibility is that I’m the outlier where coaching only makes a difference for our clients, and if my team isn’t training and coaching sales managers to coach, it won’t work.

Coaching 333

Coaching Guidelines Margin Incentives 333

Understanding the Sales Force

JANUARY 21, 2021

As a result, you don't have realtime data to populate your dashboard and still don't know what's really going on with your sales organization, their pipeline and the forecast. Bringing it closer to sales, you invested in the CRM application you needed but your salespeople aren't using it the way you had hoped.

Training 372

Training Forecasting Selling Skills CRM 372

Understanding the Sales Force

SEPTEMBER 27, 2022

They also had a large number of opportunities stalled in the pipeline and they believed that training on more effective techniques to conduct follow up calls would help. One of their issues was their 20% win rate was much lower than they thought it should be and they believed their salespeople needed some refresher training on closing.

Software 261

Software Software Follow-up Groups 261

Understanding the Sales Force

NOVEMBER 10, 2023

Within the sales function, and from among sales operations, sales process, sales methodology, sales strategy, sales compensation, sales talent evaluations, sales recruiting and selection, sales pipeline, sales forecasts, sales metrics, sales training, sales culture, sales incentives, sales enablement, sales coaching and sales leadership, there is a (..)

Company 212

Company Hiring Scale Forecasting 212

Understanding the Sales Force

APRIL 9, 2020

Most companies expect their sales teams to be not only active, but proactive; to replace face-to-face meetings with virtual meetings; and to continue pipeline building so that there is business to close when we return to work. For most salespeople and companies, the last three weeks has been an absolute roller coaster.

Company 353

Company Face-to-face Consultative Selling Pipeline 353

Understanding the Sales Force

NOVEMBER 12, 2014

Last week a new client was explaining how he called several of the nearly 300 opportunities that one salesperson had in his pipeline. My client identified 7 opportunities that had no recent activity but had been in the pipeline for several months and were supposed to close.

Forecasting 243

Forecasting eBook Pipeline Sales Cycle 243

Understanding the Sales Force

APRIL 30, 2018

While that has an impact on the size and quality of the pipeline, it has little to do with results. They try everything! Most leaders think it's an issue of closing skills. Others think it's about prospecting. But I have discovered the cause, will show you the data, and discuss how to fix it.

Closing 216

Closing Data Pipeline Opportunity 216

Understanding the Sales Force

FEBRUARY 2, 2018

There are traditional lagging indicators, like revenue generated, and there are traditional forward looking indicators, like new meetings, pipeline value and pipeline quantity compared to a prior period.

Sales Cycle 209

Sales Cycle Pipeline Coaching Revenue 209

Understanding the Sales Force

NOVEMBER 20, 2020

A sales team looks its best on January 1, when every opportunity in the pipeline is a possibility and forecasts predict a banner year. Because my lawn looks its worst on August 1 and its best on November 1, it has a lot in common with most sales organizations.

Data 259

Data Quota Forecasting Pipeline 259

Understanding the Sales Force

JULY 31, 2023

I don’t want to risk losing the business – better to have a potential piece of business in the pipeline than learn that I don’t. Salespeople tend to fall into one of three groups when it comes to following up: I don’t want to be a pest – they may not like me anymore.

Follow-up 156

Follow-up Proposal Intent Groups 156

Understanding the Sales Force

JUNE 6, 2017

You may be more familiar when the rant sounds like, it's almost the end of the quarter, we're only at 65% of forecast, the pipeline is half empty, and nothing is closing. With the exception of 3 nice deals that came in during May, our salespeople have sucked.

Sales Forecasts 209

Sales Forecasts Forecasting Revenue Pipeline 209

Understanding the Sales Force

DECEMBER 22, 2014

How much of that is already in your pipeline and how much of it must be found? Resolve to begin each day from inside your CRM and specifically, in your pipeline. From the exercise above, you should know how many opportunities are required for each of four stages of the pipeline. Live in Your CRM. Use the Phone.

Face-to-face 275

Face-to-face Commission Exercises Sales Qualified Lead 275

Understanding the Sales Force

AUGUST 16, 2017

My favorite is our Comprehensive Pipeline Analysis which I wrote about here. The exciting thing is that there are some very cool things that OMG does with our data. For example, when we evaluate a sales force we include analyses that you can't get anywhere else.

Analysis 173

Analysis Pipeline Data Groups 173

Understanding the Sales Force

DECEMBER 3, 2014

Dave Kurlan Inbound Marketing crm twitter Pipeline linkedin social selling selling value Lead Nurturing top of the funnel Bill Cosby Value Proposition' So if not those topics, then what should we all be writing about - all the time - that would be a real difference maker for salespeople? Why, you ask?

Lead Rank 299

Lead Rank Lead Scoring Top of Funnel Lead Nurturing 299

Understanding the Sales Force

MAY 3, 2019

This article is about the ineffective salesperson who is lazy, or has an attitude problem, or is stubborn, or isn't making the calls, or can't close any deals, or has an empty pipeline, or won't adapt to the new way of selling, or can't seem to grasp the importance of getting traction, or claims not to know what's expected in the way of performance.

Coaching 311

Coaching Objections Follow-up Motivation 311

Understanding the Sales Force

JULY 2, 2018

In this article, we will look to determine whether there is a correlation between sales percentile, sales pipeline and sales performance. Ten of my last fourteen articles have been based on Objective Management Group's (OMG) data from the evaluations of 1.8 million sales professionals and like the road work, we're gonna dig some more today!

Data 130

Data Account Pipeline Groups 130

Understanding the Sales Force

DECEMBER 1, 2014

Dave Kurlan sales pipeline Closing Sales accurate sales forecast' What can you do to assure that December (a short month with only 17 business days) as well as the 4th quarter and the year finish - all have a strong finish? You won''t like my answer at all, but it''s the truth.

Strategy 244

Strategy Sales Forecasts Forecasting Pipeline 244

Understanding the Sales Force

APRIL 10, 2017

Yet pipeline management, along with the ability to motivate, recruit and hold salespeople accountable are also required. But what if I told you there was a way to completely eliminate the need to manage the pipeline, motivate, recruit and hold salespeople accountable?

Motivation 136

Motivation Account How To Pipeline 136

Understanding the Sales Force

MAY 6, 2015

Earlier this week I posted an article that explored whether or not a salesperson should be punished for landing a big deal if that same salesperson had nothing else in the pipeline.

Compensation 120

Compensation Commission Pipeline Sales 120

Understanding the Sales Force

JANUARY 16, 2015

I recently downloaded eWeather HD and as I poked around, I found something I had never seen before and it has a huge tie-in to sales management, the pipeline, and accurate forecasts! Dave Kurlan Baseline Selling sales management sales leadership sales pipeline sales forecasts eweather HD'

Sales Forecasts 120

Sales Forecasts Forecasting Pipeline Sales Leadership 120