Like this article? PLEASE +1 it! Evan Signature
Evan Carmichael Top Header about About Home Profiles articles Tools forums inspirational quotes About facebook Twitter YouTube Blog
Share for a Cause











Death Defying Sales Calls- Don't Get Run off the Road

Guest post by: Dave Kurlan

Article Overview: When you're making sales calls trust in your own ability to handle the situation but don't have too much faith that everyone involved is on your side. A healthy dose of skepticism goes a long way.

Free Download - Sales Courage and Resilience By Dave Kurlan
Name: Email:

Death Defying Sales Calls- Don't Get Run off the Road

Dave Kurlan is a top-rated speaker, best-selling author, sales thought leader and highly regarded sales development expert.

I was driving to the airport at 4:30 AM when I passed a tandem tractor trailer - 2 18 wheelers hitched together. You must have tremendous confidence when you do that - at highway speed - with the huge, long truck on one side, and nothing but guard rail on the other side. While it's helpful to have confidence in your own ability to hold your vehicle steady, it's even more important to trust that the truck driver won't veer into your lane and run you off the road! What happens if you trust too much, take the truck driver for granted, and don't pay attention to every move that driver makes?

Sales calls are like that. You can have all the confidence in the world in your own ability but if you trust the prospect too much, if you have too much faith that they won't run you off the road, if you take their intentions for granted, they might run you right off the road without you even noticing!

But that never happened to you or your salespeople.

Have a healthy degree of skepticism, push back and challenge everything you hear, especially when it's what you wanted to hear, to avoid a case of happy ears.

Related Articles
  Know your magic numbers
  What is the best way to develop my sales skills?
  Profitable Online Business Ideas and the Recession Part 2
  Contribution
  How can you make more of your customers open your emails?
  When does no mean no?
  More crazy customers!
  Ode To Summer
  Are you a Star?
  Learning From Failure
  Social Networking or Social Distraction
  Can you afford to make your email marketing more targeted? Can you afford not to?
  Part Five - Prospecting for More Sales
  Are you Hard, Scrambled or Soft?
  Sales Query Answer
  Find your Focus
  Handling the Telephone Interrupter
  Get better results from email newsletters and promotional emails
  How do I find a passionate and purposeful mentor?
  Insurance Sales Planning that Works

Home > Sales > Dave Kurlan > Death Defying Sales Calls Dont Get Run off the Road >
Article Tags: cold calling, prospecting, sales calls, sales people

About the Author: Dave Kurlan
RSS for Dave's articles - Visit Dave's website

Dave Kurlan is a best-selling author, top-rated speaker and thought leader on sales development.  He is the founder and CEO of Objective Management Group, Inc., the industry leader in sales assessments and sales force evaluations, and the CEO of David Kurlan & Associates, Inc., a consulting firm specializing in sales force development. Dave has been a top rated speaker at Inc. Magazine's Conference on Growing the Company, the Sales & Marketing Management Conference and the Gazelles Sales & Marketing Summit. He has been featured on radio and TV, including World Business Review with General Norman Schwarzkopf, in Inc. Magazine, Selling Power Magazine, Sales & Marketing Management Magazine and Incentive Magazine. He is the author of Mindless Selling and Baseline Selling – How to Become a Sales Superstar by Using What You Already Know about the Game of Baseball. He created and wrote STAR, a proprietary recruiting process for hiring great salespeople, and he writes Understanding the Sales Force, a popular business Blog and is a contributing author to The Death of 20th Century Selling (Dan Seidman), Stepping Stones (Deepak Chopra and Brian Tracey) and 101 Great Ways to Improve Your Life, Volume 2 (David Riklan).

Click here to visit Dave's website
Dashed Line

Understanding the Sales Force
More from Dave Kurlan
Salesperson Selection
Predict Sales Turnover
Visual Pipeline


Related Forum Posts
Online Sales and Marketing vs Traditional Online Sales and Marketing vs Traditional - Hi Evan, I am noticing that many of the posts in the Sales/Marketing section deal with online marketing, SEM and and SEO and Affiliates. I was wondering if it might be a good idea to separate that section into two; 1) Online Sales and Marketing; 2) Traditional Sales and Marketing
Re: Online Sales and Marketing vs Traditional Re: Online Sales and Marketing vs Traditional - [quote="ltrahan":31w9r2iz]Hi Evan, I am noticing that many of the posts in the Sales/Marketing section deal with online marketing, SEM and and SEO and Affiliates. I was wondering if it might be a good idea to separate that section into two; 1) Online Sales and Marketing; 2) Traditional Sales and Marketing[/quote:31w9r2iz] I second the request...
Re: How to Promote a MLM Business? Re: How to Promote a MLM Business? - In MLM a lot of it is hype. I know you like your product but you have to get people in like a circus does. Draw people in with attraction. Depending on your budget you should setup a tent in the parking lot of a mall/grocery store(with their permission or rent the space) and cook-out hotdogs and hamburgers, have a clown doing magic for the kids, make a nice presentation on projection screen. Show your prospects that you are larger than life. Sales is 90% attitude and 10% aptitude. With MLM it is usually simple to understand so make it so simple they cant resist. They should feel dumb if they dont sign-up on the spot. When you have a crowd it is like a feeding frenzy. They will sign-up just because other people are...especially if you have a relatively cheap MLM. You are not going to make any sales if your product in MLM is over $200. I know this part is self promotion but get a wireless credit card machine so you can take payment right on the spot. Dont give them any reason to leave without buying/signing up.
enRoute ads - 10 days with my new salesmen enRoute ads - 10 days with my new salesmen - Hi Guys, As some of you may know I hired a sales person for my business. I picked him amongst 50+ interviews, so I did do my due diligence. For any of you who have had experience with outbound sales reps in your company could you please shed some light on these statistics and let me know what you think: Days Employed: 11 Calls Made: 200 Average length of call: 3 minutes Sales: 0 Closing Rate: 0 Previous closing rate at Astral Media: 5% He is selling billboards instead of radio, for an unestablished company vs. an established one There seems to be large gaps in calling made in his daily log, on average he is making 20 calls a day. I am going to try to increase this by providing him with calling lists versus him creating his own. (I will keep you posted on this). I am just wondering, in your experience, what kind of regiment do you have your cold callers work on, 6 hours? 4 hours? 7 hours? And did you notice a curve occur with closing rates as time progressed and experience increased? If so when did you notice this begin to occur, I have him on a 1,500.00 NON-RECOVERABLE sales draw salary which ends in 6 weeks (approx).
Re: How to Promote Your Blog – The Definitive Guide to Promoting Re: How to Promote Your Blog – The Definitive Guide to Promoting - Great Post! Dont forget to put your blog in Anchor Text For SEO purposes for the keywords you want when getting backlinks (for example with article marketing)...Very important. You can conquer quite a few small Niches and get your site on the number 1 spot in Google!


Recommended Article for You close

  Know your magic numbers

Share this article with your friends. Fund someone's dream.

Leave a comment below or share on the left and you'll help support entrepreneurs in Africa through our partnership with Kiva. Over $50,000 raised and counting - Please keep sharing! Learn more.



Featured Article

Bottom Footer



Newsletter

Get advice & tips from famous business
owners, new articles by entrepreneur
experts, my latest website updates, &
special sneak peaks at what's to come!
Name:
Email:
Popular Articles

Understanding Influence

SEO and the Entrepreneur

Suggestions

Email us your ideas on how to make our
website more valuable! Thank you Sharon
from Toronto Salsa Lessons / Classes for
your suggestions to make the newsletter
look like the website and profile younger
entrepreneurs like Jennifer Lopez.