The CEO Who Needed to Hire Salespeople

Guest post by: Dave Kurlan
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Everyone Can Sell. Not Really. Top 10 Reasons Why Not - By Dave Kurlan

Yesterday I spoke with a CEO who asked for some help recruiting salespeople. It seems that the salespeople they had previously hired had failed. As I learned more about their business, a few things became obvious to me:

* They hadn't yet figured out the best way to find and close business - they only closed 8 deals last year, up from 4 the year before.
* They lacked any formal sales systems or processes.
* They were closing only 1 of 30 opportunities.
* They were selling to people who didn't want or need their service.
* They must sell the "why buy" rather than the "why us?"

The reality of their situation is that before they can recruit salespeople and expect them to succeed, they must first succeed themselves so that they can share their proven, time-tested, repeatable model with new salespeople. Today they are selling by the seat of their pants and they aren't very good at it. You simply can't bring new salespeople into an environment like that and expect them to succeed.

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Free PDF Download
Everyone Can Sell. Not Really. Top 10 Reasons Why Not - By Dave Kurlan

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.

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