Dave Kurlan is someone who I believe has perfected the science of building and maintaining a high performance sales organization. A smile often comes across my face when folks begin to talk about all of the things they believe make a good professional organization. Generally they could not be further from the truth; please consider a professional evaluation of your sales force if your top line is a priority in 2008.

• 2008 Dave Kurlan*
  This post on the Blog at IDC said the the number one agenda item for CEO's in 2008 is sales. With a weakening, uncertain economy, that shouldn't really surprise anyone but thanks to the researchers at IDC, now we can confirm it. With CEO's now beginning to worry about the top line in addition to their existing concerns about the bottom line, I predict that we'll see a lot of fringe, underachieving, complacent, overpaid (paid as salespeople but actually performing work of an account manager) salespeople losing their jobs this year.

The question is are those descriptions conditions or symptoms? That's the very reason for evaluating the sales force - so you can tell the difference. Are the conditions described above chronic, where those salespeople won't change or improve; or are there reasons why they exhibit those symptons (not conditions) and can they be fixed? A Sales Force Evaluation will answer those questions and more!