I had the pleasure of speaking with Glenn Kurtz, an experienced sales leader out of Richmond, Virginia with a deep affinity for all Boston sports. In his 25 years in sales, he’s held positions of all sorts, carrying the bag from a sales manager of a small team to VP of sales of a billion-dollar company. From service to manufacturing industries, Glenn has experienced sales from a variety of high-demanding angles and recently came to begin working among a network called Sales Xceleration in which he provides fractional VP of Sales services to small businesses. “We help businesses that have gotten to a point where they need some professional help with sales. Maybe the owners have grown it up to a certain level of they have organically grown, and they need to have some sales infrastructure and attention put in place in order to grow the business further.”
What is one piece of advice that you would give to someone first entering sales?
“Sales is a process like almost anything in life. It’s a process and you have to embrace that. Look at sports for example. If you look at building a winning team, it includes a lot of the same fundamentals that get built up into plays. You put together the basics of contacting people, contacting customers, and build that into a process that can be repeated over and over again. The second thing is just to get to know as many people as possible because part of the process is to get your word out and the best way to do that is through referrals.”
What is the best sales squad that you’ve been a part of? What do you think led to the group’s success?
“I think the best sales teams are the ones that have a common goal. That’s the great thing about sales. It’s numerical.
I had a team of 10 sales people where we worked very well together, and I think we used each other’s strengths to help us all get better individually. Naturally, within a team, you have people that are good at certain aspects of the sale. If you look at our weekly team meetings as we’re working with each other’s accounts, we’re able to translate the strengths of everyone across the whole team. It’s similar to that of a basketball team where you have someone much really good defense and someone much better at offense. Those things can multiply up to make a much better team and we made everyone a lot better.”
Larry Bird’s passion for his craft made him one of the best basketball players in history.
What sports figure do you think best represents you as a salesperson and why?
“I’ll go back a few years. Larry Bird was a super hard worker. He was calm, cool, and collected but had a lot of passion which you could see when he played the game. So, you have that passion, that hard work, and that ability to make other people better. That was one of the things he did really well. That’s the person I would hope to be like.”
How would you say that you overcome rejection or failure in your day to day sales experience?
“It’s just a part of the process. You have to understand that we’re sort of in the rejection business where you get a lot of no’s. If you understand your numbers and your metrics, then you understand that it’s going to take a certain amount of no’s to get a yes. You can you can quantify the fact that each “no” is actually moving closer to a yes. You have to take a shot in order to have a chance of making it. If you’re not getting out there and getting “no’s” you’re definitely not moving or closer to getting a “yes”.”
Sell me the idea of your New England Patriots winning the Super Bowl this year.
“You have to start with their track record, and you know they have had the pieces in place that have had before. There’s some confidence there but I think the other thing is, usually the team that wins the Super Bowl is the one that starts playing their best football towards the end of the year.
I have a sense that that that’s where there are going to be. They will start listening to Belichick a little more and have more focus. I think the next couple of games they’ll win. They’ll be going in with a sort of intimidation factor. They’ve been there for so long that once you get to playoff time, that actually matters. They have a good chance as anyone. It seems like everybody’s a little shaky at this point.”
Do you remember the first thing that you ever sold?
“I was in the Boy Scouts and we fundraised. Back then, they had what was called a Tom Wat kit which is a big box with a bunch of stuff in it. It would be wrapping paper, screwdrivers, or any trinket-like stuff. We would trek it around the neighborhood, open it up, and take orders. This box was probably the size of a large suitcase.”
Do you see any trends coming about in sales?
“There’s a major trend that’s been going on in the last 10 years and it continues today. In the past, salespeople have been a conduit of information to potential buyers. Now all the information available on the Internet is becoming more and more detailed. And so, a sales person’s role was changed from providing information to the potential buyers doing two things. One is helping buyers sort through all the information and process information in light of their own company and their own requirements. The other major thing is to challenge the assumptions of a lot of people that are buying. A lot of people make false assumptions about the way things are and as a salesperson, your job is to challenge assumptions and think about problems and solutions differently.
So those are major trends and they’re now more pronounced because of the internet and people’s tendency to get all their information before they talk to somebody. The real successful salespeople are ones that are embracing that and being much more consultative.”
You can find Glenn on the following sites:
