Colleen’s Blog

Having long studied the habits of top-ranked sellers and the changing nature of the marketplace, I’ve seen a steady shift in the power in buyer-seller relationships. Now, study after study confirms what I’ve been observing in the field: today’s buyer is showing less and less desire to engage with salespeople than ever before. 

Why does team selling work? 

Did you know closing ratios on deals that employ traditional selling methods (e.g., cold calls and direct mail) have not changed since the 1980s? Seriously. They’ve not budged at all since “Eye of the Tiger” was a hit song on the radio. And yet there are still salespeople and team leaders today—four decades later—who remain stubbornly fixated on this entirely outdated way of looking at sales.

It’s one of the biggest challenges you face with a new customer: scouting out the landscape of their organization and determining who the decision makers are (and aren’t).

Recently, I talked about customer loyalty and how it’s your job—not theirs—to create ideal conditions for them to stick with you. But what about within your organization? It matters here, too.

It’s incredibly frustrating. Ride-along coaching ought to be a powerful tool at the disposal of every leader in a sales-based organization today. But, many still don’t use it properly and their sellers—and sales—suffer the consequences.

It’s important to keep finding things to remain positive about while in a crisis. To that end, I’ve talked about why it’s important to keep moving during tough times. It is equally important, however, to safeguard the way you think. Never lose your ability to be objective, anticipate, and adapt to change.

In every sales territory and in every organization, there's a hidden danger—one that has the potential to be lethal if left unchecked. It emerges only when "the unexpected" occurs. That's usually something big and potentially destabilizing. It could take the form of a sudden severe weather event, a change in management, a shift in organizational priorities in your client's company, or even a downturn in one or more sectors of the economy.

“Buyers have changed and loyalty’s dead now. Customers don’t care about the relationship anymore!”  I’ve been hearing that whine a lot from sellers. Most recently, it was from a client of mine, saying: “I’ve been supplying my long-time customer with free donuts and baseball hats every month for the last 20 years and now they’ve suddenly moved to the competition!”

Helicoptering behaviour: it isn't just limited to parenting. It's a real problem in the workplace today. And it's especially damaging in sales organizations.