Colleen’s Blog

There has been no greater impact on B2B sales in the last decade than the online consumer-buying process.

Despite changes to our selling marketplace, too many sales professionals are rooted in beliefs about customer engagement that simply aren't true. That's why today, I'm going to dispel the three big sales engagement myths.

Time-based branding makes it as easy as possible for your customer to find you and buy from you. Get this right and you will unlock new growth in even the most competitive of marketplaces.

Every time your customer makes a buying decision, they deal with risk. They ask: “What if I make a mistake? What if things don’t work out? Can I be sure I’m making a good choice? What’s the cost of failure?”

If you follow my work, you may be familiar with my belief that the most critical part of the sales process is between getting someone to say yes and when that order actually comes in. The shorter you can make this time period, the less likely you are to lose the sale.

Workshops and learning events can be the least effective—and for some, even the worst—places for your salespeople to get the training they need. You heard that right. Now, let me explain.

It's the thing you always do because it worked before. Much like the delivery person whose route over the years has consisted of taking as many right turns as possible to save time, sales leaders have a tendency of relying on time-honoured habits in the execution of their work.

I've stopped more than one CEO in their tracks when I've heard them utter this phrase: "I need you to fix a sales problem I have." Doing the fixing is not what I do.

Sales velocity is a powerful metric that every sales leader must know inside out. While it measures how fast you're making sales and earning revenue, it gives you something even more valuable. You gain an understanding of the relationship between the four key activities that comprise your sales velocity: opportunities, deal size, closing rate and sales-cycle speed.

So far in this series—which looks at four adjustments you can make to improve your sales velocity — each activity has involved both a planning and execution stage.