Colleen’s Blog

I was working with a group of sales managers at a workshop a few weeks ago and one of them introduced this strategy. It was a very simple strategy of implementing an account plan when you didn’t have a sophisticated account planning process.

Yes, it is possible to do less and achieve more.

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

I was surprised when one of the clients I’ve been working with for close to 10 years asked me to discuss referral selling for a sales roundtable I was going to facilitate for them. I was surprised because this client is exceptional at what they do: millions of dollars in services and their top salespeople are constantly hitting records.

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.

I recently completed a number of studies regarding sales leaders and their salespeople. And one element that keeps resurfacing is that their salespeople are reporting that they want their leaders to be more solutions-oriented. When I examined this closely to determine what that specifically meant, I discovered salespeople want—during a coaching session or sales meeting—the sales leaders to help them solve their problems.

I want to highlight a sales strategy I’ve noticed perform incredibly well as of late. We started calling this the “land and expand” strategy.

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.

I recently spoke with a couple of high-performing salespeople about the various accounts we were managing. And one of them told me that he had been calling a particular customer for ten years before he finally got the break he needed to win their business. During one of his sales calls, he realized that he wasn’t just calling a single shop. In actuality, they had 120 locations.

There’s one thing I’ve noticed with organizations and people who are really good at bringing new business: they are good at operationalizing value. These organizations and people have closing ratios higher than the average: 40% to 45%, as opposed to the average of 25% to 30%.