Colleen’s Blog

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.

Whether it's a prospect or a client you've been doing business with for years, you need to over-communicate, not under-communicate. Far too many sellers believe that no news is good news. If they have a problem they are trying to resolve and have not resolved it, they just won't call their customers. This stems from the fear that the customer will either not like their progress or response. Thus, these sellers hide and under-communicate.

Years ago, I had a client based in Northern Europe and they were a ships services company. Their sales VP told me, "Colleen, we have a long and proud history of losing all the RFPs where we have the incumbent relationship." I had to think twice for a second and did not know what he was talking about.

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.

I was recently with a group of sales leaders and one of them admitted that he had sales reps who didn't use CRM. And this sales leader was from a top-performing company with around 40-50 reps who are consistently over their targets both from a volume and margin perspective. While it was commendable that he was willing to admit that his sales reps had CRM deficiencies, it's a shame that those salespeople were not using a tool that would make them much more effective.

I was recently talking to a sales rep who told me he had not taken a vacation in 5 years. I could tell by the tone of his voice that he saw it as a badge of honor and was bragging about it. I stopped him and told him that it's not a badge of honor to never take some time off. In fact, it's a sign that you are highly inefficient if you feel you can't go away for a few days—let alone a few weeks—and have everything fall out from underneath you. It's also a sign of a really unhealthy ego if you think that your business and your client will fall apart if you go away. You believe that you are the only thing that is holding the territory together. Stop it.

It's impossible to create a non-stop sales boom in your organization with a high turnover rate. Have you thought about how to reduce it on your sales team?

Far too many sales teams underperform because they have underperforming sales reps in the team. These sales reps need to be replaced. Additionally, another reason for a sales team's poor performance is that one of the top sales performers left, resulting in a drastic loss. Both of those are issues that sales leaders have to address on a proactive basis.

Most of my clients are in traditional businesses: commodities, manufacturing, aerospace, and finance. Businesses and business reps that have a long history in the market have been successful because of relationships. When you spend 30 years in your territory selling to the same customers and buyers, you have a good relationship with those customers. You see those businesses grow, thrive, and flourish as a result of your work. However, recently, we've been helping some of those clients of mine reposition the way they are thinking about relationships.

I recently talked to a CEO whose sales were down $16 million. That represented a 20% decrease from the prior year. Thus, they were concerned. I asked him, "What would your sales VP tell me if I asked why your sales were down." He replied, "Our biggest customer that represents the vast majority of that loss is in flux. They pivoted their business and, as a result, they're not buying from us right now. We think it's going to pick up, but we are not sure."