Colleen’s Blog

Your sales team could be too isolated! A couple of years ago, I was working with an organization and we brought their entire sales team together in one room. One of the first things we did is we asked each individual on the team to begin sharing examples, ideas, thoughts and success stories. We wanted to determine whether those success stories aligned with the goals and values that the company put forth. Something interesting happened though. We began hearing phrases like:

I've been inspired by the athletes at the recent Winter Olympic games in PyeongChang. Their grit, tenacity and their ability to perform under pressure are all takeaways for sellers.

In my line of work, I've noticed that the vast majority of sellers don't prepare for sales calls and leave opportunities on the table.

It's frustrating. When you see a sales rep struggling month after month, and missing target after target, it's enough to make any sales leader uneasy. The problem is most leaders handle poor performers the wrong way. There's a tendency to have "tough conversations" or attempt to punish them into higher performance. Some leaders even give poor performers the "cold shoulder" and allow a rep's professional performance to seep into their personal behavior towards them. These are all things that are extremely counterproductive and more often than not, contribute to more negativity and even worse performance. Luckily, there are strategies you can put into place to help improve their results. 

Most times, companies, marketing departments, executives, and even sales teams create value statements without understanding the value they can bring to the customer.

If we're connected on LinkedIn, you've probably seen many of my posts surrounding this topic. Cold calling is dead.

I am sick of sales managers complaining about their top sellers not being team players.

The winter Olympics are in full swing and I'll be the first to admit I'm a junkie! I just love competition featuring the best of the best worldwide. Of course, there are always lessons to be learned for us as sellers. Here are the top five from week 1.

Today, I want to talk to you about a process that we've been using with our clients that is helping them close more deals. We're using a buyers map to help unstick opportunities that are stuck in their pipelines.

You may have noticed this interesting trend... Lost deals tend to be the same ones that stagnate during the proposal phase. That is, after completing a needs analysis, the deals that are ultimately missed are often the same ones that sit, and sit, and sit in the proposal phase. Interestingly enough, in our research, we've also found that completed deals don't tend to stagnate in the proposal phase but they do spend more time in the needs analysis phase. In fact, completed sales on average spend two to three times longer in the needs analysis phase than sales that are lost. Let's go even deeper with this.