Colleen’s Blog

This week, I had the pleasure of addressing 400 top Financial Services professionals at a national sales conference in Las Vegas. In fact, the image embedded to this blog post is the "backstage" view I had before the audience starting piling into the room. Here are the top 10 points from my keynote, they're the strategies that work today:

I've had many opportunities recently to sit in during sales meetings and presentations, and I have to be honest. Awful is the really the only word that comes to mind.

Are you considering raising your prices? Many salespeople look at raising prices with a grain of salt, a double-edged sword if you will. On one hand, raising prices means more earnings and greater profits. On the other hand, it could upset or scare away your current client base.

If you're in sales, you know the age-old mentality towards marketing. They're often looked at as the "bad guys." They're not the enemy.

Is your business experiencing wild swings in revenue? This may surprise you, but relaying too much emphasis on closing business for your sales team is actually counterproductive to increasing your revenues. What?! Let me explain.

I've said it before and I'll say it again. Cold calling is nothing more than desperation selling.

Have you ever wondered what makes you and your business more interesting to your prospects and clients? It isn’t hourly updates on social media or a picture with a celebrity. In fact, what makes a business more interesting to prospects often eludes most business owners.

Are you actively seeking referrals from your current client base? According to recent studies, 78% of happy clients want to give out referrals. Yet only 8% of salespeople actually ask for them. Can you see the disconnect? It doesn't take a math genius to figure out that many salespeople are missing out on key opportunities to increase their sales and grow their businesses. I understand the intimidation factor, but the truth is in order to achieve and maintain any kind of success in sales, you have to push through the intimidation and ask for referrals anyway. They are such a powerful tool to grow your customer base, and not asking for them often enough is doing a huge disservice to yourself and your business.

Far too many companies out there simply aren't growing. They're stagnating - once exciting results have been relived quarter and quarter and year after year and they're itching to see greater revenue. Does this sound like you?

I have a question for you. Do you really know where your revenue comes from? Most businesses can probably answer that question pretty quickly. It's obvious, right? Not so fast. Recently, we've been involved in a very large sales reorganization. There are three sales teams, a channel sales team, a field sales team and an inside sales team. It was always assumed that the field sales team was the main revenue engine. After all, they were the ones going out, finding leads and closing business. But, we uncovered something interesting...