Colleen’s Blog

Do you want to be successful? Alright - that was obviously a rhetorical question. Since I know you want to be triumphant with your sales, it’s imperative that you surround yourself with success. You’re probably familiar with the following quote: “You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with.” If you want to manage a successful sales team, you must do your best to learn from and work with successful sales leaders. If you’re learning tips and strategies from poor salespeople, you’re not going to be able to relay effective information to your team. If you don’t currently work with any sellers who are creating positive results, branch out and meet high achieving salespeople via networking events, conferences and trade shows. The idea is to surround yourself and learn from achievers. It doesn’t stop at your immediate network. Here are a few steps you can take to create a success mindset so you can create a prosperous sales career. On top of following these steps yourself, I highly recommend you ask your sales team to do the same:

You’ve probably had to deal with professional criticism at some point (or often) in your sales career. In such a fast-paced, high-pressure profession that is continuously focused on results, we are often subject to our fair share of criticism from colleagues, managers, clients, and prospects. If you want to be successful in sales, you must learn to take criticism and use it to your advantage. ← Click To Tweet It’s easy to get wrapped up in your faults when others are pointing them out to you. But, there are steps you can take to efficiently move past the negativity and actually create success through the criticism that you receive.

If your sales are suffering right now, I want to make you aware of a shocking statistic. According to a study conducted by our friends at InsideSales.com, an incredible 30% of leads are never followed up on by the sales team when passed on by the marketing department. Can you believe it?! It doesn't matter if you have a client base of 10 people or 10,000 people. Ignoring 30% of your leads is a great way to create a sales disaster in your business. At the very least, I'm sure we can all agree that even if your sales are on target, that extra chunk of business can't hurt! Now that we have that surprising stat out of the way, let's discuss what's required in your follow up.

Do you ever wonder what happened to good old-fashioned handwritten letters? Although communication tools like email have become the norm and have eliminated most practical uses for handwritten letters, it seems as though the transition period between the two methods of communication was almost overnight. In business today, it’s clear that letter writing is no longer in style. However, have you ever thought of how you can use this fact to your advantage? It isn’t a coincidence that most high ranked sales professionals that I know are also prolific letter-writers. Consider the benefits of writing a letter: