Colleen’s Blog

Have you ever taken a serious look at your pipeline? There are likely a few extremely valuable clues it's trying to tell you! Let's take a deeper look at this.

The number one most discussed topic by my community in the past year has been surrounding cold calling. If you're an active member of my online communities, you may recall seeing much of the debate behind the statement I made...cold calling is dead.

Did you just do a double take? Don't close sales...isn't that counter-productive to our sales success? You heard me right. Salespeople should not be attempting to “close” sales with clients. It’s all in the definition.

At this time of year, the weather is warm (for the most part!), sellers are anxiously awaiting their vacation, and they also seem to buy into the idea that making sales is next to impossible.

I’m touring Japan for a couple weeks (or should I say eating my way through Japan), and I’ve noticed that the best meals are also the simplest. From the freshest fish, perfectly cooked rice, handmade noodles, a locally, just-picked vegetable, the best meals have a singular focus on each plate highlighting a single ingredient with no ornate sauces, or fussy preparations. In thinking back to my past travels, Mykonos was the same way. The meals we remember the most were simply prepared and focused on the highest quality, local ingredients. Occam’s Razor tells us that most often the simplest solution is the best. And, while this is the case for food, it is also the case for revenue generation. A confused buyer never buys, and a confused seller never sells.

How many of you have been asked to do less work than you did last year? No one has ever been asked that. Even my clients in shrinking markets are asked to do more sales. This is what's expected from salespeople.

Millennials in the professional world have been a hot topic for the past few years. It seems every second or third article online discusses how to communicate with them, what they seek in an employer and what gets them operating at their peak potential. It makes sense, with more and more of them piling into the workforce, managers and leaders are trying to get a grasp on how to best handle this generation.

Recently, I have been coaching a number of sales leaders in professional services firms. They've all been complaining to me that their teams are complaining about a lack of results with traditional outbound calling techniques.

It's been a long time since I was perturbed about a sales practice. That changed last week at Saks Fifth Avenue with Georgio Armani cosmetics. Congratulations to the brand for forever tarnishing themselves in my mind.