Colleen’s Blog

You no longer have an ideal buyer. You have to throw out the notion that there's a single person inside your organization that makes the buying decisions.

I'm rarely lost for words, but this provocative question at last night's Enterprise Sales Forum in NYC caused me to pause for a few minutes: "What does the fact that most sellers don't call themselves "salesperson" say about our clients' perception of us, and what does this mean overall for the future of our profession?"

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

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.

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.

Improving productivity to be a more profitable seller - everyone wants to do it, but few actually succeed at it. I'm providing some simple (but extremely powerful) strategies in this live video that you can apply to sell more in less time.

I've often said to B2B sales audiences "If they can't find you, they won't buy from you!" This is why I embrace a ubiquitous marketing approach for sellers. (Chapter 3-4 in Nonstop Sales Boom). This principle applies to all sales, and we can learn from the best practices and massive failures of all industries. Here is a local example: Three new restaurants opened within a four block radius of my condo this week.