Colleen’s Blog

I’m always amazed at how much one can learn about business success just by the act of travelling. Here is what happened over the last 30 days, and the lessons you can use to profit from it. It's a valuable exercise to use your own experiences as a customer to improve your own business' customer service. Why not learn from the mistakes of others?

Is your business experiencing wild swings in revenue? This may surprise you, but putting too much emphasis on closing business is actually counterproductive to increasing your revenues. What?! Let me explain. Every time one of your sales reps closes a sale, they should be adding three to four more leads to your pipeline. When you’re concentrating too much on closing business, it detracts focus from gaining new leads. Before long, you will have no new leads to close business with, and this is what causes swings in revenue or sales whiplash...as I like to call it! Not to worry, if you feel your team has fallen victim to laser-focusing on closing while sacrificing new leads, there's a solution. Are you wondering how you can attain consistent revenue?

This year, we've been blessed with an extra day! That's right, because "February 29" shows up on this year's calendar, we have an extra 24 hours to speed up, catch up or to simply use as a way to rest and recharge. Chances are, most sales leaders won't look at their time this way. They won't even acknowledge that they have an extra day this year, or if they do, they'll underestimate what they can accomplish in a day. So, what exactly can you do with the extra day you've been given this year? Here are 16 ideas inspired by my work with the top performers inside the Engage Community:

You only have a few seconds to make a positive first impression on someone. Let’s face it - within moments of meeting another person we have often already determined whether or not we want to work with them. Here are, what I believe to be, extremely simple steps to creating trust upon meeting someone new: 1) You must look and act like someone who is ready to do business. ← Click to Tweet 2) Then, it’s important to behave in such a way that generates positive feelings in the other person. Doing so will get that person to like you. 3) Once they like you, your continued behaviors will determine whether or not they will trust you. When they trust you, they will often do business with you. Sounds easy, right? Apparently not.