Colleen’s Blog

There has been no greater impact on B2B sales in the last decade than the online consumer-buying process.

If you follow my work, you may be familiar with my belief that the most critical part of the sales process is between getting someone to say yes and when that order actually comes in. The shorter you can make this time period, the less likely you are to lose the sale.

Workshops and learning events can be the least effective—and for some, even the worst—places for your salespeople to get the training they need. You heard that right. Now, let me explain.

It's the thing you always do because it worked before. Much like the delivery person whose route over the years has consisted of taking as many right turns as possible to save time, sales leaders have a tendency of relying on time-honoured habits in the execution of their work.

I've stopped more than one CEO in their tracks when I've heard them utter this phrase: "I need you to fix a sales problem I have." Doing the fixing is not what I do.

Summer is not an excuse to stop selling. You don't have to give in to the idea that there are no sales to be made in July and August.

You may have noticed this interesting trend... Lost deals tend to be the same ones that stagnate during the proposal phase.

Sales velocity is a powerful metric that every sales leader must know inside out. While it measures how fast you're making sales and earning revenue, it gives you something even more valuable. You gain an understanding of the relationship between the four key activities that comprise your sales velocity: opportunities, deal size, closing rate and sales-cycle speed.

When I ask sales teams what's the number reason why their pipeline isn't more full—how come they're managing a pipeline so lean it's going to be impossible for them to hit their targets—they give me an excuse. They abdicate responsibility, claiming that their marketing department has not provided them with enough leads. You have to be responsible for your own pipeline.

So far in this series—which looks at four adjustments you can make to improve your sales velocity — each activity has involved both a planning and execution stage.