Colleen’s Blog

I want to highlight an important coaching technique that you should be practicing with every single one in your sales team: owning the story. What do I mean by that?

I’ve been talking a lot about the importance of having the right mindset for uncertain times. And for sellers and leaders alike, I regularly remind you why you must adapt, how you work, and how you connect with customers to survive and thrive in this fast-changing marketplace.

As sales managers, you can’t solve your team and company’s problems if you're not talking to customers directly. Especially during these uncertain times, I know many of you have become comfortable with just sitting behind your desk. However, you need to get out and talk to customers or, at least, talk to them virtually.

If you’re like most salespeople, you probably dread at least one essential sales process, such as prospecting.

The big mistake repeated far too often by sellers throughout the global pandemic—and in any period of abrupt change—is believing that if you wait long enough and keep on working the way you always have, things will eventually get back to normal.

There's an easy way to improve sales closing ratios. When a sales leader notices that his or her ratios aren't up to par, a variety of tactics are often implemented.

We can talk about methods, strategies, and tactics until we're blue in the face. But, the truth is, your sales team won't be as effective as they can be if they don't have the daily habits in place to create consistent sales results.

Over the past few months, due to travel restrictions, companies have been conducting more and more product training sessions. I'm not opposed to product training, but it's critical that we don't pitch product features to our customers. Instead, what we need to do is transition product training into value training.

We all strive to be perfect. But, there's a problem with perfection. Interestingly enough, most of us know that it's an unrealistic ideal to live up to.

I don’t need to tell you that the 2020 global pandemic was a watershed year for change. But, what gets overlooked far too often is that the conditions for change—especially in sales—were apparent for years. Selling was ripe for disruption because, as the marketplace changed, the behaviours and assumptions of sellers did not.