Colleen’s Blog

Your buyers want to co-create the solution to their problem with you and be part of the solution process as opposed to being told what to do.

This is an interview supporting the book launch of Millennials Matter. Q: Thanks for joining us today, Danita. Give us a quick overview what you’re seeing and hearing about the importance of millennial salespeople in our companies.

One of the biggest mistakes you can make is trying to sell to everyone that comes into your pipeline. I know, it’s intuitive as a salesperson to sell as much as possible, but effective salespeople know how to pick and choose which prospects to sell to. They know the good from the bad. The reality is, not every prospect is an ideal candidate for your product or service. The sooner you learn this important lesson, the sooner you can focus on the prospects that are ideal candidates for you to work with.

A big mistake that I see sellers and companies make at the end of the year is failing to not plan for the new year. We get caught up in trying to close every single deal we can to accelerate way past our goals that we forget that January is just around the corner.

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.

A lot of work in the sales process focuses on handling objections. I'm going to make this simple for you and give you three steps that will help you handle just about any objection that you come across.

Generating leads is great, but if none of those people are actually going to end up working with you, or do but turn out to be an entirely wrong fit for your business...what good is it doing?

Like many sellers, you’re wrapping up your fiscal year soon, so it’s time to close-out your year strong. Now, more than ever, it’s time to get real about your sales: knowing what you can realistically close now, as well as what to target in the coming year. Why? Because too often, we engage in avoidance behavior: putting-off problems until later, when they need to be tackled now. That’s at the root of a lot of mistakes I see in the marketplace today, and is a key hindrance to sales acceleration. Stop kicking that can down the road. You need to plan and execute each of these steps to get real in 2018:

I want to focus on what's on the top of my mind, which is the end of the year for many of my clients. Right now, we're moving towards the end of the calendar year, but the strategy that I want to talk about can and should be done every single month and quarter.

Firing people is never pleasant. Regardless of your personal relationship with an individual, in a business environment, if a seller is doing more damage than good, it's time to think about their role on your team.