Colleen’s Blog

Are you selling the same way you were five years ago? Many salespeople have not adapted with the times and have not updated their sales process. As a result, their sales are suffering and they’re not selling as much as they used to. When it comes to your sales processes, it’s important to constantly stay on top of what’s working and what is not. ← Click To Tweet That way, you can identify and stick with the strategies that yield the best results for you and kick the “sales trash” to the curb! Here are five common practices that, in my experience, hurt sales and are often not addressed by salespeople! If your sales results are struggling, consider reviewing these five practices and identify whether or not you have recently updated these points in your sales process.

In a perfect world, prospects would fall from the sky. There would be no need to hunt or chase people down, they'd simply just appear! Unfortunately, as we tune back into reality, we have to accept that prospects can be tough to come across. Many salespeople have exceptional product knowledge and people skills, but lack the prospecting abilities to actually put those skills into practice. There's no escaping the fact that we have to prospect consistently in order to sell consistently. If prospecting is continuously slipping to the bottom of your daily todo list, here are 8 tips that can help you find more people to sell to. The best part? They are all easy to implement! With these tips you can finally throw the excuses out the window and get to work!

One of the biggest mistakes that sales leaders can make is neglecting their sales team. It happens more often than you think. Sales management becomes so preoccupied with results and numbers that they neglect the one thing that is most responsible for those numbers. Your sales team may be composed of a group of individuals, however, they come together each day to form an entity that is directly responsible for your success! ← Click To Tweet If just one of those individuals is unhappy, the entire team can feel the effect. Results can suffer, conflicts may develop and before you know it your sales team can become dysfunctional! It’s so important to ensure that each of your team members is happy and that your entire team supports one another. This is the kind of team that creates positive sales results and success in the long run. Consider these easy steps you can implement into your day-to-day operations to create a proper team atmosphere:

“How do I build the perfect sales cycle or the perfect sales process?” If you find yourself asking this question, you may be in for a dissapointment when you hear my answer. I’m often asked questions like this and while I wish I could provide better news, there’s no such thing as the perfect sales process. You simply can’t build or replicate a perfect system to unleash on your entire market and be guaranteed success. The truth is, the best advice for a salesperson who wants to create the “perfect” sales process is to simply make their processes more flexible. ← Click To Tweet As you know, every sale is different. Every client has their own needs and desires and each product has their own features and benefits. Because of this, there is no static sales process that can be used to accommodate the plethora of different requirements in your market. However, there are steps you can take to increase your chances for success with your sales processes:

Is your market slowing down? Be sure not to get caught up in a “slow down” mindset! While most salespeople will complain about the market, the successful salespeople will be looking for ways to turn a negative situation into a positive one. The majority of salespeople fail to realize that a market slowing down is actually the perfect opportunity to revise sales strategies and increase sales activity. Think about it, the slower market does not just create problems for you, your competition is likely struggling as well. Chances are they're facing the same challenges your sales team is facing, so it’s important to capitalize on this opportunity. By switching yourself from a  “slow down” mindset to a “speed up” one, you are essentially taking the first step towards achieving prosperity in difficult markets.

If you’re a professional salesperson, there’s a good chance that you’re also a professional traveler or will become one in the near future. Let’s face it, traveling can be an extremely stressful and energy draining experience. Missed flights, lost itineraries, lack of sleep, lost passports, bad weather, long lines at the border, car searches, obnoxious plane passengers sitting beside you, and countless other travel setbacks can cause massive headaches and leave you less than prepared for business. Because of this, I've put together a list of tips that can help you prepare for your future travels while drastically cutting down the chances of running into problems!

Just like many other things in life, keep the word variety in mind when it comes to your sales if you want see greater results. If you’re only using one or two pipeline streams to create more success with your prospecting, you are likely either currently experiencing or will experience less than impressive sales results. Why? Because the goal of efficient salespeople is to fill their sales funnels with the right prospects using multiple pipeline streams. In today’s market, your buyers have access to information anywhere, anytime and on any form of media they desire. In fact, they are often gathering information about you in places you would rather they avoid, especially if you have little to no presence in those spaces. Therefore, you must be ubiquitous! It’s critical that you retain control of all pieces of information about you and your business by embracing all forms of prospecting tools and media. You need to continue using the traditional and direct prospecting tools that you’re used to but you must also begin using indirect tools such as social media and publishing to your advantage. By doing so, you also expand your presence in the market.