Colleen’s Blog

Your mindset is typically one of two things. It can either be one of your greatest tools or one of your worst obstacles. The good news is you get to choose which side of the spectrum your mindset sits. If there’s one quality every successful salesperson can share, it’s their overall mindset for success. I haven’t yet met a successful salesperson who spends most of their time focusing on scarcity or negative circumstances. ← Click To Tweet As hard as you must work in order to see results, you should be working equally as hard to stay positive. Here are a few tips to get you on the right track:

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. By selling to anyone and everyone, you are setting yourself up for huge customer service problems in the future. ← Click To Tweet

How long do you typically take to get back to a prospect upon receiving an inquiry from them? Anything longer than 24 hours is too long. Your customers are busy people - by taking too long to respond you’re letting go of an otherwise potentially easy sale. ← Click To Tweet The number of salespeople and organizations who let days or weeks pass before responding to an inquiry is absolutely staggering. This type of behavior not only breaks several rules in sales etiquette but also displays a complete lack of professional etiquette as well. For example: I once sent an inquiry to a company about buying a tradeshow booth. I expressed a strong interest in their product and indicated that I simply needed a few pieces of information before making a purchase. I expected a prompt reply due to my clear readiness to buy their product.

If you’re anything like the motivated salespeople I have worked with in the past, you may at some point feel as though you are not doing enough to separate yourself from the pack. You may look at your colleagues and competitors and see little to no difference between your approaches to secure more sales. If this is something you’re feeling, don’t get discouraged! This feeling is a good thing. By feeling motivated to do something more or different than everyone else, you are already separating yourself from other people. This feeling is the beginning of creating a certain uniqueness about yourself which your prospects, clients, colleagues and competitors will surely notice! In fact, professional relationships on almost every level will advance; not to mention more leads are created and more long term and profitable relationships are formed. However, wanting to do more is only the first step. Stepping outside of your comfort zone and doing more is where the real magic starts to happen.

Summer is quickly approaching (some may claim that it has already arrived!). And, with the weather becoming increasingly pleasant, I can’t help but wonder how many professionals are simply going to sit back over the next few months and kick up their feet, both figuratively AND literally. You know as well as I that life is all about enjoying it. We work hard as sales professionals so that we can live a comfortable life. However, far too many sales professionals enter these summer months with an extremely nonchalant attitude. They decide because “no one else is working” that they too should stop making calls and meeting customers. Don’t fall into this trap. People are still working during the summer and quotas are still being met.

Often at Engage, we discuss effective communication strategies to use with prospects and clients. After all, in order to be an effective salesperson, learning to communicate effectively is a necessary prerequisite. There’s truly no way around it. However, it’s equally important for you to understand the “client repelling behaviours” which will land you in hot water with your sales results. Both new and experienced salespeople often don’t even realize when they are displaying poor business etiquette to prospects and clients. Don’t get stuck in the same category as these sales reps! In today’s era of mobile and smartphone technology, you are encouraged to take advantage of the many different avenues of communication to get in touch with clients. Texting, Skyping, faxing, emailing, and calling are all acceptable forms of communication when trying to reach your prospects. It’s what you do during the communication process that really matters.

You never know what you’ll find when going through old emails. While doing some inbox “spring cleaning,” I came across this cold email I received awhile ago. Let’s dissect it and see what lessons we can learn! “Dear Colleen, "ABC Company" is working with more than 1000 companies - including Xerox, Kaiser Permanente, VeriSign, and Goodyear - to help them deliver more effective and consistent communications and training to their internal and external audiences and dramatically reduce costs. The following is a brief example of “ABC Company’s” presentation that speaks to our value: View the “ABC Company” message for Engage Selling. Thank you for taking the time to review this. Please let me know if you are interested in learning more about the solutions we have created for our customers, and I'd be happy to forward a testimonial.”