Colleen’s Blog

After a week of touring ancient cities on the Rhine including visiting a good selection of castles, fortresses and churches, I discovered that I most enjoy them! They offer a complete glimpse into the way entire towns lived, the ways families came together and went about their daily lives, and how they protected their lives. One thing that came as a surprise was this: All castles have a single weak spot. There was only one penetrable opening in the castle that put the inhabitants at risk of enemy takeover. And, it’s the one spot with direct and open access to the ground below. Any guesses where it is? The toilet! Because the toilet was a simple hole in the floor with direct access to the outside, usually on the second floor and located over a hill, it created a vulnerable spot for the fortress. For this reason, the toilet only locked on the outside so you could escape quickly and lock the enemy out, and, was located in a highly trafficked room such as a dining hall so that if the enemy came up, there were lots of knights waiting to attack them! As I was learning about all the attempted attacks on the Marksburg Castle (the most well-restored castle on the Rhine), I got to thinking about sales teams. It struck me that all sales teams have a weak spot too. And while all teams might not have the exact same weak spot, identifying yours is the key to accelerating performance. In my experience, a sales team weak spot falls into 1 of 5 categories:

You have a few top performers on your sales team. That means they don't need to be coached, right? Wrong. Your top producing salespeople need to be coached just as much as your mid or bottom performing reps. In fact, it may be a wise decision to start coaching them even more! Why? Because by coaching your best reps, developing them further and encouraging them to raise their own bar, you better your chances of moving your sales results forward.

How often do you track your growth accounts? In order to be successful with your growth clients, you should be tracking them on a regular basis. More specifically, you should update yourself on their progress on a monthly basis. This may seem counterintuitive, especially because I recommend tracking key accounts on a quarterly basis. But, there are four big reasons that I suggest tracking your growth accounts more frequently.

You’ve probably achieved a degree of success by doing the right things from the comfort of your office. If you’re taking the right steps directly from your office, well done! The good news is, if you’re maximizing your efficiency during your work hours in the office, you can expect to achieve great sales results! The better news? You can actually achieve even greater success by periodically stepping outside the boundaries of your office. Most salespeople quite literally think inside the box. That is - they do 100% of their work and achieve 100% of their results directly from their office. However, the most successful salespeople have learned how to think and act outside the box. In other words, they know how to leverage opportunities outside of their office to create accelerated sales results. Here are two tips to help you get out of the office and create new opportunities for yourself:

It really has been a crazy few months here at Engage Selling. Working with so many different clients in such a short span really opens your eyes to new ideas, strategies and insights. I'm always open to embracing fresh new thinking! With that in mind, I want to share with you an important point which I believe is currently eluding many sales leaders and executives when it comes to building, growing and managing their sales team - and in turn, it's hurting their overall sales results. "We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them." - Albert Einstein This quote is crucial to your continued success as a sales leader. When you're dealing with issues and problems with your sales results, are you trying anything new? Are you trying to find fresh perspectives, thinking and solutions to the issues, or are you using the same kind of approach which may have lead to the problems in the first place?