Colleen’s Blog

Have you noticed a recent downward trend in your sales? Has one bad month turned into two, three or four more in a row? Do you feel as though strategies that were once efficient and successful are now yielding poor results? Let’s face it - sales results can sometimes fluctuate due to external factors. While some salespeople will blame and accept these external factors and allow them to control their destinies, the successful sales leader will find ways to break out of a slump regardless of other variables. If you’ve been experiencing disappointing numbers for an extended period of time, it’s time to regroup and focus on rebuilding prosperity. <-- Click To Tweet Here are many ways you can increase sales to help you break out of a slump:

There are still many sales leaders, sellers and companies that are not embracing social media. At this point in 2014, social media has been integrated heavily into our personal and professional lives. It’s no longer a “nice thing to have” but rather a necessity to reach maximum success with your sales. Here are a few common reasons that I hear for not using social media: It’s too difficult to learn My company bans social media at work My buyers are not on social media While these may seem like legitimate reasons to avoid social media at first, if you change your mindset and approach, you’ll realize that these issues can easily be overcome.

Believe it or not, you can easily alienate, disengage and confuse your prospects within the first few seconds of a sales call. How you open a conversation with a prospect can truly make or break your chances for success with them. Unfortunately, most salespeople start sales calls in ways that repel prospects and clients. It doesn’t matter if it’s during the opening, qualification or closing process, if you’re asking bad questions you will end up with bad results.

Are you keeping a positive attitude in your day-to-day interactions? The outlook you have on your career and life has a direct impact on how successful you will become. ← Click To Tweet Those with a positive mental attitude tend to have more positive interactions and are easier to communicate with. People with negative attitudes tend to push clients, prospects, and colleagues away. Nobody wants to associate themselves with toxic people! A toxic attitude can easily spread across an entire team and sales force. When this happens, sales start to suffer! Trust me, if you’re feeling deflated, angry or frustrated, your team and your clients will be able to tell. Here are a few tips you can easily implement to maintain a positive attitude and environment at work:

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.

Have you ever lost contact with a client and wondered why? It’s easy to lose touch with people. We all have personal relationships that we wish we could maintain and nurture more often. But, when you allow your business relationships to fizzle out, it can have a negative impact on your career. Keeping regular contact with your clients is an essential practice for any successful salesperson. ← Click To Tweet How can you stay in touch with your clients on a regular basis? Try incorporating the following habits into your sales regimen:

You’ve been increasing your prospecting efforts and as a result, orders and sales are beginning to flood in. Your hard work is beginning to pay off and you’ll never have to spend time prospecting again...right? Wrong! Too many salespeople become complacent after a successful period of prospecting. They begin to slow down with their prospecting activities because they’re too busy celebrating current victories instead of focusing on securing future achievements. In short, they forget all about the hard work that allowed them to achieve success in the first place. Don’t get caught in this trap!

You’ve probably had to deal with professional criticism at some point (or often) in your sales career. In such a fast-paced, high-pressure profession that is continuously focused on results, we are often subject to our fair share of criticism from colleagues, managers, clients, and prospects. If you want to be successful in sales, you must train yourself to take criticism and use it to your advantage. ← Click To Tweet It’s easy to get wrapped up in your faults when others are pointing them out to you. But, there are steps you can take to efficiently move past the negativity and actually create success through the criticism that you receive.

You’ve heard it before. The dreaded “Let me think about it” objection is never something a salesperson wants to hear. Salespeople struggle with this objection because they don’t want to be “pushy” or “aggressive.” As a result, they usually thank the prospect for their time and move on. The worst part? They often never hear from the prospect again. The trick with this objection is determining whether or not it’s a real objection. Many prospects throw out the dreaded phrase because they want to get rid of you, while others really do need time to think. How can you tell them apart? Here is a highly effective technique you can use to uncover the real hesitation while giving you essential information so you can close the business.