Colleen’s Blog

You may have noticed this interesting trend... Lost deals tend to be the same ones that stagnate during the proposal phase.

I'm currently working on a large project where I work closely with several sales managers. Unfortunately, I have been disappointed with their managerial qualities. This is because they don't practice coaching and exhibit leadership—skills that all of these sales managers are more than capable of displaying. However, instead, they make excuses, hang on to existing customers, and get engaged in customer service or delivery work—work that isn't their primary responsibility. As a result, their sales team suffers.

I recently talked to a group of sales leaders. It was the last three days of their quarter and they told me, "Colleen, we have to admit: we are having a fire sale. We're doing everything we can right now, including deep discounts to push us over the end of the month because we are a bit behind and we want to finish the quarter on track."

If you want to make more sales, you have to think about this. First, understand that we live in an "on demand generation."

Some sales reps give up too easily. That is, they'll reach out twice, perhaps three times to a prospect before throwing in the towel and moving on. 

I often get asked: what is considered a normal close rate and how do I improve it?

Today, I will be exploring how you can improve the metric of sales cycle length: how many days it takes to close a piece of business. If you can move that, for example, from 90 days to 80 days or 120 days to 90 days, you can dramatically improve your sales velocity.

Want to know the very best way to keep the majority of your customer base? Develop a healthy sense of paranoia. That's right, paranoia.

You can sometimes learn a lot from your dog. I have a relatively new puppy at home and there's one thing I noticed about her that all salespeople can learn from: you've got to ask for what you want. Indeed, the biggest reason salespeople don't get the sale is because they never ask for it.

Sales velocity is incredibly important because it is the measure of revenue that you bring in per person each day. It's a great indication of the future success or the gap you are creating based on a variety of key measures.