Colleen’s Blog

When I ask sales teams what's the number reason why their pipeline isn't more full—how come they're managing a pipeline so lean it's going to be impossible for them to hit their targets—they give me an excuse. They abdicate responsibility, claiming that their marketing department has not provided them with enough leads. You have to be responsible for your own pipeline.

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.

If there's one habit that will make your sales team successful, it's this one. Get your sales team to do this each day.

Are you actively seeking referrals from your current client base? According to recent studies, 78% of happy clients want to give out referrals. Yet only 8% of salespeople actually ask for them. Can you see the disconnect? It doesn't take a math genius to figure out that many salespeople are missing out on key opportunities to increase their sales and grow their businesses. I understand the intimidation factor, but the truth is in order to achieve and maintain any kind of success in sales, you have to push through the intimidation and ask for referrals anyway. They are such a powerful tool to grow your customer base, and not asking for them often enough is doing a huge disservice to yourself and your business.

Do your team members possess the key trait for sales success? People are always asking me what they think the number one personality trait of a successful salesperson should be. Now, there is obviously a mixture of key strengths an ideal salesperson should possess, but one that stands out for me is personal responsibility. A salesperson is simply not prepared to reach their maximum potential until they take responsibility for their wins, losses, and their development as a sales professional. Here are a few questions to discover if this trait exists in your next candidate:

Do you turn your computer on each morning only to find a mountain of unread emails that need your attention? Email overload is an epidemic in the workplace. Most salespeople that we poll tell us that they spend up to 40% of their day just managing email correspondence between clients and internal partners. If this sounds about right for you as well, let me put things into perspective. If you continue this trend throughout 2017 and work 5 days a week, you will spend 104 days next year in your email inbox. If you manage a sales team of 10 people, that is almost 3 years of collective time in 2017 between your sales team that will be spent in an email inbox and not actually selling. If you manage a sales team of 100 people, well...you can do the math.

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.

,I know there are a lot of small businesses and startup businesses that pay attention to my site. Often, they come to me and they say, “Colleen, should I build out my sales team? It seems kind of expensive and cumbersome."

Haven't I said this before? Today I attended the Salesforce for Sales keynote. Thanks to the Sales Cloud team, Tim Clarke specifically for the great VIP Seating. I have to admit, I sometimes fall into that grizzled, jaded, old sales vet mode, and think, "come on! Do we really need all this new fanged technology to sell?" The answer is no. Unless, of course, you want to sell more in less time with greater ease and with more profit. In that case, the answer is absolutely yes! Teams need to be equipped with mobile technology, and a fully functioning CRM. <--- Click to Tweet I would also encourage you to consider the following technologies that are proven to increase conversion rates: