Colleen’s Blog

We're now well into Q2. Are you ready to help your team accelerate their success? I’ve been working with organizations and helping transform their sales teams for the last year. In all cases, these are companies looking to grow faster than the market and at an accelerated pace than their current growth path. Here are their keys to success:

You cannot grow your business with a particular client if you're relying on a singular point of information. Growth comes from not only the quality of contacts, but also your quantity of contacts in a particular organization. If members of your sales team are not diversifying their contacts within an organization, it's time that you ask them to start doing so. The truth is, your team needs to be increasing their engagement or "infiltration" with their clients if you have any hopes of growing your business within your existing customer base. What's the best way to begin practicing this? Start building an organizational chart. When a member of your sales team meets with a buyer, either in person or on call, get them to ask this one simple question:

We're approaching the end of the first quarter of the year. Are you satisfied with your results so far? Regardless if your sales team is way ahead, on pace or behind on the targets you've set, I want to direct your focus to a potential gold mine you're already standing on. In fact, there are countless organizations who will miss their sales targets this year, without realizing that if they took advantage of this gold mine, they could not only make up lost ground, but completely exceed the results they hope to create this year. Don't worry about grabbing your shovels, no physical labor is necessary to tap into and grab the gold that's already waiting for you. Wondering what exactly this sales goldmine is? Enough suspense!

I’m always amazed at how much one can learn about business success just by the act of travelling. Here is what happened over the last 30 days, and the lessons you can use to profit from it. It's a valuable exercise to use your own experiences as a customer to improve your own business' customer service. Why not learn from the mistakes of others?

It's common for people think  "garbage in, garbage out." However, in sales the opposite is true; garbage in, garbage stays! In other words, if you keep making tragic mistakes in managing your team and your territories you will produce a garbage year. So, while it's common at the start off the year to create your annual "to do list" or goal list, you must also create a "not to do list" of  specific "garbage activities" that are hurting your sales. Here are the top 16 "garbage activities" for your 2016 "not to do list." STOP….

How can you ensure that you’re hiring the right people to join your sales team? Many sales leaders have been asking me how to hire new sales reps and build a profitable team, especially as we inch closer to 2016. I often suggest taking a step back. There are a few things you need to do before you proceed with interviews in order to ensure that you hire the right person and create the best team possible.

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: