Colleen’s Blog

Yes, it is possible to do less and achieve more.

There’s one thing I’ve noticed with organizations and people who are really good at bringing new business: they are good at operationalizing value. These organizations and people have closing ratios higher than the average: 40% to 45%, as opposed to the average of 25% to 30%.

   Here’s an idea for all of you planning your sales kickoffs or big sales meetings with all of your team present: rather than just having a number of outsiders come in and talk about their motivational, sales, or consulting principles, have somebody come in and interview your top performers.

We recently experienced great success with our sales training programs. The customers involved received up to 200 to 400 percent return on investment just a few short months after the program was implemented—not after a year or multiple years, but indeed just a few short months.

Are your sales reps really operating at full capacity? That is, are they making the most of the time they’re provided each day to produce results?  Chances are, they’re not.  In this age of “multi-tasking,” it’s very common for professionals in virtually every industry to spend time in labor-intensive activities that don’t actually produce results. Sales professionals are especially likely to fall into this trap. 

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 in perspective. If you continue this trend throughout 2015 and work 5 days a week, you will spend 104 days next year in your email inbox. Imagine the number of sales you will be missing out on! It's time to re-align your mindset. Email does not close business for you. You close sales based on your personal relationships. Stop working so hard behind your computer and go meet customers in person, or pick up the phone and call them. In order to increase productivity (and sales) you must learn to manage your email inbox. <-- Click To Tweet Here are 5 tips for staying on top of your emails: