Colleen’s Blog

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:

The best leaders are proactive. They create policies, plans, and action before they need to. The NFL has failed in this regard. While I applaud the work they are doing now to deal with future cases of domestic violence, one gets the sense they are only doing the right thing because of public outcry and fear of sponsorship loss.

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:

Not all clients are created equal. Nor should you be compelled to treat them equally. There’s no law stating you must sell to everyone, or keep servicing clients that are the wrong fit for your business. It’s as fair to say that your business has outgrown some types of customers as it is to say that you have some customers that you should have never brought on in the first place. You know who they are! If you’re miserable working with a client that you know isn’t profitable for your company, you won’t be motivated to serve them well. And, if that client isn’t receiving the best treatment, they won’t hit their desired goals. By virtue of this predicament, you’ve created a lose-lose situation: You’re not helping the client reach their objectives and they’re not helping you reach yours. Besides the ones that are clearly not profitable for you, here are four other types of clients that must go immediately:

“Buyers believe buyers first, the seller second and the business third.” This is a direct quote from a technology entrepreneur I coach and he is right. Testimonials have amazing persuasive powers. They touch on both the facts and emotions that drive people to make decisions. They reaffirm that your claims are credible and that your services are the real deal. They validate the value you deliver to the prospect. And they do so with a message that is unmistakably authentic and sincere. When a client says great things about you, about your work or the products you sell, give them the opportunity to turn that praise into a testimonial. Simply ask: “I’d really love to share your success with others. Would that be okay?” People generally like to be helpful to other people, but they’ll rarely think to give you that all-powerful testimonial unless you ask. Here are the some great ways to acquire testimonials:

We are now in September. As much as you may not want to admit it, the temperature is starting to drop and the leaves are beginning to change colors. Before you know it, you’re going to start hearing “Jingle Bells” playing on your local radio station! Are you on track to hit your sales quotas for the year? If you’re on pace to hit your goals for 2014, well done! Otherwise, now is the time to regroup and add some discipline to your sales game so you can end 2014 with strong sales results. Gone are the days that salespeople could make a living by waiting for the phone to ring. Today, only the most disciplined salespeople survive, thrive and achieve success. Here are a few tips to help you add some discipline to your daily routine:

When I think back over 20 years of my sales career, I've met only five kinds of people with behaviors that lead me to believe I should disqualify them as a prospect forever. I write about them in my recently released book Nonstop Sales Boom. You may have run across them in your work as well. They are: 1. The Shopper You learn that the prospect is considering two well-known competitors with whom they have a long, successful buying history. You are the last one into the process and the prospect cannot tell you clearly why they would consider an alternative, nor are they willing to allow direct communication with the decision maker. This is a sign that they are using you to compare pricing and features.