Colleen’s Blog

Be honest, is your sales team, or are you lacking consistency?

Silence is one of the simplest things a seller can learn to do, but it is the most difficult for them to execute in the sales process effectively.

As we approach the last few weeks of the year, salespeople often find themselves either coasting into the new year because they have accomplished their sales goals, or they find themselves pushing hard because they have struggled to reach their sales targets.

I was working with a group of sales managers at a workshop a few weeks ago and one of them introduced this strategy. It was a very simple strategy of implementing an account plan when you didn’t have a sophisticated account planning process.

I want to highlight a sales strategy I’ve noticed perform incredibly well as of late. We started calling this the “land and expand” strategy.

I recently spoke with a couple of high-performing salespeople about the various accounts we were managing. And one of them told me that he had been calling a particular customer for ten years before he finally got the break he needed to win their business. During one of his sales calls, he realized that he wasn’t just calling a single shop. In actuality, they had 120 locations.

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.

   A few months ago, I was privileged to be invited to a seminar hosted by Gartner featuring a small group of top level thought leaders in sales. There were about six of us around the table and we got a preview of Gartner's research that they were rolling out at their sales summit later in the year. We assessed and discussed the research—in particular, how it applied to our clients.

When we're making a sale, we're asking someone to make a change—a change in business, strategy, software, people, or products. However, more importantly, change is difficult. If you start thinking about selling as managing a change management process, it really helps you to speed up sales and set yourself apart from the competition. Why? Because your buyers, indeed, don't like change. They're scared of change and making the wrong decision.