Colleen’s Blog

The number one question I get from sales leaders: how do I get my sellers to ask for more referrals? Sellers are notoriously bad at asking for referrals in a business to business environment because it makes them sound needy, helpless, or desperate. How do we rectify this fearful mindset?

Recently, I've been doing a lot of research with our clients and a lot of reading on sales turnover rates because it's impossible to create a non-stop sales boom if you have high turnover.

Recently on my LinkedIn page, we've been having an interesting discussion on compensation plans. Over the course of my career as a consultant, I've met two or three sales leaders who like to have compensation plans that "keep their salespeople guessing" because they think it "keeps them on their toes."

We're finding that buyers are limiting contact with sellers to manage their time. In fact, Jill Konrath put it best when she said, "buyers are busy and long-term planning is sometimes only a few weeks."

Ten years ago, I was working with clients where we were focused on their business as a speciality item. One of the biggest banks in the world was one of my clients at the time and they were losing business to niche specialists.

Last month, I was working with a client who told me that a core group of their targeted market was interested in speed because whoever gets there the fastest will win the business, regardless of price.

There's an expression floating around these days that I love: corporate promiscuity. What exactly is that and how does it relate to us as sales leaders?

Recently, I was overseas coaching a group of sales managers from the Middle East and one of them had a great question. He asked, "Colleen, how do I coach someone through ego?"

It is common for me to get questions like, "How do I get my sellers to reach their sales goals?" Here's my answer.

Today, we're going to talk about something that's profitable and easy to do, yet so few people do it. It's called cross-selling.