Colleen’s Blog

Far too many companies out there simply aren't growing. They're stagnating - once exciting results have been relived quarter and quarter and year after year and they're itching to see greater revenue. Does this sound like you?

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. I often suggest taking a step back before conducting interviews and hiring a new team member. 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.

Based on my work over the last year, I've identified 6 top reasons that I see sales teams fall short of their full sales potential. Could you be making the same mistakes? If you are, I would highly suggest course correcting and updating your processes.

How long do you typically take to get back to a prospect upon receiving an inquiry from them? Anything longer than 24 hours is too long. Your customers are busy people. By taking too long to respond you’re letting go of an otherwise potentially easy sale.

The best salespeople are constantly looking for ways to improve. They are not staying static for extended periods of time because, let’s face it, if you’re not moving forward - you’re moving backwards! There’s almost nothing better than reaching (or exceeding) all of your sales goals for the year. A certain feeling of accomplishment is natural, and should be embraced! However, will you be satisfied if your numbers stay the same and stagnate? Are you doing anything to improve upon your past accomplishments? The answer for many salespeople is no. They often work hard to create temporary success and soon after end up in a worse situation than they were before because they allow temporary accomplishments to hinder their work ethic. Here are two things you can do to improve upon your current success:

Thinking back to my post on Monday, another lesson we can learn from Mykonos is the value of adding value. Adding value, especially when it is not expected, creates a lasting impression in your customers minds and keeps them coming back. Even more, it converts your customers into evangelists bringing you more customers at little advertising costs. For example:

A few weeks ago, I was at a client sales management meeting and we were discussing Account Management because many were concerned that they were starting to lose some of their accounts.  There was a lot of resistance from the sales managers that said their teams won’t do account plans because they don’t want to go to the rigor of documenting what they’re going to do as clients are often unpredictable.

We’re approaching the end of first quarter for many salespeople and it’s a good time for us to take stock.

A couple of weeks ago, we talked about traits of top performers and I mentioned that curiosity, creativity, persistence, and discipline were some of the key traits.  The other things that I noticed about top performers is that they have confidence and they have energy.  How does this manifest itself in front of a client?