Colleen’s Blog

Sales leaders ask me all the time about how to make their sales team take accountability, or hold them accountable, for the set goals. I have to remind them that it's very hard for anyone to want to be accountable for someone else's goals.

We can discuss sales strategies, ideas, tips and methods to no end. However, at times even the best salesperson struggles to achieve results not because of a weak strategy, but because of little to no focus on their productivity. Let’s cut to the chase. The best way to get your team to achieve true productivity in their work day is to get them to cut off all inbound access. Now, before your jaw drops too low, let me clarify...

Most of my clients have a practice where they do quarterly business reviews with their best customers. This is something that I advocate as a best selling practice for key account management.

Your sales team could be too isolated! A couple of years ago, I was working with an organization and we brought their entire sales team together in one room. One of the first things we did is we asked each individual on the team to begin sharing examples, ideas, thoughts and success stories. We wanted to determine whether those success stories aligned with the goals and values that the company put forth. Something interesting happened though. We began hearing phrases like:

Most times, companies, marketing departments, executives, and even sales teams create value statements without understanding the value they can bring to the customer.

Today, we're going to go over three tips that will help you in your interview process so you know which candidates you shouldn't hire.

Last week, we talked about being nice, staying focused and getting to work and I mentioned that being nice was so important because people do business with people that are motivated, successful and happy. One of the ways that we can show that in our business is to be confident.

Many sales managers are complaining about their top sellers because they're not team players. It goes without saying that top sellers have to be acting in a legal, moral, and ethical manner at all times. We also want them to get along with people, but they don't need them to be team players.

Turnover, specifically sales turnover, hurts your business. How do I know this? Recently, I've been working with some clients who have suffered some devastatingly bad losses because of sales rep turnover.