Colleen’s Blog

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.

Most companies take a reactive approach to client retention and that is the wrong way to think about this issue.

Our team spends a lot of time working with our clients on compelling value propositions and client testimonials. There are two ways to use client testimonials that are often overlooked that I think are some of the most powerful uses of this type of content.

I would like to talk to you about a proposal format that you can customize for whatever business you’re in. You can use this whether you’re in a products business, a service business, or a hybrid of both.

In a previous video, we talked about the concept of learning by doing instead of learning through a training workshop or a facilitated training event. I was recently at an extended leadership team meeting for one of my best clients and he had all of his sales managers there. We introduced a quick concept to them around proper account planning and management.

Last week, we talked about persistence and I walked you through a call and email plan that’s designed to get somebody on the phone. There’s one other element of persistence that’s really important as you’re following up with an account and that is to be persistent with multiple people.

The world is run by people who follow up, and for sellers, that means being persistent.  You will win more business by being persistent than anything else. 

I’m a big fan of using your best to mentor the rest. One of the other things that I’m a huge fan of is learning by doing. So, what exactly does this mean and how can you harness its power in your organization?

Recently, I was pulled aside at a sales meeting by a couple of sales reps who said, “This is all great, Colleen, but my manager won’t coach us.  He won’t take the time to help us develop our skills. What should I do?  I mean I can’t get better because I can’t be coached.”

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.