Colleen’s Blog

When meeting with prospects or high level decision makers, many salespeople focus on the wrong type of conversation. Your average salesperson will spend hours preparing sheets that outline their product’s features, benefits, pricing and other details. They practice their pitch, and at times have a lengthy speech rehearsed. While preparation is never a bad thing, the successful salesperson understands the value of focusing on the correct aspect of the presentation.

Closing rates are ALWAYS the "topic of the day" during workshops, coaching calls and strategy sessions. What is yours? Is that high or low compared to average? What would you expect it to be? How can we make it better? Is my closing rate higher or lower for lost deals vs. won deals? Questions abound, here's where you should start.

How often do you track your growth accounts? In order to be successful with your growth clients, you should be tracking them on a regular basis. More specifically, you should update yourself on their progress on a monthly basis. This may seem counterintuitive, especially because I recommend tracking key accounts on a quarterly basis. But, there are four big reasons that I suggest tracking your growth accounts more frequently.

When professionals in virtually every industry think about "compensation" - especially when it comes to structuring compensation plans, rarely is anything but a dollar sign considered. Yet, there's another powerful way to provide commissions to your sales team, and you're likely overlooking it or underestimating its power and value.

Like many professional sellers, I travel all the time. Having racked up over 225,000 miles over two major airlines last year you could say that my most used office space is seat 3D. Air Canada and America are my preferred choices and I am always pleased with the levels of service they provide their elite fliers. Concierge service, priority numbers, access to the best seats and best flights, upgrades, free food and drinks - it really does pay to be a top tier with these two airliners. I need to be productive when I travel. For me, that means a business class seat for room and privacy, power, and WiFi. After all, this is my office! This month, I was surprised to be be missing key elements from these requirements with both carriers.

Most sales reps are making a fundamental mistake when handling the pricing objection. They're always trying to get the buyer to make an apples-to-apples comparison on the pricing and that’s not what we want. We want the buyer to be faced with an apples-to-oranges comparison. Now, why do we want that?

Response rates are critical in sales. After all, if you can't get a buyer to respond to a call or an email...you can't start a relationship let alone close a sale. Smart sellers know that email marketing to a warm list of buyers is a profitable way to both keep in touch with your current customers as well as attracting new buyers. That being said, you must pay attention to a few rules to ensuring your emails are responded to positively.

As a sales leader, you need to know how to be an effective coach. LeBron James, Kobe Bryant, and even Oprah Winfrey have coaches - because they understand the power of an outside perspective to help them master their own games. So, regardless of how well a salesperson is excelling or exceeding their targets, you should never just "let them be" and hope that they continue to grow, develop, and produce results. The problem is, many sales leaders don't understand the difference between coaching, managing and simply shouting out directives and commands. Don't be fooled, the latter is NOT coaching.

What if I told you that you may be standing on a sales gold mine and not even know it? There are actually countless organizations who will miss their sales targets this year, without realizing that if they took advantage of this gold mine, they could not only make up lost ground, but completely exceed the results they hope to create this year. Don't worry about grabbing your shovels, no physical labor is necessary to tap into and grab the gold that's already waiting for you. Wondering what I'm talking about? Enough suspense!

Home fitness is all the craze these days. You know, those big, bulky machines that supposedly deliver amazing results or certain 90 day programs that make you fit and healthy? Don't worry, I'm not about to bash anything that can increase your fitness, health and overall well-being. The fitness machines and programs are not my issue. In fact, if you eat right, work hard and stay committed, you probably will get into great shape. My issue is with the people who buy these machines/programs, and then leave them to collect dust. You can have greatest fitness program or gym pass in the world, but if you don't use it, the results won't come.