Colleen’s Blog

Did you just do a double take? Stop trying to close sales...isn't that counter-productive to our sales success? You heard me right. Salespeople should not be attempting to “close” sales with clients. It’s all in the definition. Closing is something you do to a person. While it may just be a term, the language is completely one-sided. It implies that you are going entirely for the win regardless of what’s right for the customer. Salespeople who approach prospects with this kind of self benefiting mentality are almost never successful in their long term endeavors. Depending on their abilities and experience, they may in fact convince the prospect to do business with them, but long term, mutually beneficial relationships are rarely ever fostered. This breed of selling creates the "pushy" and "aggressive" stigma that clouds our entire industry. It puts everyone, including well-wishing, value focused salespeople at a clear disadvantage with prospects. You want to instill a win-win mindset in your team. Your business hasn't truly won unless your clients are gaining incredible value by working with you. Sales closing techniques that have amusing terms or names are often methods that you should not be using. For example:

Your health and wellness are important factors to consider if you want to increase your sales. As you know, it’s tough to focus and get things done when you’re stressed or working on a lack of sleep! You might think nobody else notices your sleep deprivation and stress, but I promise your team can tell when their leader is feeling off! Due to this, it’s so important to focus on you just as much as you focus on your sales team and your business. When you’re staying in noisy hotel rooms, working late or pulling all-nighters, you must make an active effort to stay grounded and ensure that you’re not neglecting yourself for the sake of your team and your business! Remember, a sales team is only as good as their leader!

Do you want to be successful? Alright - that was obviously a rhetorical question. Since I know you want to be triumphant with your sales, it’s imperative that you surround yourself with success. You’re probably familiar with the following quote: “You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with.” If you want to manage a successful sales team, you must do your best to learn from and work with successful sales leaders. If you’re learning tips and strategies from poor salespeople, you’re not going to be able to relay effective information to your team. If you don’t currently work with any sellers who are creating positive results, branch out and meet high achieving salespeople via networking events, conferences and trade shows. The idea is to surround yourself and learn from achievers. It doesn’t stop at your immediate network. Here are a few steps you can take to create a success mindset so you can create a prosperous sales career. On top of following these steps yourself, I highly recommend you ask your sales team to do the same:

You’ve probably had to deal with professional criticism at some point (or often) in your sales career. In such a fast-paced, high-pressure profession that is continuously focused on results, we are often subject to our fair share of criticism from colleagues, managers, clients, and prospects. If you want to be successful in sales, you must learn to take criticism and use it to your advantage. ← Click To Tweet It’s easy to get wrapped up in your faults when others are pointing them out to you. But, there are steps you can take to efficiently move past the negativity and actually create success through the criticism that you receive.

If your sales are suffering right now, I want to make you aware of a shocking statistic. According to a study conducted by our friends at InsideSales.com, an incredible 30% of leads are never followed up on by the sales team when passed on by the marketing department. Can you believe it?! It doesn't matter if you have a client base of 10 people or 10,000 people. Ignoring 30% of your leads is a great way to create a sales disaster in your business. At the very least, I'm sure we can all agree that even if your sales are on target, that extra chunk of business can't hurt! Now that we have that surprising stat out of the way, let's discuss what's required in your follow up.