The Sales Leader Blog

“Maybe our price is just too high.” I hear that often when troubleshooting sales issues for clients during my seminars and coaching sessions. My advice is always the same: price isn’t the problem.

Price says many things about what you are selling and about whom you consider as your ideal customer for your product or service. If you are already established in your market and you have set your prices competitively, then price-cutting is the last thing you should be thinking about as a solution to boosting sales.

With a low-price strategy, instead of attracting customers who appreciate dealing with professionals focused on excellence, you risk attracting buyers with no expectations other than that you’re, well, cheap. That makes it hard to create an emotional connection with customers, thus it’s less likely they’ll stick with you. Why should they? They chose you largely on price in the first place!

Focus instead on value, better options and benefits. Examine what customers are buying from you, what needs they have that compel them to make the decision to buy and why they choose to buy from you rather than from someone else.

Dedicated to increasing your sales,

Colleen

I am often asked by Sales Leaders how to get their teams engaged with their sales goals.  The following  is how I answered this in a recent interview for the Society of Advancement of Consulting:

“The surest way to ensure success in engaging employees is to involve them in the establishment of the initiative’s goals” says Colleen Francis, founder and president of Engage Selling Solutions (www.EngageSelling.com), a North American based sales consulting company.

“For sales organizations, this is especially critical: if reps don’t understand or believe that their sales targets are achievable, they won’t internalize them and are less likely to hit them. Taking the time to help reps understand where the quotas came from, demonstrating that they are achievable and soliciting their explicit commitment can make the difference between success and failure.”

Now is the time  to ensure all reps are all onside, both with what is left to close for the year PLUS what is coming in their targets next year. Sit down with everyone one on one to have a detailed conversation about their 2012 goals, the companies expectations and how each seller can make a contribution. The more you involve your team in the goal setting, the more likely they are to hit the goal.

Dedicated to making this your best year yet,

Colleen

 Gone are the days when some salespeople could eek out a living simply by waiting for the phone to ring and taking orders. Today, only the most disciplined survive and thrive. Here’s what you can do to bring more discipline to your daily business habits.

Do away with improvised scheduling. Replace it with a structured business day in which prospect development and contacting clients are your top priorities. Fill-in empty blocks on your calendar with specific activities supporting you prospecting pipeline.

Follow-up regularly on all new leads. A vast majority of these, in my experience, aren’t ready to close until up to as many as seven follow-ups. Adopt a multistep approach using several channels for leads (e.g., email, direct mail, social media, websites, e-newsletters). Make a habit of making that one more call, of attending one more networking event, and of spending one more hour rehearsing your sales script or presentation. These all add up to make big changes.

Dedicated to making tis your best year yet!

Colleen

Sales leaders are always asking me what the right KPI’s are for their team.While the “right ones” vary from company to company depending on your sales cycle I would suggest the following Key Performance Indicators are a base line for any team wanting to measure and improve:

• Revenue generation new and existing
• Proposal to closed  ratio
• Number of client meetings in a set period
• Average client growth (projects or products) year over year
• Length of time the average new client takes to close (pipeline management)
• Length of time the average existing client takes to close a new piece of business (pipeline management)
• Pipeline accuracy
• Forecast accuracy
• Account Plan completion including the scheduling of “client days” for key strategic accounts
• Overall territory growth
• Overall client growth
• Overall client satisfaction and loyalty scores
• Willingness to refer

Once you know the base line for these metrics – where your team is at today – you can make informed decisions on what (and who) needs to be improved and how to improve them.

Dedicated to increasing your sales,

Colleen

Are you selling the way you were five years ago? Chances are good your results aren’t what they once were. Find out what’s not working for you and kick that sales trash to the curb! Here are five common issues I’m seeing when coaching clients.

Clinging to bad leads who don’t buy. Bad leads will always be bad leads and are sucking time and resources out of your day. You either qualify a lead or you trash it.

Cold calling as top lead generator. Today, only 3% of all sales are closing from cold calls. The other 97% come from other sources (e.g., referrals, web inquiries, white papers).

Same old sales script. If you’re talking more than listening on that first call to a prospect, trash that script. Start over, beginning with good coaching advice.

Dropping price because someone asked. Emphasize value of your product/service and offer more options, not discounts.

Outdated testimonials. Remember three Cs: current compelling and credible! Prospects want to know if your products/services work in today’s marketplace.

Be honest with yourself. Which of these 5 above are you or your team guilty of. Now, what are you going to do to correct it? Awareness if the first step to solving the problem