Colleen’s Blog

After a much needed, quiet three weeks at home, I started to travel for myself and clients in late January. Here is the round-up of the good, the bad, and the unexplainable. Use the lessons to elevate your own customer experiences. They could make the difference between a loyal client and a lost one.

What are you currently doing to separate yourself from other salespeople? I don’t recommend locking yourself in a room and working through your days without any interaction with your colleagues, but I do recommend taking steps to truly differentiate yourself and stand out from the pack. If you want to be the best, you must do things that mediocre salespeople are not willing to do. It often takes more effort, but what you will gain from going the extra mile is invaluable. When you show up to work and do exactly what everyone else is doing, you will achieve the same results that they are achieving. When you make the extra effort, you create extraordinary results and make more sales. It’s not just about your sales results. When you stand out from the crowd, you are more likely to move up in your company and receive more opportunities within your own business. Regardless of the industry you’re in, people always respect and admire hard working individuals. Here are a few steps you can take to separate yourself from other sales professionals:

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.

Want to know the easiest way to lose control of the sales process? Time and time again, I’ve seen salespeople hold off on presenting their price to a prospective client until the final written proposal. They don’t bring up pricing in person or before a written proposal is sent because they’re afraid to scare away their potential client. Ironically, by following this methodology, they end up scaring away the prospect anyway. If you avoid discussing pricing options until the very last moment, you make it too easy for the prospect to ignore you. They may love everything about you and what you have to offer, but if the amount they see in writing is not something they’re comfortable with, chances are they will simply avoid discussion rather than initiating it. In their mind, it’s much easier to ignore you than to reach out to you for a chance at a better price. Remember, your buyers fear rejection too! When this scenario unfolds, you lose complete control over the sales process and you make it very difficult for yourself to recover from it.