Colleen’s Blog

Chris and I spent an afternoon scuba diving with the team at Key Dives. What an exceptional experience they created for everyone on the boat! And, as usual, I can distill a number of lessons that you can use to grow your business from my experience. Here are the top three: 1) Expertise matters but it must be captivating as well. The captain of our boat was a commanding and authoritative man, but also fun and likeable. He had charisma and rapport with his crew and guests that made you want to listen to him. Diving is fun but also risky, and the briefings are critical for everyone's safety. Our captain held the entire boat with rapt attention. As a contrast, when was the last time you saw a flight attendant receive 100% attention to their preflight briefing? Lesson: Bored customers learn nothing (and buy nothing).

We're approaching the end of the first quarter of the year. Are you satisfied with your results so far? Regardless if your sales team is way ahead, on pace or behind on the targets you've set, I want to direct your focus to a potential gold mine you're already standing on. In fact, there are 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 exactly this sales goldmine is? Enough suspense!

I’m always amazed at how much one can learn about business success just by the act of travelling. Here is what happened over the last 30 days, and the lessons you can use to profit from it. It's a valuable exercise to use your own experiences as a customer to improve your own business' customer service. Why not learn from the mistakes of others?

Is your business experiencing wild swings in revenue? This may surprise you, but putting too much emphasis on closing business is actually counterproductive to increasing your revenues. What?! Let me explain. Every time one of your sales reps closes a sale, they should be adding three to four more leads to your pipeline. When you’re concentrating too much on closing business, it detracts focus from gaining new leads. Before long, you will have no new leads to close business with, and this is what causes swings in revenue or sales whiplash...as I like to call it! Not to worry, if you feel your team has fallen victim to laser-focusing on closing while sacrificing new leads, there's a solution. Are you wondering how you can attain consistent revenue?