Colleen’s Blog

Is your sales team actively seeking out referrals from your current client base? According to recent studies, 78% of happy clients want to give out referrals. Yet only 8% of salespeople actually ask for them. Can you see the disconnect? It doesn't take a math genius to figure out that many salespeople are missing out on key opportunities to increase their sales and grow their businesses. How many of these opportunities are slipping through the fingers of your sales team? I understand the intimidation factor, but the truth is in order to achieve and maintain any kind of success in sales, you have to push through the intimidation and ask for referrals anyway. They are such a powerful tool to grow your customer base, and not having your team ask for them often enough is doing a major disservice to them and your business. Here's the truth, you will always get a rejection if you're asking for referrals the wrong way. Just like anything else, being successful with gathering referrals requires strategy. <-- Click To Tweet Consider this quick strategy to get the ball rolling:

I was lucky enough to watch a pod of humpback whales pass by our beach yesterday. I was on the shore and you could easily see them off in the distance breaching continuously for 15 minutes or more. Why do whales breach? Some say communication, to signal danger, a change in direction, or to woo a new mate. It could be to mark a territory, a menace, or simply to clean off pesky parasites and barnacles. Surely 40 tons of whale crashing into the Pacific would shake almost anything lose! Others say the breaching is to help the whales look around to see what's on the horizon. Could they have spotted me watching?

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.

Let’s face it, sales as we know it has changed, from how to attract distracted buyers to how to nurture a long-term relationship when loyalty is diminishing almost as quickly as our attention span. Fortunately there is new information that can help us make sense of this evolution, which in turn can help educate our sales teams as to what they need to do differently. But have you considered that possibly our sales teams as we would define them have changed as well?

It’s one thing to provide a great product or service, but unfortunately, that’s where the experience stops for many people. Sales is all about truly understanding your clients’ needs and issues. Their experience with you should not end immediately after their signature is on paper. The way I see it, all customers want the same 13 things from you. That’s right. Regardless of the industry you’re in, or the product you sell, customers all essentially buy and remain loyal for the same core reasons. <-- Click To Tweet Stay true to all of them and you will develop a loyal and profitable customer base who will refer you to everyone they know!

You only have a few seconds to make a positive first impression on someone. Let’s face it - within moments of meeting another person we have often already determined whether or not we want to work with them. Here are, what I believe to be, extremely simple steps to creating trust upon meeting someone new: 1) You must look and act like someone who is ready to do business. ← Click to Tweet 2) Then, it’s important to behave in such a way that generates positive feelings in the other person. Doing so will get that person to like you. 3) Once they like you, your continued behaviors will determine whether or not they will trust you. When they trust you, they will often do business with you. Sounds easy, right? Apparently not.